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This padlet was created by Kathy Kennedy - Nat Lib adviser.

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Tuia Mātauranga highlights local people, places, and events that have helped shape our nation. The histories of Aotearoa New Zealand have multiple perspectives, some are presented here for you to explore.

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Tuia Mātauranga highlights local people, places, and events that have helped shape our nation. The histories of Aotearoa New Zealand have multiple perspectives, some are presented here for you to explore.

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There is an overview of early schools here but for more detail

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Mission schools and the arrival of literacy

The first school along European lines for Māori in New Zealand was established by the missionary Thomas Kendall of the Anglican Church Missionary Society, at Rangihoua, in the Bay of Islands, in 1816. Kendall used rote learning to teach basic reading and writing, and also included religious instruction. Reports suggest that he had difficulty in keeping his charges fully engaged in their learning, and the school ran effectively only when he could provide them with food. Lessons were held in the early morning and late afternoon, with the pupils spending the rest of the day foraging. Kendall developed the first published books in the Māori language to use in his classroom. Kendall's school only lasted two years, but by the 1830s there were numerous schools attached to mission stations, including those of Methodists from 1822 and Catholics from 1838.

Maussie schools

The first school for Māori was actually in Australia. It was established by Anglican missionary Samuel Marsden at his home in Parramatta, Sydney, from around 1813. In 1820 Marsden was instructing 25 young Māori in the 'customs and manners of civilized life'.

Interest in literacy

Māori became increasingly interested in learning to read and write. While the missionaries saw literacy as the key to the scriptures, Māori were more interested in understanding the new European world with its tall sailing ships, firearms and iron tools. Māori who had attended the schools returned to their villages and created their own schools. When George Clarke, a missionary and the chief protector of aborigines, travelled through Waikato and Hauraki in late 1840 he found a Māori-run school in nearly every village he visited. It is estimated that by the early 1840s half of the adult Māori population was able to read and write to some extent. All teaching was in Māori and, because of a lack of reading material other than the scriptures, Māori interest in the schools declined after the early 1840s.

Books for all

William Colenso had established a printing press at Paihia, in the Bay of Islands, in 1834 and printed millions of pages over the following years. By 1845 there was a bible or prayer book for each member of the adult Māori population.

Grey and Māori education

George Grey, governor of New Zealand from 1845 to 1853 and again from 1861 to 1868, was the architect of the government's racial amalgamation policy in the early colonial period. The effect, however, was more like assimilation, and this was the dominant theme in Māori education policy until the 1930s. The prevailing belief at the time was of the superiority of British civilisation. It was thought that the greatest favour that could be bestowed on Māori would be to turn them into 'brown Britons'. There had been open warfare with Māori in the mid-1840s and education was seen as a way of pacifying Māori. There is evidence too that the government saw in Māori a potential labouring class to help build the young colony.

Education Ordinance 1847

Running a cash-strapped administration, Grey supported the existing network of mission schools through the Education Ordinance 1847, based on four principles:

religious instruction

industrial training

instruction in the English language

government inspection.

Native Schools Act 1858

The Native Schools Act 1858 built on this system, providing for an annual sum of £7,000 for the schools, and added the stipulation that Māori students at the schools must live away from their kāinga in a boarding situation. By 1851 between 700 and 800 Māori attended the government-supported schools, considerably fewer than the numbers attending mission schools in the 1830s. Progress was limited with regard to the teaching of English and the government struggled to find the finances to resource the schools appropriately. Many schools continued to teach in Māori. Most of the mission schools were closed by the wars of the 1860s.

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Missionaries and the early colonial period

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Mission schools and the arrival of literacy The first school along European lines for Māori in New Zealand was established by the missionary Thomas Kendall of the Anglican Church Missionary Society, at Rangihoua, in the Bay of Islands, in 1816. Kendall used rote learning to teach ...

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Excerpt from the book 'He Korero, Words Between Us' by Alison Jones and Kuni Jenkins. Check out pg 150 for details about their visit to England

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If you visit this, click on the Ruapekapeka site to see the pa design.

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On 8th January 2021, Ngāti Manu, Te Kapotai, Ngāti Hau and Ngāti Hine will welcome whānau, hapū and iwi from across the nation to commemorate the end of the Battle of Te Ruapekapeka (10 January 1846).

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Māori explore Sydney and London

New Zealand did not have a city until 1856, when Christchurch achieved city status. (Its population was only a few thousand.) By then, however, London and Sydney were well established as important cities for New Zealand.

Sydney - known by Māori as Poihākena (Port Jackson) - was a major trading centre and the port of call through which New Zealand accessed British goods and services, government and missionaries. London - Rānana - was the home of the British royal family and the political and cultural centre of the British Empire. Sydney and London were the two cities Māori travellers visited most frequently from the late 1700s. Both cities now have long histories of Māori visiting and relocating to them.

Māori visitors to Sydney

From the late 18th century Māori travelled the world, often as crew on board ships. From the 1800s Māori sought opportunities to trade with Sydney, and acquire new technologies and skills such as carpentry and gardening. Sydney was also a place where individual Māori met with British officials and missionaries. For instance in 1804 Te Pahi, a chief of Rangihoua, sent his son Maatara to Sydney to observe the British. The governor of New South Wales, Philip Gidley King, looked after him, and sent him home with tools and other gifts. In 1805 Te Pahi himself went to Sydney, where he stayed with Governor King for several months. With his companions he learnt carpentry, gardening, weaving and spinning.

