Trade Beads and Nails

The surprising and illuminating tools of trade and exchange that defined the era of Tupaia and the Endeavour

Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum opened the exhibition Voyage to Aotearoa: Tupaia and the Endeavour to commemorate Tuia 250. Taonga selected from across the Museum's collections communicated themes, like trade and exchange, as a part of Tupaia’s role as navigator and translator for Cook and his crew. Including Tupaia’s perspectives in the exhibition sought to balance the Cook-centric narrative of the first encounter with tangata whenua on Aotearoa shores.

The display of trade beads, nails and matau (fish hook) presents the narrative of first contact trading between the Tahitians, tangata whenua and crew of the HMB Endeavour.

_{Image credit (above): Parkinson, Sydney. Various kinds of Instruments Utensils & of the Inhabitants of New Zealand with some ornaments of the People of Terra del Fuego of New Holland. A journal of a voyage to the South Seas, in his Majesty's ship, the Endeavour, 1773. Plate XXVI.}

Ngā whakatere I te Moanaui a Kiwa

Maui received the jawbone of his grandmother, Murirangawhenua, which formed the matau of Maui, or the ‘hook of Maui’. This gift represents the passing of knowledge and the first tool from Pacific and Māori history.[1] Maui was the first early navigator within Pacific and Māori narratives and his seafaring navigation paved the way for successive voyagers across the Pacific. The Pacific Islands were subsequently populated between 1300 and 900BCE[2]. Civilisations were well established by the time European voyages to the region occurred.

_{[1] Grey, G. (1885). Polynesian mythology and ancient traditional history of the New Zealand race: as furnished by their priests and chiefs (No. 1). University of Waikato Library.}

_{[2] Irwin, G. (2005). Pacific Migrations. Te Ara- The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand.}

_{Image credit (right): Matau, 1926.131, 18062.}

Foreign glass and iron

The HMS Dolphin and the Endeavour carried trade beads to use when bartering with the indigenous civilisations across the many Pacific Islands. Tupaia had acquired enough English from the first encounter with the Dolphin in 1767 so that by the time the Endeavour arrived on the shores of Tahiti in 1769, he was able to successfully facilitate trade. Beads were used to trade local food, water, timber and sexual companionship. At the time of the Dolphin, the ship’s physical integrity was put at risk because crew stripped the iron nails to trade for sex with the local vahine.[1]

When the Endeavour first arrived on the shores of Aotearoa, tangata whenua were initially uninterested in trading their resources with the crew for beads and iron nails despite Tupaia’s negotiations. However, by the time the ship arrived in Uawa, tangata whenua recognised the possible value of the trade beads and iron nails.[1] Tupaia facilitated successful trade with the tangata whenua of Uawa so that the crew could access sorely needed local resources.

Having fresh supplies on board, the Endeavour then voyaged northwards. Arriving in Te Wanganui a Hei, Te Horeta Te Taniwha (Ngāti Whanaunga) described meeting Cook onboard the Endeavour. During this meeting, Cook offered a selection of objects including a nail which Te Horeta notes,

“I took my nail, and kept it with great care, and carried it with me wherever I went, and made it fit to the point of my spear, and also used it to make holes in the side-boards of canoes, to bind them on to the canoe. I kept this nail till one day I was in a canoe and she capsized in the sea, and my god was lost to me.”[2]

_{[1] Cook, J. (1893). Captain Cook's Journal during His First Voyage Round the World Made in HM Bark" Endeavour" 1768-71 (No. 188). E. Stock. Pg.143.}

_{[2] White, J. (2011). The ancient history of the Maori, his mythology and traditions. Cambridge University Press. Pg. 92.}

_{[1] Couper, A. D. (2009). Sailors and traders: a maritime history of the Pacific peoples. University of Hawaii Press. Pg.65.}

_{Image Credit (left): Trade beads, 1936.67, 22452.}

Up-cycling: Tangata whenua adaptations

Tangata whenua adapted the iron nails to form matau much like the image of the jawbone gifted to Maui. Large iron nails were reshaped into chisels, drills and weapon tips as seen in the metal nails that forms the shank of a traditional pa kahawai featured in the exhibition Voyage to Aotearoa. The beads were stripped and used as colourful adornments on kakahu (clothing) or as ear pendants.[1]

Consequently, the stability and longevity of selectively adapted resources incorporated into everyday objects would create this new type of taonga. They too would be passed down through generations as reminders of both the ancient as well as the new legends of navigating through the Pacific.

_{[1] Stenders, K. and Aitken, S. (2018). The Pacific in the Wake of Captain Cook, with Sam Neill. Essential Media and Entertainment Pty Ltd.}

_{Image credit (above): Te matau me te mētara, Trade and Exchange case – Voyage to Aoteraroa: Tupaia and the Endeavour.}

Catch the last days of Voyage to Aotearoa: Tupaia and the Endeavour, only at Auckland Museum.

Find out more

Trade Beads and Nails by Taila Roth - L.A Spedding Associate Curator, Māori, Human History. Published March 2020.