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This extract originally appeared in Te Ata o Tū The Shadow of Tūmatauenga: The New Zealand Wars Collections of Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2024) on pages 186-187.
This extract was authored by Rebecca Rice.
Hēni Te Kiri Karamū (Ngāti Rangiteaorere, Ngāti Uenukukōpako and Ngāti Hinepare of Te Arawa) was not only famous for her humanitarian act of taking water to the dying Captain Booth, she also made several flags while fighting with Ngāti Koheriki under the chief Wī Kōka. William Francis Gordon corresponded with Hēni from the 1890s through to the 1910s in order to learn more about these flags. One of her letters, now in Te Papa’s archives, describes one of the flags she made, and provides a diagram:
. . . a red silk flag about 6 yds long, a black silk cross, a white calico crescent white calico stars 2 or 3. also white calico letters Aotearoa, all in capital letters, the red on the back part of the letters, crescent & stars, were cut out, & all neatly sewn down . . . Aotearoa was below the crescent & stars . . . made of 3 small equal strips of calico crossing the middle of each other, all the designs cut through, making the banner reversible.1
1 Hēni Te Kiri Karamū to Gordon, 2 September 1899, Te Papa Archives, CA162/1/10/4.