In 1805 another northern chief, Ruatara, set out. Working on whaling and sealing ships, he visited Sydney twice but he did not get to London until 1809, where he was not allowed ashore. In 1810 he reached Sydney again and stayed with Samuel Marsden at Parramatta for eight months. He did not return home to the Bay of Islands until 1812. His travels as a crew member were more fortunate than those of a Māori sailor on board the Atlantic, who was killed by lightning in Sydney Harbour in 1806.

In Sydney, Ruatara acquired eight muskets and borrowed a couple of pistols. Though significant at the time, his small armoury would soon be outdone by Ngāpuhi chief Hongi Hika, who traded gifts he received in London for muskets, which were selling cheaply after being dumped on the Sydney market.

By the 1810s the Māori language could be heard on Sydney's docks. By the 1840s an estimated 1,000 Māori had travelled overseas, with the majority going to Sydney. The presence of Māori there had become so common it was no longer recorded. Sydney has remained an important city in Māori lives. By the early 2000s many Māori had migrated there, and Māori cultural activities and media thrived.

Fourth estate

In 1859 two Waikato Māori, Wiremu Toetoe and Hemara Te Rerehau, travelled to Austria on the frigate Novara, and were trained in printing techniques at the state printing house in Vienna. As a parting gift, in May 1860 Archduke Maximilian gave them a printing press, which was shipped to Ngāruawāhia. Late in 1861 the press was used to print a newspaper, Te Hokioi e Rere Atu Na, which was a mouthpiece for the Kingitanga, the Māori King movement. The young chiefs' plans to import a lion were unsuccessful. During the Waikato war the press was broken up by troops.

Māori in London

One of the first Māori to visit London was Moehanga of Ngāpuhi in 1806. He was presented to King George III. Hongi Hika visited London in 1820 with another chief named Waikato and missionary Thomas Kendall. They helped with the compilation of a Māori alphabet and grammar, and Hongi met King George IV.

In 1846-47 Hoani Wiremu Hīpango helped protect the new town of Whanganui from attack by another iwi. Partly because of this, he accompanied missionary Richard Taylor on a visit to England in 1855. When he arrived in London, Hīpango had an audience with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Other Māori reported in London included Māui, or Tommy Drummond, who taught Sunday school in London in 1816, and Tuai and Titeri, who visited in 1818. In 1863 there were two Māori performing groups in London.

For Māori London was the cultural centre of the British Empire, and also the home of the queen, their partner in the Treaty of Waitangi. Māori visiting London hoped to, and often did, meet royalty.

London and Māori culture

When members of the British royal family have visited Rotorua they have participated in a Māori cultural experience. In 1959 Māori in London set up the cultural group Ngāti Rānana, a name which loosely translates as the London tribe. In the 2000s Ngāti Rānana was a thriving kapa haka group.

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Māori explore Sydney and London New Zealand did not have a city until 1856, when Christchurch achieved city status. (Its population was only a few thousand.) By then, however, London and Sydney were well established as important cities for New Zealand. Sydney - known ...

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Hongi Hika was born near Kaikohe, in northern New Zealand: he told French explorers in 1824 that he had been born in the year of Marion du Fresne's death, which was in 1772; and he was a mature man at the height of his powers when he died in 1828. He was the third son of Te Hōtete, born of his second wife, Tuhikura, of Ngāti Rēhia. He was descended through nine generations from Rāhiri, the ancestor of Ngāti Rāhiri, who was in turn descended from Puhi-moana-ariki, the ancestor of Ngāpuhi. In addition to Ngāti Rāhiri and Ngāti Rēhia he was most closely associated with Ngāti Tautahi and Ngāi Tāwake.

The defeat of Ngāpuhi by Ngāti Whātua in the battle of Moremonui, at Maunganui Bluff, in 1807 or 1808, was an important event in Hongi's early life. Pōkaia, the uncle of Hōne Heke, had been at war with Te Roroa and two closely related Ngāti Whātua hapū for a long period. Although some Ngāpuhi were armed with muskets, Murupaenga, leader of Ngāti Whātua, successfully ambushed them, taking advantage of the time they needed to reload their weapons. Pōkaia was killed, together with the fathers of Te Whareumu, Manu (Rewa) and Te Koikoi, and two of Hongi's brothers. Hongi and Te Koikoi saved themselves by hiding in a swamp. At nightfall they and a handful of others were able to escape. After this battle Hongi appears to have succeeded Pōkaia as war leader. These experiences left Hongi with an obligation and strong personal wish to avenge the Ngāpuhi defeat. In campaigns against Te Roroa, Te Rarawa and Te Aupōuri in the north he became convinced of the usefulness of the new muskets, if employed in sufficient numbers. By 1815 Hongi was the undisputed leader of his people. His oldest brother, Kaingaroa, born to their father's first wife, Waitohirangi, died in that year.

Hongi eagerly sought contact and trade with European visitors; he went to Sydney on the Active in 1814, a visit which encouraged Samuel Marsden, the chaplain of New South Wales, to go ahead with his plan to establish a Church Missionary Society mission at the Bay of Islands. The mission was set up in the same year, under Hongi's protection, and as a result ships came in increasing numbers. In this way the missionaries served Hongi's purposes. Hongi protected missionaries and seamen alike against his own people. He knew that a reputation for peace and security would draw Europeans into his sphere of influence and increase his opportunities to trade food and supplies for European technology, including tools and weapons. Other mission stations were established under his protection at Kerikeri and Waimate North.

