January 21, 2013
Rare glimpse at Te Tau Ihu ancestors
A show of portraits going on show at the National Library in Wellington today is a window into one of the bloodiest events in early colonial history.
The library's Māori curator, Paul Diamond, says the 22 watercolours were painted by Isaac Coates, a Quaker who lived in Nelson from 1843 to 1845.
Many of the Māori he painted were involved in the Wairau incident, where a group of settlers from the New Zealand Company tried to arrest Te Rauparaha and his lieutenant Te Rangihaeata in a dispute over whether land near Blenheim had been sold.
In the subsequent action four Māori and 22 Pakeha were killed.
“Hillary and John Mitchell, historians down in Te Tau Ihu, which is where most of the people in these portraits come from, apart from the ones Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata from further north. Hillary and John have said after the Wairau, it would have been very difficult for a pakeha to paint Māori, because Māori had left the area. There was a huge amount of tension. Māori were expecting retribution and I think that’s partly why Isaac Coates left New Zealand.
Paul Diamond says the watercolours, which were bought by the Alexander Turnbull Library from a United States collector in 1989, can also be seen online, along with other work by Coates held in Boston, Oxford and Sydney.
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