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ACTIONS AT PARIHAKA PAU L D I A M O N D
DESCRIPTION
MAKER / ARTIST
REFERENCE
‘For Diver’s Reasons’ cartoon, Wellington Advertiser, 19 November 1881
Attributed to Edward Pharazyn (1835–1890)
Collection of Alexander Turnbull (A-095-038)
The woodcut cartoons printed in Taranaki Punch, a satirical magazine published between 1860 and 1861, are thought to be the first to depict Māori. Many were to do with the war erupting in Taranaki at the time and showed Māori in a negative light, invariably as one of two ‘types’ — shrewd, bloodthirsty savages or primitive simpletons.
MUP004 History 101 200x250 272pp f_a.indd 72
The Wellington Advertiser was a short-lived newspaper that is thought to be this country’s first to include editorial cartoons. The library’s holdings of the newspaper do not include the cartoons, which were collected separately by Alexander Turnbull.
A later stage of the Taranaki wars — the 1881 invasion — prompted another of Parihaka in south Taranaki cartoon featuring Māori, which Alexander Turnbull collected from the Wellington Advertiser. At first glance, this brutal image of a man in naval uniform dismembering a defiant Māori man could be read as an attack on Māori.
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