But Hongi's relationship with the missionaries brought him difficulties as well as advantages. Other leaders began to protest to Marsden about Hongi's monopoly. The missionaries, for their part, angered Hongi by refusing to trade in muskets or even to repair them, and by shunning the missionary Thomas Kendall for his affair with a Māori woman. Nevertheless he continued to protect them. If they were to withdraw, the reputation of the Bay of Islands as a safe anchorage would suffer, and Hongi's opportunities for trade would decline. He was pursuing his own interests, not those of the missionaries.

Although Hongi Hika preferred muskets and powder as trade goods, he also appreciated the iron tools offered by the missionaries. Agricultural implements, put to use by the great numbers of captives taken in the south in Hongi's campaigns from 1818 on, enabled him to bring about an agricultural revolution in terms of crops and productivity. Hongi experimented with the growing of wheat and corn on his Waimate land. But his main effort was to grow huge crops of potatoes to exchange for muskets and powder with the European ships. The prices of the desired goods gradually altered in his favour, but there are accounts that some of his people died of starvation while others were still selling pork and potatoes.

Hongi visited England in 1820, with Kendall and the young chief Waikato. At Cambridge they assisted Professor Samuel Lee with the compilation of a Māori dictionary; they were made much of in society, and introduced to George IV. But Hongi's main aim, in which he was eventually successful, was to acquire muskets. He was also given a suit of armour, which gained him a reputation for invulnerability, and helped to demoralise his foes.

These acquisitions altered the balance of power in the Bay of Islands, and prompted an arms race, with important consequences for the greater part of New Zealand over the next two decades. First, other Bay of Islands communities armed themselves with muskets in self-defence against Hongi's hapū. Then, the heavily armed northern tribes attacked those to the south, who had few or none of the new weapons. The muskets were often faulty and inefficient, and the numbers of their victims exaggerated in many accounts, but tribes who had only heard of these terrible weapons lived in great fear; panic contributed much to Ngāpuhi victories and the disruption of social life. Captives were used to produce more supplies to exchange for more weapons. The spiral of war, trade and more war reached a high point in the early 1820s.

Hongi's military genius flowered. In 1818, in an enormously successful campaign, Hongi and Te Morenga had led their separate forces against different objectives. However, from 1821 to 1823, inspired by Hongi, combined expeditions of hundreds of warriors left the Bay of Islands and Hokianga, each section led by their own leaders but aiming at a common goal. In 1821 Hongi led an expedition against Te Hīnaki of Ngāti Pāoa at Mauinaina pā, on the Tāmaki isthmus, and moved on to attack Ngāti Maru at Te Tōtara pā, near present day Thames. The next year the northern tribes again combined to attack the Waikato tribes, gathered under their chiefs, including Te Wherowhero, at Matakitaki pā, near Pirongia, which was taken; many died when a rush to escape the shooting resulted in panic. In 1823, after hauling canoes overland for 12 days, the combined forces attacked Ngāti Whakaue and other Te Arawa on Mokoia Island, Rotorua.

All these campaigns were highly successful. Directly or indirectly they caused a considerable loss of population; on some occasions the casualties among the defeated were very great. Further, the campaigns placed intense pressure on the peoples of the Waitematā, Bay of Plenty, Tauranga, Coromandel and Waikato regions. This, combined with similar pressure exerted on the west coast by earlier Hokianga expeditions, began a series of wars and migrations which, in the 1820s and 1830s, set almost the whole of the North Island on the move, caused numerous wars and expeditions in both the North and South Islands, and eventually brought about a major redistribution of population.

Hongi, of course, had not planned all of these results. Although some missionaries had encouraged the idea of Hongi as a Māori king, he was not a conqueror, and made no effort to occupy the territory of those he fought against. Although the means he adopted to gain his goals were new and had unprecedented success, the goals themselves were not new. They were set firmly within the traditional framework of intertribal relations.

Hongi was not exclusively a man of war. At home he was a mild, gentle and courteous man. He supervised the planting and harvesting of crops; he worked alongside his people with their fishing nets. He had two or more wives; he treated his blind senior wife, Turikatuku, with kindness, and was said to take her advice on strategic as well as on everyday matters. Her sister, Tangiwhare, was another of his wives. He was a loving father to his children, five of whom survived him. The death of his eldest son, Hāre Hongi, in 1825 left him depressed and disturbed. Although missionary witnesses were horrified by the killing of captives when the expeditions returned to the Bay of Islands, Hongi was performing a traditional action, to sustain the mana of those who had been lost on his own side.

Hongi's ambition to redress the balance between his people and Ngāti Whātua was partly fulfilled in 1825 when Ngāpuhi, despite the loss of their canoes, set on fire by the enemy, won decisively at the battle known as Te Ika-ā-ranganui, at the junction of the Kaiwaka River and the Waimake Stream. Some accounts say that 1,000 Ngāti Whātua died for the loss of only 70 Ngāpuhi. But Hongi himself said that only 100 of the enemy were killed. And among Ngāpuhi dead was his own son. To avenge his death Hongi led further expeditions against Ngāti Whātua remnants scattered deep in Waikato. His own people began to complain that he would never be satisfied.

From that time on his life was a troubled one. He was laid low with a growth on his knee; one of his wives committed adultery with his son-in-law; he was still grieving for his son. As one misfortune followed another some of his own people came to believe he was the victim of witchcraft. The missionaries thought he was very unsettled and 'always seeking for some new object'.

He decided to move from Waimate to Whangaroa in 1826, asserting the rights of his father's people. He had, in any case, a number of reasons for taking action against the people there, Ngāti Uru and Ngāti Pou. They had plundered the brig Mercury, and constantly harassed the Wesleyan mission at Whangaroa with threats and pilfering. Hongi valued the presence of Europeans; to protect them he decided to punish the Whangaroa people.

