By DANIEL JACKSON
Some time between 1824 and 1829, a young Maori student used a sharp implement to write on a slate while at one of New Zealand's first schools.
Now, more than 170 years later, the slate is being heralded as a significant snapshot of our early history after it was unearthed at Kerikeri still bearing the writing scratched in Maori.
Fergus Clunie, the Historic Places Trust heritage adviser at the Kerikeri Mission Station, found the slate and other artefacts while carrying out maintenance work on the deteriorating floor in the pantry at the rear of the mission house.
"The building was built very close to the ground and once something got under there, no one would have been able to get it out," he said.
The pantry was built in the 1830s on the site of one of the first schools where missionaries in the 1820s taught Maori how to write in their own language.
Students usually used soft slate pencils to write on slates and, once the lesson was finished, wiped them clean.
Although the found slate is cracked in two, scratches on it are still legible and Mr Clunie hopes someone will be able to read them.
Other finds include musket balls, crockery, pieces of sailing gear, a well-preserved practice taiaha (spear) for a child, and traditional Maori spinning tops.
"It's quite fascinating because not much is known from that time," said Mr Clunie.
Another slate was found at the site several months ago. While the lesson on that slate no longer remained, neatly carved into it were the words "Na Rongo Honi" or "belonging to Rongo Honi," who was the daughter of Ngapuhi chief Hongi Hika and later married Hone Heke.
Mr Clunie said the writing on the latest find was not as neat as the printing on Rongo Honi's.
"It's obviously a child's writing."
Once the mission building was restored, the slate would go on display only a few metres away from where it was found.
Professor Judith Binney, of Auckland University, said the find was one of the first examples of written Maori.
The Auckland Public Library had a book from the mission school at Rangihoua, also in the Bay of Islands, from the same period, and several other examples of early written Maori existed, but all of these were on paper.
"The slate would be the only example of its type that I know of."
Professor Binney said that anyone with a workable knowledge of Maori should be able to read the slate, although the way it was written would differ from today's language.
Slate find bears early sample of Maori writing
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