Daily Photo – Takatahara

I came across this life mask in the Akaroa Museum. It was created many, many years ago of Takatahara, a prominent 19th-century Māori chief. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that the backstory is a bit more complex. In March 1840, the French ship Astrolabe anchored at Otago Harbour. On board was Pierre-Alexandre Dumoutier, a French phrenologist collecting human head casts for the now-discredited pseudo-science of phrenology which essentially was measuring a person’s character, personality and IQ by feeling the bumps on a person’s head. While in New Zealand, Dumoutier managed to convince Takatahara to allow a plaster mold to be made of his head for future study by Dumoutier. 

At the time, it was quite something as Takatahara was a formidable fighting chief and played a key role during a number of conflicts in the area. The thing is, this isn’t the actual life mask, it is a replica  and was gifted to Akaroa in 1991 by French Prime Minister Michel Rocard.