In 1827 his war expedition reached Whangaroa. Some local inhabitants fled immediately; others were driven off. As they left, Ngāti Uru sacked the Wesleyan mission. But Hongi himself was the chief casualty; a ball from a musket, the weapon he had helped to introduce, passed through his chest. To make matters worse, Turikatuku, his wife, died a few days after he was wounded.

The last year of his life was even more troubled. There were frequent struggles between those of his people who had stayed at Waimate and those who had gone to Whangaroa. He was still feared by people who expected him to attack them; but some of his own people called him 'an old woman' and said that they cared nothing for him.

He still planned for the future. He tried to tempt the missionaries James Kemp and George Clarke to come to Whangaroa, believing that their presence would attract shipping. He planned a Waikato expedition to avenge the death of Pōmare I in 1826. He schemed to capture the anchorage at Kororāreka (Russell), popular with the visiting ships. He died from his bullet wound on 3 March 1828, at Whangaroa. The missionaries at Waimate and Kerikeri thought the fact that he had died at Whangaroa would spare them from a plundering expedition. His successors, however, concealed his death for fear of such an expedition, until Patuone reassured them. Then, this fear removed, his people paid him honour for some days before burying him. The final resting place of his bones was a carefully guarded secret.

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Hongi Hika was born near Kaikohe, in northern New Zealand: he told French explorers in 1824 that he had been born in the year of Marion du Fresne's death, which was in 1772; and he was a mature man at the height of his powers when he died in 1828.

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Some good information

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Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, NZ

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Learn how relationships between Māori and the British developed and led to the signing of the Treaty in 1840.

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New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage Te Manatu Taonga

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Early seafarers Shortly after their arrival in New Zealand in the 1200s, Māori continued sailing over open seas, landing as far as the Kermadecs and the Chatham Islands. In 1777, two Māori sailed aboard Captain James Cook’s Resolution. Seventeen-year-old Te Weherua and ...

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Listen to this 15 min podcast of early Maori visiting England

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Historian Vincent O'Malley has researched the many journeys Maori made to England and Australia for his book Haerenga, Early Maori Journeys Across the Globe. He says they were the pioneers of the great Kiwi OE.

See terms of use.

Recent stories from Nine To Noon

Podcast (MP3) Oggcast (Vorbis)

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Historian Vincent O'Malley has researched the many journeys Maori made to England and Australia for his book Haerenga, Early Maori Journeys Across the Globe. He says they were the pioneers of the great Kiwi OE. See terms of use. Podcast (MP3) Oggcast (Vorbis)

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In keeping with their own seafaring traditions, a number of Māori were keen to explore the world in the wake of European contact in the closing decades of the 18th century.

In 1777 two Māori boys, Te Weherua and Koa from Queen Charlotte Sound / Tōtaranui were probably the first Māori to travel beyond New Zealand since the early seafaring days of their Polynesian ancestors. They joined James Cook aboard the Resolution as it sailed from New Zealand to Tahiti. Their fate is unknown.

Others soon followed. By 1795, chiefs were sailing to Sydney aboard trading ships in search of bartering opportunities. Other Māori worked their passage on European and American vessels. A number of Māori also proved to be willing and eager recruits for the whaling ships that began arriving here from the 1790s. Described by one whaleboat owner as 'orderly and powerful seamen', Māori saw whaling as exciting and an opportunity to see the world. The first record of Māori on board a whaler came in 1804, and in 1826 one British whaleboat reported having 12 Māori crew.

National Library of Australia. Ref: NK259/B

Not all Māori went voluntarily. Some were kidnapped or taken on as crew, then maltreated and even abandoned overseas. The French explorer Jean François Marie de Surville and the St Jean Baptiste anchored in Doubtless Bay in late 1769. Initially he and his crew got on well with Māori in the area, but the relationship soured when he accused Ngāti Kahu of stealing a ship's boat which had drifted ashore. In reprisal he burned whare and 'arrested' a chief, Ranginui. Strong winds then forced the ship to set sail and it headed east across the Pacific. No land was encountered and the crew sickened. Ranginui died of scurvy on 24 March 1770.

In 1793 Northland chiefs Tukitahua and Ngāhuruhuru were kidnapped and taken on board a ship at the request of Lieutenant-Governor Philip King of Norfolk Island. King hoped he would be able to get them to demonstrate the techniques for manufacturing flax. The plan was a failure. The Norfolk Island flax was poor and the men, in any case, knew very little about dressing flax as it was primarily women's work - Tukitahua was a tohunga, while Ngāhuruhuru was a warrior.

In 1805, Bay of Islands-based Ngāpuhi leader Te Pahi, with four of his sons, travelled to visit Philip King, who was now Governor of New South Wales, having heard of his hospitability. They established a complex relationship based on trade and cultural exchange.

In the same year the Ngāpuhi chief Ruatara, from Rangihoua in the Bay of Islands, left New Zealand on the whaling ship Argo with the intention of meeting King George III. Over the next four years he served on several whaling ships, receiving mixed treatment. He never met the King. That honour went to a fellow Ngāpuhi man, Moehanga, who became the first Māori to visit England in 1806.

