This book traces Māori engagement with handwriting from 1769 to 1826. Through beautifully reproduced written documents, it tells an image-led story about the earliest relationships between Māori and Pākehā based around the written word and sheds light on a larger story of the first attempts of Māori and Europeans to live together in the early 1800s, the negotiation of the relationship through conversations and correspondence, and frustrations of Māori at the limits of the teaching Europeans offered.