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The Kune-Kune pig is smaller than other breeds, with the adults no more than 60cm in height at the crest of the shoulders and 70 to 90cm shorter in body length.
The characteristic beads, dewlaps, or pire pire hanging from the lower jaw (about 4cm long) are one of the most obvious and distinctive features of the Kune-Kune.
Kune-Kune fatten prodigiously on little more than a subsistence diet and were highly prized by the early Maoris because they did not roam and because of the quality and quantity of their fat. Fat is the traditional food preserving medium for Polynesian races, rather than salt and brine, as used in Europe.
Specimens of the Kune-Kune pig are now at Hilldale Game Farm, Hamilton*. These have been obtained from farmers in the Te Kuiti and Waharoa districts. Others are at the Willowbank Wildlife Reserve, Christchurch, and Stagland Park, Upper Hutt.
There are quite a number of crosses between the Kune-Kune and other domestic breeds, varying in colour from brown, white, and black to gold.
According to my research, the name Kune-Kune was given by the Maoris, and described the shape of the pig's body. "Kune-Kune" means "fat and round".
Maori tribal names for other domestic and feral pigs included Poretere and Petapeta. Also there is the universal "poaka", a corruption of the English word "porker". The name used in Tonga, Samoa, and other islands for the pig is Puaa, Booha, or, again "poaka".
Research of a wide range of historical sources and references to the introduction of pigs into New Zealand, as well as enquiries made from numerous kaumatua (Maori elders), historians, and others, has failed to bring to light any authoritative information regarding the derivation of this apparently unique member of the pig family.
Though the wild pig in this country has traditionally been known as the Captain Cooker, the successful introduction of pigs to the Maoris in northern New Zealand may be attributed to a Lieutenant Governor, Philip Gidley King, of Norfolk Island, in the year 1793.
Earlier, two Maoris were kidnapped from the Cavalli Islands and taken to Norfolk Island, to teach convicts how to dress flax. (Incidentally the mission was abortive, as the two detainees, one a chieftain the other a tohunga, or priest, were neither of them expert in such a menial occupation.)
In 1973 these two were repatriated to New Zealand, and among the parting gifts given to them by Governor King were 10 sows and two boars.
Deciding factor in the spread of pigs throughout northern New Zealand seems to have been a further gift by Governor King to Northland Maori friends, of 26 sows and four boars in 1805.
A major factor undoubtedly related to the speedy distribution of pigs in the years immediately following their introduction, was the Maori custom for large gifts, to be distributed generously among their relatives and neighbouring tribes.
Captain Cook found at Queen Charlotte Sound that sows were found in the hands of one tribe and boars in another.
And according to Te Rangihiroa (Sir Peter Buck), as far back as the year 950 there were food, plants, and animals (such as pigs), which had been lost by the Polynesian voyagers during their original passage from Indonesia through the desert atolls of Micronesia which were re-introduced into Tahiti. And it was from Tahiti that the Maori originated.
Quite certainly the fleet of canoes which left for New Zealand from Tahiti would have taken on board dogs (kuri), pigs, and other animals. But because of the length of the journey, the dogs (kuri) and rats (kiore) were the only ones to survive the voyage to New Zealand.
Had pigs been safely landed, they would have flourished on the bracken fern roots as did the pigs later introduced by Captain Cook and Governor Philip Gidley King.
There is a most interesting Maori reference to pigs in the journals of Sir Joseph Banks, who accompanied Cook on his first voyage to New Zealand. Near the North Cape of the North Island in December 1769, Cook's Tahitian interpreter, Tupaea, was told by the local Maoris that N.W. by N. or N.N.W. was a large country to which some people had sailed to in a very large canoe, the passage taking up to a month.
From this expedition some members returned and told their countrymen that they had seen a country where people ate hogs. And for these animals they used the same name, Booah, as is used in the Islands.
Though Tupaea ridiculed the story, claiming that it could only be believed if they had brought back pigs to prove it there is a good reason to regard this as a memory of a return voyager to Tonga, Samoa, or even the lower Islands.