In 1809 Ruatara met the missionary Samuel Marsden, who was about to return to Port Jackson (Sydney), in London. Marsden ensured that Ruatara, who was in poor physical condition, was cared for and supplied with clothes during the voyage. Ruatara spent eight months with Marsden at Parramatta in New South Wales, studying European agricultural techniques, carpentry and other skills with the aim of introducing wheat to New Zealand. Marsden arranged a passage home for Ruatara on the whaling vessel Frederick. Ruatara took tools and a quantity of seed wheat but was defrauded of these items and abandoned on Norfolk Island. He was eventually rescued and taken back to Port Jackson before finally returning to Rangihoua in 1812.

Ruatara's relationship with Samuel Marsden helped pave the way for the establishment of the first Christian mission station in New Zealand in 1814. Governor Lachlan Macquarie of New South Wales supported Marsden's plans to establish a mission station and gave Ruatara a mare, a cow and other livestock, as well as a military uniform, to help further this aim.

Ruatara assumed the role of protector and patron of 'his Pākehā' - the lay missionaries Thomas Kendall, John King and William Hall - when they arrived with Marsden on the brig Active on 22 December 1814. A site for the mission station was chosen the following day. Marsden delivered his first sermon on Christmas Day at Hohi (Oihi) Beach in the Bay of Islands, with Ruatara translating his words to the largely Māori gathering.

Connecting cultures

In this early phase of contact, Māori had the upper hand. Europeans in New Zealand were dependent on Māori for their physical and economic well-being. Māori actively engaged with Europeans who they believed could increase the personal mana of individuals or the collective interests of hapū and iwi. Interaction with Europeans reflected Māori cultural values and expectations.

Contact with Europeans was increasing, but still rare; by the early 1830s there were probably only a couple of hundred permanent European residents in New Zealand, but perhaps around 100,000 Māori. An important feature of early cross-cultural contact in New Zealand was role of intermediaries (kaiwhakarite) who acted as go-betweens - people from one culture who lived within the other culture and helped bridge the gap between the two.

The relationships which were established in these early years of contact allowed Māori to assert their mana in the world. Evidence of this could be seen in the significant Māori economy that emerged, with iwi producing large amounts of food, including wheat and potatoes, to support the new European towns that began to spring up. They also sold goods overseas, some using their own ships which sailed back and forth between New Zealand and Australia.

Find more about Māori Explore the World on Te Ara

Objects that tell stories

Biographies on the DNZB

Further Information

Cultural Go-Betweens Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

' The first Māori in Australia ': Radio New Zealand interview.

The Te Pahi medal, a taonga of national importance which was given to Te Pahi to mark his visit to Sydney in 1809, is discussed in this Te Papa documentary.

Maori and the Economy: Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, Vincent O'Malley, Anne Salmond, Haami Piripi and Mānuka Hēnare speak of Māori entrepreneurial endeavours in the early years of contact.

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In keeping with their own seafaring traditions, a number of Māori were keen to explore the world in the wake of European contact in the closing decades of the 18th century. In 1777 two Māori boys, Te Weherua and Koa from Queen Charlotte Sound / Tōtaranui were probably the first Māori to travel beyond New Zealand since the early seafaring days of their Polynesian ancestors.

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NZ Museums - a site for you to explore New Zealand museums, art galleries, cultural organisations and their collections

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A site for you to explore New Zealand museums, art galleries, cultural organisations and their collections. Find out more

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An important feature of early cross-cultural contact in New Zealand was the role of intermediaries (kaiwhakarite) who acted as go-betweens – people from one culture who lived within the other culture and helped bridge the gap between the two.

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Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, NZ

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British and other visitors to New Zealand were quick to realise the business opportunities this land offered. Likewise, Māori saw that the visitors offered new trading possibilities.

Kei a koe te taonga, kei au te hiahia.
You have the goods, I have the need.
Whaling and dealing

Whalers started hunting the oceans near New Zealand before the 19th century. By 1805, whaling ships called regularly at New Zealand's Bay of Islands. Māori offered them fresh food and water, and sometimes women. In exchange, Māori received manufactured goods, clothing, and sometimes muskets.

Inshore opportunities

Some British whalers turned their attention from the open ocean to New Zealand's coastal waters, where right whales came to give birth.

The whalers set up shore stations all around the country. Here, Māori and British worked alongside each other catching and processing the whales. Both groups felt they benefited. Māori learned new skills and acquired manufactured goods. The British gained access to a land base and a local labour force.

Marriage between whalers and Māori often forged a bond that secured the protection of local rangatira chiefs Māori |

rangatira noun .

Outside the law

Some Māori took work on ships. They travelled to places as diverse as Australia, Asia, North America, England, and Europe. However, they were sometimes ill-treated on board, abandoned in foreign ports, or cheated of their wages.

As early as 1805, Philip King, British governor of New South Wales, was discussing the problem with Māori in Sydney, but in practice he couldn't do a thing. Britain had no control over its citizens once they left British-owned territory. And it had no authority either in New Zealand or on the high seas.

Building relationships

New Zealand's high-quality timber was sought after in Britain and Australia. Māori and Pākehā set up joint ventures to export it. Boat-building started here, too.

Tying up deals

Flax fibre had long been used by Māori for many purposes. But British traders wanted it for one thing - to make rope for ships' rigging.

In the 1820s Māori sold flax in return for goods such as muskets and blankets. They offered their services to prepare and bring the flax to collection points for Pākehā traders to export.

***

This content was originally written for the Treaty2U website in partnership with National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa and Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o Te Kāwanatanga in 2008, and reviewed in 2020.

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War, migration, and change

War, migration, and change

One item the Pākehā visitors brought caused more upheaval than any other - the musket. At the start of the 19th century, these guns were the norm on European battlefields.

