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The Huia Settlers Museum; TC8188

The Huia Settlers Museum, TC8188
FromThe Huia Settlers Museum
Name/Title
The Huia Settlers Museum
About this object
THE HUIA SETTLERS MUSEUM is situated on the northern side of the Manukau Harbour 20 minutes drive from Titirangi at 1251 Huia Rd. It is open on Saturday and Sunday afternoons from 1.30 - 4.30 and at other times by appointment. Groups are welcome and admission is by donation.
Collection
Chappell Digital Collection
Object Type
Photograph
Object number
TC8188

Tags

History
Museum
Waitakere City
West Auckland


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Results from DigitalNZ

The huia was prized by people – too much for its own good. For Maori, huia feathers were the mark of high status. You could wear huia feathers in your hair, or whole skins in your ear, only if you were of chiefly rank. The huia's name became associated with treasured things: containers for precious items were called waka huia. Europeans coming to New Zealand were also captivated by the huia's beauty and its unusual features. Most notable of these was the difference between male and female in the size and shape of the bill. The first European to give a scientific description of the huia thought that male and female were two different species. The huia became a target for collectors – to be stuffed and mounted as decoration in wealthy homes. It also came to be prized for modern fashion accessories – for a while, hats trimmed with huia feathers were all the rage. In the late nineteenth century Maori and Pakeha hunters slaughtered huia in great numbers with shotguns and sold the skins to collectors and fashion merchants. Scientists advising the government of the time could see that the huia's survival was threatened, so the government attempted to organise the collection of birds for shipping to offshore islands where they could survive undisturbed. Ironically, the people who collected the birds alive found it more profitable to sell them as dead specimens, and so the recovery plan failed. The last confirmed sighting of a huia in the wild was in 1907, although unconfirmed sightings were reported for twenty to thirty years after that. Traces of the huia have only ever been found in the North Island where it was widespread, living in tall forest from north to south. Males and females paired for life, and they were often seen feeding together. It was once thought that this meant they fed co-operatively, but scientific studies of dimorphism (physical differences between the sexes) have shown that differences in body size, and bill size and shape, mean less competition...
Huia (Heteralocha acutirostris)
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
A large carved treasure box of the type genericly referred to as 'pouaka whakairo', or carved box. This type of treasure box represents a distinct third variety of carved box quite separate from the waka huia and papa hou. It is charactersied by flat, straight, edges, and tends to be square or rectangular in shape. Their outer decorative carving is usually a combination of rauponga and whakarare patterns. Five sub-categories of this type of carved box have recently been identified. The earliest recorded European descriptions of this type of box are from 1831-1837, suggesting that it may be a less common traditional form, rather than one influenced or introduced by European settlers, as previously believed.
Pouaka (carved box)
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
This type of cloak is referred to as a hihima (cloak with undyed tassels) because of the undyed dressed flax used in manufacture that gives the garments their beautiful plain white appearance. This example is from Poroutawhao (located between Levin and Foxton in the lower North Island) and belongs to the Ngati Huia tribe, a hapu (sub-tribe) of Ngati Raukawa from the Waikato region. There is a concentration of black hukahuka (tassels) at one border accentuating the top of the garment, and coloured woollen sides woven in decorative loops. This woollen decoration was worked into the weaving after completion of the base garment. Hukahuka Hukahuka are made by the miro (twist thread) process of dying the muka (flax fibre) and rolling two bundles into a single chord. Korowai seem to have been rare at the time of Captain Cook's first visit to New Zealand because they do not appear in drawings made by his artists. But by 1844, when George French Angas painted historical accounts of early New Zealand, korowai with their black hukahuka had become the most popular style. Hukahuka on fine examples of korowai were often up to thirty centimetres long and when made correctly would move freely with every movement of the wearer. Today, many old korowai have lost their black hukahuka due to the dying process speeding up the deterioration of the muka. Pre-European colour Before the arrival of European settlers and modern materials such as wool, colours were sourced from indigenous materials. Paru (mud high in iron salts) provided black, raurekau (shrub: Brachyglottis repanda ) bark made yellow, and tanekaha (celery pine: Phyllocladus trichomanoides ) bark made tan. The colour was set by rolling the dyed muka (flax fibre) in alum (potash).
Korowai hihima (cloak)
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
RECENTLY the Dominion Museum received from England a small collection of adzes and other Maori artifacts gathered by an early settler, R. J. Corbett, who farmed at Hikurangi, Waikato, and who collected locally. Prominent among this collection was a lidless box hewn out of pumice and having a human figure carved on the outside of it. The figure carved largely on the back of the box is to be seen in fig. 1, and an oblique view of the upper portion appears in fig. 2. The box interior appears originally to have been square-cut on one side and round on the other. The bottom of the box is somewhat rounded and a cavity leads down to a depth of more than 40 mm., being at one time, perhaps, the repository of some very tapu or greatly cherished object. On the other hand the cavity may be due to decay of the substance during the passage of time. Considerable pitting on the outside surface may be an indication of this possibility. The human figure which surrounds the outside of the box is fairly typical of an old style of carving in which the mouth is open, tongue missing, and circular orbits with raised eyes and low, flat forehead are to be seen. The large hands are reminiscent of certain old carvings of early last century before European contacts had begun. On one hip is a series of concentric circles with a raised circle in the centre—perhaps a koru spiral which has become broken out and decayed. ( Koru is the curving stalk with a bulb at one end from which many spiral types may have been derived.). Dimensions are as follows:— Box interior: Width 67 mm., length 98 mm., depth 40 mm. (approx.). Outside measurements: Width 148 mm., length 179 mm., depth 117 mm. (approx.). The carved figure has a width of 65 mm. and a length of 72 mm. The Maori had no shelves, but a usual method of placing an object in a secure position was to suspend it from the roof. This is noticed in at least one of the pictures of Maori life in The New Zealanders, by Angas, drawn in the early 1840's...
Carved Pumice Box From Waikato (Journal of the Polynesian Society)
The University of Auckland Library
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