Nz Rock Carvings
p. 51 · Read in the full issue
Letter to the Editor IN your issue of February, 1948, you print a short item headed “Ancient rock drawings in southern NZ caves.” which refers to discoveries said to have been made recently by a young Dutch painter named Theo Schoon.
The inference is that Schoon was the original discoverer of these rock-drawings.
This is not the case. He may have made some new discoveries, but many have been known for 50 years or prob ably for a much longer period, and have been investigated, written about, and the identity of the artists discussed in the columns of “The Journal of the Polyne sian Society”(a New Zealand publica tion) by NZ scientists as well as by over seas scientists, I have before me a cutting from the Auckland (NZ) “Weekly News” of August 24, 1943, in which complaint is made that “some American museums had been allowed to remove the best of these draw ings to America.” There is, or has been, a diversity of opinion among those scientists who have studied the question of the origin of the rock-drawings, and I am not aware if any agreement has yet been reached.
I regret to notice that you fall into error in the concluding paragraph of your item when you say “the ancient artists ... may have been Morioris dwellers in NZ before the Maoris came from Poly nesia, and who now survive only on the Chathams a small, bleak group east ward of NZ.”
Please see your own publication, “Pacific Islands Year Book,” for 1942 s page 228, where you say (regarding the Chatham Islands): “There is no pure
native race in the group, the original natives, the Morioris, having been exterminated by the Maoris.”
The last full-blooded Moriori, Tami Horomona, also known as Tommy Solomon, who weighed about 26 stone, died on March 19, 1933, vide “SM Herald,” 15/4/1933.
I am, etc.,
J. D. Mccomish, Frgs.
Wahroonga, Sydney, March 8, 1948.
In the Suva Supreme Court recently, Paul Foster, part-Rotuman, was sen tenced to five years’ imprisonment for the manslaughter of an Indian fellow-em ployee of-Millers, Ltd., of Suva,
Mrs. Norma Venning, of Lae (NG), was visiting her mother, Mrs. C. Cassel of Woody Point, Queensland, in March.
Mr. Ken Cahill has resumed his medi cal studies at the Brisbane University after spending the vacation period with his parents at Madang, New Guinea.