Missionary impact

Missionary impact

From 1814, Christian missionaries from Britain began building up friendly relationships with Māori. Mutual trust grew, and eventually this helped the British government gain influence here.

Political relationships

Political relationships

Before 1840, the British government had no legal power to protect its citizens while they were in New Zealand - nor could it make unscrupulous ones obey British laws. This was a problem. Māori, British traders, and missionaries all expressed their dissatisfaction.

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British and other visitors to New Zealand were quick to realise the business opportunities this land offered. Likewise, Māori saw that the visitors offered new trading possibilities.

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New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage Te Manatu Taonga

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Changes in daily life after European arrival

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European imports The introduction in the late 18th century of European plants such as potatoes, animals such as pigs, and technology including iron tools and muskets, altered Māori people’s patterns of daily life dramatically and permanently. Changing work patterns...

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A Christchurch City pamphlet on the first peoples from Waitaha to European settlers

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Click here for a history of the Kaiapoi Pa

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Whakaora Te Ahariri - early Maori History in Canterbury

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Whakaora Te Ahariri - early Maori History in Canterbury

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Part of this video describes how Maori would have lived in early Canterbury

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Whakaora Te Ahuriri, A Wetland for Te Waihora - 2/02/2022

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Like many things at the time, Christianity - in the form of the Church Missionary Society - came to New Zealand via Australia. Historian James Belich described the Christian missionaries as the 'agents of virtue in a world of vice' - a world the British Resident, Jame Busby, described as 'frontier chaos'.

Although not immune to moral blemish themselves, these men and women went to extraordinary lengths to bring Christianity and 'civilisation' to Maori. The early years were largely unsuccessful for missionaries in terms of saving souls; as points of contact for trade as well as a source of new ideas, missionaries had a profound impact on many Maori communities. Their introduction of the written word and the development of a written Maori language represented a massive change.

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Like many things at the time, Christianity - in the form of the Church Missionary Society - came to New Zealand via Australia. Historian James Belich described the Christian missionaries as the 'agents of virtue in a world of vice' - a world the British Resident, Jame Busby, described as 'frontier chaos'.

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In the 1830s, shore whaling stations were established on Banks Peninsula. They were the first European settlements in Canterbury, and provided bases for early exploration. This map shows the sites of whaling stations.

Using this item

Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand

This item has been provided for private study purposes (such as school projects, family and local history research) and any published reproduction (print or electronic) may infringe copyright law. It is the responsibility of the user of any material to obtain clearance from the copyright holder.

Source: Nigel Prickett, Archaeology of New Zealand shore whaling. Wellington: Department of Conservation 2002

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In the 1830s, shore whaling stations were established on Banks Peninsula. They were the first European settlements in Canterbury, and provided bases for early exploration. This map shows the sites of whaling stations.

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Missionaries were based in New Zealand from 1814, and many were vitally important cultural go-betweens. They were usually better educated or more highly trained than Pākehā-Māori and, unlike them, almost never married Māori women. However, like Pākehā-Māori, missionaries needed a good knowledge of Māori language and customs, and aimed to win and retain the respect of both peoples. They were usually the first schoolteachers in Māori communities, teaching adults as well as children to read and write, and to use European tools and farming methods.

Missionaries as farmers

By the 1850s the region around the mission station at Te Awamutu in the Waikato had mills, ox carts and a postal service. Missionary John Morgan imagined '[e]ach family with their neat boarded cottage, surrounded by their orchards and wheatfields, the men employed in driving their Carts ... training their children in the habits of honest industry.' Another missionary, Thomas Grace, taught Māori in the Taupō area to raise livestock, build and sail their own ships, and ask for a fair price for their produce.

The first missionaries

English missionary Samuel Marsden first arrived in the Bay of Islands in 1814. He was accompanied by Ruatara, a local chief returning to his own people; fellow missionaries William Hall, a joiner, John King, a ropemaker, and schoolmaster Thomas Kendall; and others including Thomas Hansen. Marsden favoured teaching the Māori useful skills and agriculture to encourage them to convert to Christianity. He was so successful that he transformed the traditional economy of the Bay of Islands and laid the foundations for New Zealand agriculture.

Māori missionaries

The early missionaries were appalled at the sight of Ngāpuhi raiding parties returning from other tribal areas with large numbers of captured slaves. Some of these Ngāpuhi became Christians and agreed to release their slaves. The slaves themselves then sometimes converted to Christianity and returned to preach to their own people.

The missionary tohunga

Thomas Kendall, a missionary who arrived in the Bay of Islands in 1814, had a keen interest in Māori ideas on religion and the sacred. He began a relationship with Tohungaroa, the daughter of a tohunga named Rākau, later saying he did so 'to obtain accurate information as to [Māori] religious opinions and tenets'. For a year he lived with Tohungaroa and was taught the traditions of the whare wānanga (school of learning).

Piripi Taumata-ā-Kura of Ngāti Porou was taken to the Bay of Islands as a slave in 1823. He later returned to the East Coast to preach Christianity, teach reading and writing, and prepare the way for the first English missionaries to his region. Minarapa Rangihatuake of Taranaki was the first to preach Christianity to Te Āti Awa people in Port Nicholson (later Wellington). He also built the first Christian church in the town. In 1928 Frederick Bennett of Te Arawa was consecrated as the first Māori bishop.

Māori-language scholars

One of the first tasks for European missionaries was to learn the local language. Some became so expert at Māori that they made major contributions to the written form of the language. With the help of the missionary printer William Colenso, the Reverend William Williams produced a large number of biblical and other publications in the Māori language.

