Hori Kerei Taiaroa

Hori Kerei Taiaroa (Ngāi Tahu) was born at Ōtākou in the 1830s or early 1840s. His father was the Ngāi Tahu chief Te Matenga Taiaroa and his mother was Mawera of Ngāti Rangiwhakaputa. He married Tini Pana (Jane Burns) whose mother was of Ngāi Tūāhuriri. In accordance with his father's wishes, Taiaroa made the pursuit of Te Kerēme, his life's work. In 1875 he was granted a tribal mandate to lead this mahi on behalf of the iwi.

During his tenure as parliamentary representative for Southern Maori and on the Legislative Council he pushed for a series of inquiries into grievances arising from the Ngāi Tahu land purchases including the Smith-Nairn commission of inquiry which spurred the creation of the 1880 map. He was an outspoken critic of the government and vigorously advanced the Ngāi Tahu cause in Parliament in an often-lonely battle against impossible odds. He died at Wellington on 4 August 1905 and was buried in the churchyard at Ōtākou.

Smith-Nairn Commission 1879-1880

Through the advocacy of Taiaroa, and following two decades of protest by Ngāi Tahu, a Royal Commission of Inquiry (Middle Island Native Land Purchase Commission) was established in 1879 to investigate grievances associated with the Canterbury, Akaroa, Otago, and Murihiku land purchases. Thomas Smith (a private independent nominated by the Crown) and Francis Nairn (a retired judge of the Native Land Court nominated by Ngāi Tahu) were appointed to carry out the inquiry; thus it is commonly referred to as the Smith-Nairn Commission. Ngāi Tahu communities took a deep interest in the proceedings and had high hopes for a positive outcome.

Over twelve months from April 1879 to April 1880 a vast amount of evidence was collected and presented at hearings held in Auckland, Wellington, Ōtaki, Christchurch, Kaiapoi, Akaroa, Dunedin, Port Chalmers, Waikouaiti, and Riverton. Taiaroa himself gave evidence at the hearings on several occasions. He was joined by more than thirty other Ngāi Tahu witnesses who also gave detailed evidence including firsthand accounts of the negotiation and transaction of the land purchase agreements. 

The Smith-Nairn Commission's evidence, much of it in the original te reo Māori, is a priceless store of information which provides powerful insights into the contemporary Ngāi Tahu view of the land purchases. Many of the kaumātua who gave evidence at the hearings also shared their knowledge of mahinga kai with Taiaroa who used this information to create the 1880 map.

Mapping Mahinga Kai

To bolster the Ngāi Tahu case before the Smith-Nairn Commission, Taiaroa began to gather information from Ngāi Tahu kaumātua about kāinga (settlements) and mahinga kai (food gathering areas) within the Otago and Canterbury areas at the time of the land purchases. He commenced this work in January 1880 at Taumutu. But by early April a change of government halted the commission’s funding, and it went into recess. Despite this major setback Taiaroa continued to collect and record the names and locations of kāinga and mahinga kai, in fact, his work began apace. In May and June Taiaroa met with kaumātua at Ōtākou, Waikouaiti, Moeraki, Korotuaheka, and Kaiapoi where hui were held over several days, often extending late into the evening. At Korotuaheka Taiaroa commented that he worked day and night. Eventually he recorded over 1,000 place names from Ngāi Tahu informants.

The placenames collected were by no means comprehensive – the aim of the exercise was to capture the most important kāinga and mahinga kai with the aim of advocating for their return. Under the terms of the Canterbury Deed of Purchase (Kemp’s Deed), Ngāi Tahu were specifically guaranteed retention of their ‘mahinga kai’. Thus, the majority of placenames Taiaroa collected and mapped were within the Canterbury Purchase area as the destruction of these sites, or prevention of access to them, demonstrated the Crown's clearest breaches of contract.

Taiaroa plotted most (but not all) of the placenames he collected onto the 1880 map. Some were written in a shortened form due to space constraint arising from the sheer density of sites. He carefully recorded the full-length names and more comprehensive 'mahinga kai lists' in two notebooks. The foods and resources gathered at each location were recorded alongside their corresponding placename. 

Tribal Taonga

After the Smith-Nairn Commission was halted, the mahinga kai lists and map remained part of Taiaroa’s personal papers. It is likely that he drew upon them in his ongoing advocacy for Te Kerēme. On his death in 1905, the papers passed into the care of his widow, Tini Taiaroa.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that numerous tracings of the map were made by whānau members at various times, using butcher’s paper on kitchen tables! In 1925 a tracing of the map was presented to the Native Land Court at Tuahiwi during the hearings to determine those Ngāi Tahu eligible for any compensation arising from grievances associated with the Canterbury Purchase (Kemp’s Deed). Historian James Herries Beattie also visited Taua Tini around this time and studied the map. He later described the map and used it extensively in his 1944 publication, Maori Placenames of Otago. 

On the death of Taua Tini in 1934, the papers passed to her son Riki Te Mairaki who shared them with Pākeha ethnographers and historians including Beattie, Roger Duff, and William Anderson Taylor. Ultimately, Duff and Taylor convinced Riki Te Mairaki to place some of the family archives including the map into the Canterbury Museum's care. A much pored over tribal taonga, by the time of its deposit, in January 1946, the wear and tear on the map from repeated handling was evident in that it had separated into eight pieces along the fold lines. 

The mahinga kai lists followed a more complicated trajectory, ending up in Australia, before being returned to New Zealand and deposited in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington in 1977.

WAI-27 & the 1880 Map

During the hearings of the Ngāi Tahu Claim before the Waitangi Tribunal (WAI-27) the 1925 tracing of the 1880 map and a translation of the mahinga kai lists were presented as evidence to support the Ngāi Tahu claims to mahinga kai. They proved invaluable to the Ngāi Tahu case. The documents were specifically referred to in the evidence of several witnesses for both Ngāi Tahu and the Crown. 

In his evidence, Atholl Anderson (Ngāi Tahu) pointed out that the data contained in the records revealed ‘the density of mahinga kai in the landscape’ and demonstrated that there was a far greater variety of exploited resources than was apparent from simply reading the journals of early European observers.

In his assessment of the ‘Ngaitahu 1880’ material, Dr. George Habib concluded that the failure of early European administrators to acknowledge the complex nature of Ngāi Tahu interactions with their environment and resources, and the longstanding significance of those interactions, was a continuing injustice.