A friend of my grandmothers once told me that the Hawkes Bay Museum had Te Kooti's prayer book stored away in its vaults, rarely displayed to the public. At the moment they are displaying it as part of a current exhibition on the old colonial period cemetery on Hospital Hill. Te Kooti wrote in it during his imprisonment on the Chathams after being found guilty, without trial, of acting as a Hau Hau spy. He kept it with him during the prison revolt that he led, the hijacking of a ship back to Poverty Bay and the long period of guerilla war that followed during which the prayers recorded in the book formed part of the liturgy of the rebel Ringatu faith. The prayer book fell into the hands of British soldiers near the end of the campaign and was handed on to the missionary William Colenso. I'm planning on having the main character of the graphic novel have ongoing encounters with a number of Old Testament influenced Maori rebel groups, which were a constant thorn in the side of the colonial army, the settler militias and the land speculators of the period.