His son and grandson continued his tradition of Māori scholarship, preparing and revising the first substantial Māori-language dictionary and several important collections of written Māori. The Catholic missionary Louis Servant also wrote a detailed and valuable account of early Māori society, published as Customs and h abits of the New Zealanders.

Go-betweens with other cultures

Most early New Zealand missionaries worked with Māori communities, but some also worked with other non-European cultures. In 1879 Alexander Don became a Presbyterian missionary to Chinese gold miners in Otago. He was sent to China to learn their language and in 1897 opened the Chinese Mission Church in Dunedin. Don also set up a mission in the Canton (Guangzhou) district of China, where most Otago Chinese had come from, linked to his New Zealand mission.

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Missionaries were based in New Zealand from 1814, and many were vitally important cultural go-betweens. They were usually better educated or more highly trained than Pākehā-Māori and, unlike them, almost never married Māori women. However, like Pākehā-Māori, missionaries needed a good knowledge of Māori language and customs, and aimed to win and retain the respect of both peoples.

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Daily life in traditional communities

Traditionally, the day began early, with prayers and singing to worship the rising sun.

The daily life of the community was based around getting food, so most people spent their days in activities such as:

planting and tending crops in communal gardens

fishing or gathering seafood

hunting moa, other birds or seals.

Children and adults worked alongside each other, and chiefs worked together with their people.

The first meal of the day was around mid-morning. As the sun began to set, workers returned to the village and food was prepared and eaten together. The rest of the evening was spent in games and conversation. Sometimes there were prayers to the setting sun. Once it was dark, people generally went to sleep.

Changes in daily life after European arrival

After European explorers and traders began visiting New Zealand traditional life in Māori villages changed. Europeans traded new foods such as potatoes and pigs, and new technology such as iron tools and muskets (guns). This meant less time was needed to grow or gather for the community. The muskets meant that more people died in intertribal wars.

Some Māori became involved in trading food, flax or timber with Europeans, which sometimes took them away from their villages.

When missionaries arrived, from 1814, many children attended mission schools and learned European concepts of time. Reading became a popular pastime in villages.

After wars between government forces and some tribes in the mid-to-late 1800s, some tribes came in closer contact with a European way of life. Other tribes, particularly those who had land confiscated by the government after the wars, returned to more traditional ways of life.

Daily life from the 20th century

Until the middle of the 20th century most Māori continued to live in small rural communities. The marae was still the heart of the community, but work for wages had replaced growing or hunting food. Many people practised both traditional Māori religion and Christianity.

After the Second World War many Māori, especially the young, moved to the cities for work. Some returned to their home marae often, while others found community in urban marae, or in gangs.

In the 2000s most Māori live and work alongside non-Māori, and they have a similar way of life. However, some aspects of Māori life are still common, and some, such as pōwhiri (welcome rituals) are being adopted by non-Māori as well.

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Daily life in Māori communities - te noho a te hapori

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Life in Māori villages revolved around acquiring food for the community, whether by growing crops, hunting or gathering. The arrival of Europeans - explorers, whalers, missionaries and, later, settlers - led to enormous changes in how Māori lived and worked.

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Kā Huru Manu (The Ngāi Tahu Cultural Mapping Project) 

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Kā Huru Manu (The Ngāi Tahu Cultural Mapping Project) 

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Kā Huru Manu (The Ngāi Tahu Cultural Mapping Project) is dedicated to recording and mapping the traditional Māori place names and associated histories in the Ngāi Tahu rohe (tribal area)

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Homepage - Cultural Mapping Project - Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu

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Kā Huru Manu, The Ngāi Tahu Cultural Mapping Project, is dedicated to mapping the traditional place names and associated stories within the Ngāi Tahu rohe (tribal area). Visit our Ngāi Tahu Atlas to see over 1,000 traditional place names in Te Waipounamu.

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Information about a wide range of topics about the early European settlement of Christchurch and Canterbury.

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Information about a wide range of topics about the early European settlement of Christchurch and Canterbury. For Māori history of Canterbury...

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John Marsden - Driving force in early 1800s.

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John Marsden - Driving force in early 1800s.

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John Marsden's journals online.

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The Marsden Collection

Reverend Samuel Marsden (1765-1838), Chaplain to New South Wales, was the driving force behind the establishment of the Church Missionary Society in New Zealand in the early nineteenth century. His relationships of trust with Māori chiefs paved the way for the introduction of Christianity in New Zealand. The missionary settlers brought agriculture and European technology to New Zealand. They also began documenting Te Reo Māori and created the first books in Māori. Their work paved the way for the acceptance of an official Crown presence in New Zealand.

Marsden's letters and journals, as well as the papers of other early NZ missionaries, are held in the Hocken Collections at the University of Otago Library. 599 of these letters and journals have been made available on the Marsden Online Archive to date.

More information on Samuel Marsden, the Bay of Islands in 1814 to 1823, the Church Missionary Society and the early Māori Language can be found in these links.

"Mining Marsden" Project

This was a collaborative project undertaken by the University of Otago Library and the University's Centre for Research on Colonial Culture. The project to create the Marsden Online Archive set out to achieve a number of objectives including:

Creating digital objects from historically significant, unique, items in the Hocken Collections.

Providing appropriate metadata for these resources, so to enrich contextual information and extend discoverability.

Identifying and deploying appropriate technical and discovery standards to ensure accessibility, preservation and curation.

Developing an appropriate platform, structure and web interface to make the collections useful as a research asset.

