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Flintlock musket, maker unknown, calibre .57. The lock strap is inscribed: 'Taken from the Maories N. Zealand after the fight at Mahoetahi 1860 JEA XIV R.' 'JEA XIV R' is probably a reference to James Edward Alexander [1803-1885], who was Colonel of the British Army's 14th Regiment which fought in New Zealand during the 1860s. Alexander's book "Incidents of the Maori War. New Zealand in 1860-61" [London, 1863] describes the fighting at Mahoetahi and mentions [p 219] that 'the Maories were armed with well finished English rifles and double barrelled fowling pieces.'
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).
This extract was authored by Michael Fitzgerald.
On the lockstrap of this musket is engraved ‘Taken from the Maories N. Zealand after the fight at Mahoeatahi 1860 JEA XIV R’. The initials ‘JEA’ are those of Colonel James Edward Alexander, who commanded the British army’s 14th Regiment of Foot, an infantry unit. However, as the regiment did not arrive in New Zealand until early December 1860, when it disembarked at Auckland, Alexander could not have been present at Māhoetahi.
How Alexander came into possession of this musket is therefore not known. If the inscription is correct, this was one of the weapons collected by the victors on the battlefield. A contemporary newspaper report notes that ‘a large number of muskets, double-barrelled guns and pouches filled with ammunition were found and brought away’.1
Another report states that ‘after having buried in one grave some 28 or 29 Waikatos, the main body [of the Crown forces] returned to the town . . . laden with Maori spoils, in the shape of double-barrelled guns, ornaments, shawls &c &c, many battered and bloody, proving they had not been parted with willingly’.2 A flintlock musket like this would have been obsolete in 1860. It had probably been brought to Aotearoa New Zealand 30 or 40 years previously as a ‘trade musket’ and used by Māori in the Musket Wars of the 1820s and 1830s.
1 ‘Continuation of journal’, Taranaki Herald, 10 November 1860, p. 2.
2 Ibid.