At Whare Komiti, Haerehuka, King Country

In 1885 the Dunedin-based photographer Alfred Burton travelled up the Whanganui River and through the King Country. He was one of the first Europeans to do so after the wars of the 1860s. This photograph of unidentified women and children was taken at Haerehuka (near Ōtorohanga, south of Te Awamutu), and the subjects are probably the wives and children of the King Movement chiefs that Burton also photographed at the whare komiti (committee house).

A survey trip
During the 1880s, Ngāti Maniapoto leaders were relaxing their opposition to a European presence in the region. Under pressure to open up the territory for settlement, they eventually agreed to put their lands before the Native Land Court and to allow the construction of the main trunk railway line. Land sales and surveys, like the trip during which Burton took this photograph, quickly followed. Burton travelled with C E Rochfort, a surveyor for the rail line who was engaged in surveying a river steamer route to connect with the railway.

Photographing Māori
At Whare Komiti belongs to a series of photographs that Burton called 'The Maori at Home'. It was an important project since few photographs of Māori had previously been taken outside the portrait studio. Images like At Whare Komiti provide an important insight into social and cultural details of Māori life during a time of significant change. Through such journeys, the Dunedin firm of Burton Brothers built up a comprehensive photographic record of New Zealand in the nineteenth century. Their work was continued into the twentieth century by Burton's former partner Thomas Muir, who formed Muir and Moodie in 1898. All the Burton negatives were purchased by Dominion Museum in 1943.