Tete d’un Guerrier de la Nouvelle Zelande.

Rare portrait of a Maori from the Frnch edition of the accounts of Cook’s first voyage, published (1774) the year after the English edition (1773).

The title in the English version was: [The head of a New Zealander, with a comb in his hair, an ornament of green stone in his ear, and another of a fish’s hook round his neck.]

A portrait of Otegoowgoow or (Otegoongoon), the son of a chief from the Bay of Islands. He was wounded by a shot in the fracas with Cook and his party on 29 November 1769. Banks met the man on 3 December, noting;

‘They hung to them by strings many very different thing[s], often chissels or bodkins made of a green talk…. or the tooth of a whale cut slauntwise, so as something to resemble a tongue, and furnished with two eyes; these they wore about their necks and seemed to Value almost above everything else’. (Banks, Journal II, 17.)

Reference; Beddie 659, p.124

From Hawkesworth, Relation des Voyages Entrepris par ordre de Sa Majeste Britannique Actuallement Regnante:…..

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Te Papa: Registration Number1992-0035-2079