Mokoia Island from Ohinemutu

This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).

The Ngāti Whakaue settlement of Ōhinemutu sits on the southern shore of Lake Rotorua, enjoying the constant hot water available for bathing and cooking. Descendants of the Te Arawa migration had lived there for centuries, no doubt attracted by the geothermal resources that, according to tradition, had resulted from a call by the great tohunga, or priest, Ngātoroirangi for the gods to send fire-bearing spirits from the homeland of Hawaiki.

In the 1840s Ōhinemutu comprised a community of some five hundred people, who could muster a fighting force of two hundred warriors. A palisaded pā (fortification) clung to the hill that rose from the shore. Steam would often envelop the pā, drifting up from the bay’s numerous thermal springs, which provided the morning bath for the community. This communal bathing was a matter of excited commentary among visiting Pākehā, whose culture knew no equivalent phenomenon.

The declaration of free trade in October 1844 spelled redundancy for John Guise Mitford, a young Customs official at the Bay of Islands. This new-found freedom opened the possibility of a trip into the mysterious hinterland, which he undertook over the summer of 1844–45. With whom he travelled, for how long, by which route — these and other questions remain unanswered. Mitford seems not
to have contributed an account of his trip to the local press, although many travellers of the same period did so.

Mitford’s generously sized watercolour is the first major depiction of Ōhinemutu, and may have been executed on the spot. Joseph Merrett had made drawings from the lakeside — work later pirated by travel artist George French Angas — but none of these possesses the ethnographic detail present in Mitford’s view from above the upper palisades. In this and related works the sloping style of the tekoteko (carved gable figure), characteristic of Te Arawa buildings, is visible on the houses sitting on the distant promontory.

Mitford went on to visit Rotomahana and its Pink and White Terraces. Merrett had preceded him there too, and his rough sketch gave a rudimentary indication of these marvels, but it was Mitford who made the first fully developed watercolour of the site, destined for international fame.

Roger Blackley