Horatio Gordon Robley: The Major-General Who Collected Māori Tattooed Heads

Aug 14, 2024

5 min read

Updated: Mar 13

Man with mustache poses before a historical display of shrunken heads.

There’s a well-known photograph of an elderly Englishman sitting in front of a wall hung with human heads. He looks perfectly at ease. His name was Horatio Gordon Robley, and he built the largest collection of preserved Māori heads outside New Zealand.

He didn’t take them in battle or bring them home from New Zealand. He bought nearly all of them in London, decades after he’d left, and he spent years trying to send them back.

Quick Answers

Who was Horatio Gordon Robley? A British army officer and artist (1840 to 1930) who served in New Zealand in the 1860s and became an authority on Māori tattooing.
What are toi moko? The preserved, tattooed heads of Māori ancestors. They’re also known as mokomokai.
How many did he own? About 40 by 1907. Te Papa, New Zealand’s national museum, thinks more than 50 passed through his hands.
Where did he get them? Mostly from dealers, collectors and private owners in Britain, starting in 1893.
What happened to the collection? He sold most of it to the American Museum of Natural History in New York in 1907.
Is it still there? No. The museum returned 35 toi moko to New Zealand in December 2014.

A Soldier with a Sketchbook

Robley was born on 28 June 1840 in Funchal, Madeira. His father was an Indian Army officer and his mother was a botanical artist. In 1858 he bought a commission in the 68th Durham Light Infantry and joined the regiment in Burma, where he took up sketching and had himself tattooed.

Maori man with moko facial tattoos, white hair, traditional cloak. — Te Manawa, Arawa, painted by H G Robley

The 68th was sent to New Zealand in January 1864, in the middle of the wars over Māori land. Robley landed at Tauranga that month. On 29 April British troops attacked the fortified position at Gate Pā and were beaten back by a much smaller Māori force. The next morning Robley was inside the abandoned earthworks with a pencil, drawing the breach.

He stayed for about 19 months and spent much of his free time sketching around the Bay of Plenty. Many of the drawings ran in the Illustrated London News. He also had a son, Hamiora Tu Ropere, with Harete Mauao of Matapihi. The regiment sailed in March 1866 and Robley went with it. His descendants still live around Tauranga Harbour.

What Toi Moko Are

Tā moko, the tattooing Robley had been drawing, recorded a person’s rank and ancestry in patterns distinctive enough to identify them. We’ve written separately about the Māori women who wore moko.

After death, the head of a relative or of a defeated enemy might be preserved by smoking and drying in the sun. A family member’s head was kept and brought out for ceremonies. An enemy’s might be displayed as a mark of contempt.

The older English name for these heads is mokomokai. Te Papa and most museums now use toi moko.

Heads for Muskets

Europeans wanted them from the start. The naturalist Joseph Banks acquired one in January 1770, on Cook’s first voyage, in what’s usually described as the first sale to a Westerner. One account has him pressing the deal with a musket.

Victorian man with a collection of shrunken human heads on a wall.

It became a trade during the Musket Wars of the early 19th century. Guns decided who survived, and heads were one of the few things European ships would reliably take in exchange. Two heads reportedly bought one musket. Hundreds were exported between 1820 and 1831, mostly through Sydney.

Demand changed what was being sold. There are reports of enslaved people being tattooed so their heads could be traded, sometimes with designs that meant nothing. In April 1831 the Governor of New South Wales, Ralph Darling, banned the sale of heads in Sydney. The ones already overseas kept changing hands for another century.

Building the Collection

Robley retired in 1887 as an honorary major-general and settled in London. In 1893 he bought his first head from a phrenologist called Stackpool O’Dell.

Drawing of a girl with facial tattoo, "Fig. 48.—Girl partly tattooed."

After that he couldn’t stop. He bought from dealers and private owners, swapped with other collectors and paid whatever it took for the best examples. By 1899 he had more than 20. By 1905 he had 38 and by 1907 he had 40.

In 1896 he published Moko; or Maori Tattooing, illustrated with his own drawings. It’s still in print. The collecting, though, left him deep in debt, and his health was failing.

The Offer New Zealand Turned Down

Robley wanted the heads to go back. Te Papa’s history of the collection says he first offered them to the New Zealand government in 1899 for £1,100 and got no reply. He tried again in 1901. That offer went round the Dominion Museum and the Cabinet for years before he was told in 1906 that it had been declined.

The dates and figures vary between accounts. The version repeated most often has a single offer of £1,000 in 1908, which doesn’t fit a sale in 1907.

In 1907 the collection went to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, paid for by its former president Morris K. Jesup. Te Papa gives the price as £1,500. Other sources say £1,250. Robley kept five of his best heads, offered those to New Zealand as well and eventually sold them too.

The government did buy something from him. More than 70 of his paintings of the Tauranga campaign ended up in New Zealand’s national collection.

A Pauper’s Grave

Robley lived another 23 years. During the First World War, Māori soldiers on leave in London used to call on him. He died in a nursing home in Camberwell on 29 October 1930, aged 90, and was buried in a pauper’s grave at Streatham Park Cemetery.

Mummified head with traditional Māori Tā moko facial tattoos.

Going Home

The last attempt to sell a toi moko at public auction was in London in 1988. A campaign led by the Māori entertainer Dalvanius Prime got it withdrawn, and the head went back to New Zealand.

Since then Te Papa has run New Zealand’s programme to bring ancestors home. In May 2013 it formally asked the American Museum of Natural History for the Robley collection. On 1 December 2014 the museum handed over the remains of 107 Māori and Moriori people, among them the 35 toi moko and two pieces of tattooed skin. It was the largest single return in New Zealand’s history. They were welcomed at Te Papa four days later.

Vintage book Monaco of Monte Carlo by Major Gordon Home.

Where a head can be traced to a particular iwi or family, it goes back to them. Most can’t be, and those are kept at Te Papa in a space that isn’t open to the public.