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A US museum will return the bones of 14 Maori dating back to at least the mid-19th century to New Zealand.

The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago has told the visiting New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark that it would return the partial skulls and jawbones.

"We're fully convinced that this is a request from people who really care," Field Museum's curator of Pacific Anthropology John Terrell said on Radio New Zealand.

New Zealand's national museum first requested the return of the remains in 2004.

Terrell said the museum had acquired the bones from a New York scientific supply company in the late 19th century, but it was not known how they came to be in the US.

A delegation of Maori, New Zealand's indigenous people who make up about 15 per cent of the population, is expected to travel to Chicago to bring back the bones.

New Zealand authorities in recent years have pressed overseas museums to return the remains of Maori, including shrunken tattooed heads, held as exhibits.

Last month the University of Aberdeen's Marischal Museum in Scotland agreed to return nine Maori preserved heads.

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