Hākopa Te Ata-o-Tū was a descendant of Tahu Pōtiki, founder of Kai Tahu, the people of Te Waipounamu the South Island, and the son of rangatira Te Momo Kakahu. He was born at the great pā Kaiapoi, north of Ōtautahi Christchurch. According to evidence given by Te Ata-o-Tū in 1869 at a court hearing protesting the alienation of tribal land, he had four children: ‘Two go to school. After this, I won’t send my children to school, because the land will be taken from the children.¹ 

Te Ata-o-Tū was held in high regard as a warrior with his name meaning ‘The Shadow of War’, Tū refers to Tūmatauenga, the god of war. In the early 1830s he was captured by Te Rauparaha after  hand-to-hand combat in which  Ngāti Toa chief Te Pēhi Kupe was killed. The incident that sparked the dispute was an argument over a block of pounamu, which Poutini Kai Tahu are considered kaitiaki. To avenge the death of Te Pēhi, Te Rauparaha mounted an attack against Kai Tahu. Both Te Ata-o-Tū and his wife, Te Ao Paki, were captured and transported to Waikanae, north of Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. Te Ata-o-Tū was later liberated when his captors embraced Christianity, and he returned to his homelands in the South Island.  

Te Ata-o-Tū was a master carver of pounamu, and hugely knowledgeable about the prized material. The Rev James W Stack wrote of him in 1881, ,when he was reputed to be 83 years old:  

I have just received…the following replies to a translation of the questions forwarded to me by Dr. von Haast. I attach great value to them, as the writer is a very intelligent man, who occupied a leading position in the Maori community here at the time of Rauparaha’s invasion.² 

Te Ata-o-Tū’s further responses to Stack reveal that he did not observe heitiki being made during his childhood. Rather, they were made in Te Ika-a-Māui the North Island. Some of the names he gave for pounamu include hauhunga, kawakawa, īnanga, kahurangi, tangiwai, matakirikiri and aotea.³ 

Lindauer’s painting is based on a photograph by Christchurch studio photographer Daniel Louis Mundy. Believed to date from the 1860s, it shows Te Ata-o-Tū in European clothing, which had been widely adopted by Māori by that time. However, Lindauer replaced this clothing with a fine korowai. A fringe of dyed black hukahuka falls around Te Ata-o-Tū’s shoulders and across his chest. The intricate mataora, incorporating the powerful tīwhana, is given particular emphasis in Lindauer’s painting and signals Te Ata-o-Tū’s standing as a rangatira and warrior.