Kia Ora, first time poster, no idea how to format or anything. I have a walking stick in my family given to my great-grandfather in World War I. The story behind the walking stick is that each carving is a generation. We know the story could be Tainui or Ratana/East Coast Iwi based for the past three generations beforehand, but then we get to these carvings: https://imgur.com/a/4zu8A The carving starts with the bottom symbol in the two symbol image (forgot to flip before uploading), before going around to that single carving, and then to the top carving of the first image. They could be initials, they could be anything else. I thought I'd ask you guys to get your opinions on it! If another subreddit would be better, please say! I'll be searching for information on it when I begin my bachelors in Maori History next month and have more access to resources.
You might try r/whatisthisthing and r/maori
Initials HE or EH and date 1906 perhaps? A photo of the whole walking stick would give better contest. Edit meant to say ‘better context’.
Edit; one of your photos is upside down. Now I read the date as 1905, the initials as EH or more likely HE and the other design as NZ. Also it’s probably a tokotoko rather than just a walking stick, eh