It has been generally assumed that the first pigs introduced into New Zealand were brought by Captain Cook on his voyager to New Zealand in 1769, as a result of having to put up with a lack of fresh food on his previous voyages.
An unpublished doctoral thesis states that, in published histories of New Zealand, there are quite a number of false statements about the introduction of European animals into New Zealand.
G.F. Angus (1847), in "Savage Life and Science in Australia and New Zealand", claims that pigs were liberated at various times by sealers and other Europeans who visited New Zealand. He also states that the first pigs released into New Zealand were left on these islands by Spaniards.
In an agricultural article published in the "Journal of Agriculture", October, 1945, "Origin of Pigs in New Zealand", J.W. Peirson states that the Old Poland China breed of pig was black and white.
An interesting comment made in this article was that on Maori farms on the East Coast of New Zealand were pigs they called Kune-Kune, which corresponded in type and colouration to that of the Poland China. It seems very probable that they are descendants of that breed, traded to the Maoris by American whalers, operating in New Zealand waters.
The Chinese type was no longer preserved in a pure state in Britain, but was widely employed for crossing with the native sorts, and it seems certain that all our modern breeds of pigs have been influenced to a greater or lesser extent by the refusion of this Eastern blood.
This influence is certainly most clearly to be seen in the smaller and earlier maturing breeds such as the Middle White and Berkshire, and it least apparent in breeds such as the Tamworth and Wessex.
Captain Cook may well have included some such strains when provisioning his ship.
Various people have said they think of the Kune-Kune breed as a cross between a Captain Cooker and another breed perhaps the berkshire. However, most of these people are adamant that only the Kune-Kune pig possesses the so called tassels which hang from its jowls.
Among the several possible sources of the ancestors of today's Kune-Kune are stock of Indonesian, Asian or Chinese origin transported by early Polynesian travellers to New Zealand via Melanesia as an extremely valuable source of meat and surplus fat.
They were useful for the preservation of meat from leaner animals such as the dog (kuri) and rat (kiore), both staple items of pre-early Maori diet, though there is a lack of both historical and archaeological evidence to support this.
They could be derived from the Old Poland China breed of domestic pig popular in the 18th and 19th centuries in USA, brought to New Zealand by whalers, and distributed by gold miners.
And then importation of the Kune-Kune type of pig by Captain Cook, as well as the more common feral type named in his honour, cannot be discounted as a possible origination of the breed in New Zealand.
A possibility that Governor Philip Gidley King's Northland introductions included early ancestors of the present Kune-Kune stock is probably equally credible in the absence of any recorded history of this animals's entry to New Zealand.
An interesting point is that the modern Kune-Kune seems to be linked geographically with areas of strong historic and modern Maori attachments - the East Coast, King Country, Bay of Plenty, Waikato and Northland.
This seems to confirm that the Kune-Kune pig has a long association with the Maori people, possibly even dating back from the arrival of our county's earliest Polynesian immigrants.
It is obvious, then that in the absence of recorded evidence to confirm the source of this quaint specimen of pigs, there is ample scope for speculation.
What is of more importance today is that the little known and comparatively rare specimens of the genus Suis, the Kune-Kune, may well be included among New Zealand's endangered species.
Relatively few pure-bred specimens have survived to the present day.
It would be very regrettable if this unique and probably ancient breed of pig, which provides a link with New Zealand's earliest history of introduced mammals, were to become extinct.
A number of people have been aware of its existence, but the absence of any authoritative details of its derivation and origin has tended to obscure the part of this comparatively rare breed of pig as a link in the history of pig husbandry in New Zealand.
While it has virtually nothing to offer to modern pig production of genetic merit the Kune-Kune pig remains unique in its own way, as a museum piece. Its history is almost certainly associated with the spread of early Polynesian travellers, through the Pacific Basin from the old world, and it has become established with them in the Pacific Islands and New Zealand.
Source: New Zealand Journal of Agriculture - September 1980