97: The Mikonui artefact

Continuing in the revealing of unusual items found in NZ that are non-Maori in origin, we present the following.

There is much in common with another artifact found at Pelorus Sound just to the north. All the design involves notching. It's overall design resembles many we have presented here before. It was found on this beach in Kaikoura.

The artifact here figured was found by a workman of the Public Works Department with a burial at Mikonui, between Oaro and Amuri (or Haumuri) on the coast south of Kaikoura, North Canterbury, and was confidently associated by the late Mrs. Beaton (Hariata Tapitia Pitini, a niece of the chief Whakatau of Kaikoura, sometimes called Kaikoura) with Ngaitahu, who arrived in the neighborhood not earlier than 1700 A.D. She died about the end of 1938, and apparently knew of the existence of the amulet in the particular site where it was found, and knew of its significance generally.

The artifact must have been placed in some cave or hollow, for it was blasted out of a rock-face.

Unfortunately, all the available information, obtained at second hand, and recorded by Mr. R. S. Duff in Records of the Canterbury Museum, was that the amulet illustrated was a tohi, one of three brought from Hawaiki. Apparently it was not brought by Ngaitahu, whose original landfall was in the North Island, but by the original tribe which settled Kaikoura, passing eventually into the hands of the conquering Ngaitahu. The amulet is carved from the massive tooth of a sperm-whale, its perished appearance suggesting that it is of considerable age. The conclusions arrived at by Mr. Duff on examination of the specimen are:

• 1. That it dates back considerably in time.

• 2. That in its decorative features it links up with contemporary Polynesian motifs as found beyond New Zealand, and not with standardized modern Maori design, in:

• a. The “hook” at its lower extremity, linking up with the hook on the Hawaiian lei-niho-palaoa;

• b. The raised notched ridges linking up with the Chatham islands, Samoa, Niue, Tokelau, Ellice island, Uvea, Futuna, and Tikopia.

Further psychological details given in Mr. Duff's notes in the Records are not quoted, for the reason that the source from which they apparently derive is not Considered an authority at all reliable, she being like the poet and the lover “of imagination all compact … and, as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unkown,” so she did “turn them to shapes, and give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.”

In the September number of the Journal, p. 164, a portion of the Journal of F. A. (later Sir Frederick) Weld was quoted; but as that quotation has brought to notice a sketch made by Weld on the spot, the previous part of the Journal is quoted: “… we descended through flowering and fragrant bushes upon the site of the old fishery at Amuri; there are no Europeans living there now, and the broken boats and deserted habitations told a melancholy tale of the decay of the whale fishery. Here we found two large boats hauled up belonging to natives who were on their way, by easy stages, from Motueka to Lyttelton to work on the roads; one old man, the chief, said he was going there to die in the country of his fathers, and indeed he did not look long for this world; his cheerfulness, however, was no whit diminished, and we past a merry evening by our camping fires. Next morning (13th December, 1850), half a mile along wooded limestone cliffs brought us to the pa of the Ngaitau chief Kaikora, a man of portly presence and most powerful build …”.

Kaikoura lived at Mikonui, a beautiful sandy bay just south of Oahu river mouth; the road works referred to were those on the Lyttelton-Sumner road, then in progress, for access to the Canterbury plains, whose settlers were even then on the water, arriving at Lyttelton three days later, on 16th December, 1850. The sketch shows the Maori canoes and camp, and Mokonui, where the artifact was found, lies just beyond the near wooded bluff-point of the picture; and our thanks are due to the Canterbury Museum, and its ethnologist Roger Duff, for our opportunity to reproduce it.

This type of amulet was discussed by Dr. H. D. Skinner in the Journal for 1934 (J.P.S., vol. 43, pages 199 and 271).

The sketch shows the Maori canoes and camp, and Mokonui, where the artifact was found, lies just beyond the near wooded bluff-point of the picture; and our thanks are due to the Canterbury Museum, and its ethnologist Roger Duff, for our opportunity to reproduce it. This type of amulet was discussed by Dr. H. D. Skinner in the Journal for 1934 (J.P.S., vol. 43, pages 199 and 271).

The site of the old village of Mikonui is about a quarter to half a mile north of Waihiria and is fronted by a very fine sandy beach. There were many burials along the sandy foreshore facing the village; many of these have been washed out by storms. Numerous tools and artifacts have been found there, also some large blocks of rough greenstone. I uncovered what I took to be a very large mauri there some time back, in the rough form of the human “phallus.” It was too heavy to remove and probably still remains there. There is a tapu spring called Waitapu which wells out of the limestone at the back of the village. Hariata Pitini said that the water from this spring was tapu and reserved for ceremonial rites.