OVER NINETY YEARS OLD.

Shannon News, 9 October 1925, Page 2

OVER NINETY YEARS OLD.

HISTORIC .MAORI HEED. TATTOO MARKS FOR NAMES A historic Maori deed, concluding’ a property sale by a chief near Kororareka (now called Russell) over ninety years ago. has come into the possession of an Aucklander. It is a modest enough document in size, being about, as large as the leaf of an ordinary book, but has a certain artistic effect that is never found in a deed of to-day. A few simple sketches that arc the tattoo mai’ks of the Maoris who negotiated the contract and a list of signatures in well-written English, alongside three thumb impressions in’ b'ack ink. constitute the deed of purchase and sale. In the good old times it is said that the Maori land-holder always signed his name with a tattoo mark a process which made the deeds of that era quite respectable works of art. The document in question is a page of a deed dated February 23, 1834, by which a certain Akiewa and his people transferred a block of land to one William D. Brind, of the “good ship Torrance Castle.” That was over ninety years ago, and one cannot help wondering where the bones of the Torrance Castle and her adventurous captain lie in the year of grace 1925. The land was a block of "600 English acres,” near Kororareka and the cost was “four double-barrelled guns and two hundredweight of powder.” The dead came into the hands of Mr. T. Vinton Smith, of Melbourne, who is deeply interested in Maori lore and has many interesting exhibits of early land transactions in this country; and was posted by him to a friend in Auckland.