The first iteration of this site has been made available due to the combined efforts of these two groups. For more information on the Mining Marsden project contact the University of Otago Library.

Video: The "Mining Marsden" Project Process.

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Reverend Samuel Marsden (1765-1838), Chaplain to New South Wales, was the driving force behind the establishment of the Church Missionary Society in New Zealand in the early nineteenth century. His relationships of trust with Māori chiefs paved the way for the introduction of Christianity in New Zealand.

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When sealers and whalers began to arrive in their hundreds seeking to exploit local resources, they encountered a Maori world that they had develop relationships with.

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A European outpost

James Belich in Making Peoples described how in the 18th and 19th centuries, Europe exploded outward in one of the most incredible expansions in human history. This European explosion first impacted on New Zealand in the closing decade of the 18th century when sealers and whalers began to arrive in their hundreds seeking to exploit local resources.

They encountered a Maori world. Contact was regional in its nature; many Maori had no contact with Europeans. Where contact did occur, Europeans had to work out a satisfactory arrangement with Maori, who were often needed to provide local knowledge, food, resources, companionship, labour and, most important of all, guarantee the newcomers' safety. Maori were quick to recognise the economic benefits to be gained in developing a relationship with these newcomers.

Europeans of all descriptions came to New Zealand during this time - Dutch, French, Russian, German, Spanish, Portuguese and British, as well as North Americans.

Much of this contact 'was strained through Sydney first'. Known variously as Botany Bay or Port Jackson, the Australian port became the hub of the South Pacific's whaling and sealing industries and received the bulk of New Zealand's early trade.

The New Zealand fur seal and the humpback, sperm and southern right whales, which migrated through New Zealand waters on their seasonal journeys to and from Antarctica, proved easy targets for the sealers and whalers who arrived in 1791-2.

Maori and whaling

Some Maori joined whaling vessels as crew and Sydney became the most visited overseas destination for Maori. The whaling ships offered the opportunity to travel and thus the great New Zealand tradition of the 'OE' was born. There were, however, instances of Maori being poorly treated on some of these ships.

Maori also played a major role in shore whaling, many going on to become boat steerers and headsmen, or set up their own stations. In Hawke's Bay the stations depended heavily on Maori labour, making the relationship between Maori and Pakeha whalers one of mutual respect and equality. Prominent Ngati Kurukuru chief Tiakitai had, for example, served as the patron of Morris's Rangaika whaling station until his death in 1845, bringing it under his protection. Maori, in exchange, gained access to goods, money and work.

The importance of Maori patrons diminished as the European population grew. Maori were pushed to the economic and political margins. The war in the Bay of Islands 1845-6 was partly a response to the loss of trade that resulted from the shifting of the capital to Auckland. In January 1847 the house of William Edwards, the owner of the Putotaranui whaling station, a few kilometres south of Rangaika, was burned down, killing his infant son. Edwards believed this was the work of local Maori upset at the Pakeha taking advantage of them.

Further information:

This web feature was written by Steve Watters and produced by the NZHistory team.

The nature and impact of sealing and whaling on New Zealand are explored in the 'Earth, Sea and Sky' section of Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. In particular:

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A European population explosion first impacted on New Zealand in the closing decade of the 18th century when sealers and whalers began to arrive in their hundreds seeking to exploit local resources.

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Cook's voyage was followed by other European explorers, and people like whalers, traders, missionaries and settlers.

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First encounters

The first encounters between Māori and Europeans were important and set the tone for future relationships. These websites are a good place to find information about what happened.
Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand
Te Ara is an excellent starting point for all questions about New Zealand Aotearoa. If we scroll down to the bottom of the page we can see that the website belongs to the Ministry for Culture & Heritage, so the information is well-researched and reliable.

Tips: We like sites that are from government or other reputable organisations, because we can trust the information. You can sometimes tell these sites by their web address - they might have .govt or .edu in their address - or by looking at their or Contact pages.

This is the Ministry for Culture & Heritage website to commemorate the 250 years since the first visit of James Cook to Aotearoa (New Zealand).

Select Learn from the top of the page, then go to Encounters in 1769.

Look at Encounters in 1769 from the NZ History website to discover stories about the first meetings between Māori and Pākehā.

Look at Cooks place names to find out about place names around Aotearoa New Zealand related to Cook.

Tips: Many web pages have links to further information or to other recommended sites. Following these links is a great way to find out more. This searching method is called "pearl growing" because you are picking up pieces of sand to make a beautiful pearl!

This website is managed by Nelson Public Libraries and has historical and cultural stories from Nelson, Marlborough and Tasman. It has an article with an overview of what took place.

Tips: Websites that have .org or .net in the address can have good information, but you need to assess how reliable it is. Check the link on the website, if you can find one. That can tell you what the organisation's mission and values are.

The British Broadcasting site has many useful educational pages.

Tips: Websites that have .com or .co in the address can have good information, but you need to assess how reliable it is. Check the link on the website, if you can find one. That can tell you what the company's mission and values are.

Impacts on society

The websites below have information on the impact European explorers and settlers, and people like whalers, traders and missionaries had on Māori and their land, beliefs, culture and technology.

Te Ara also has excellent information about the impacts of colonisation on society.

Scroll down to Sections and select New Zealand in Brief.

Look at the story Māori.

The sections The arrival of Europeans, Decline and revival, and Urbanisation and renaissance has information about the impacts of colonisation on Māori.

Enter keywords such as 'colonisation impacts' or 'colonisation effects' into the search bar to see what other articles you can find.

Tips: Search words, or keywords, are the most important words in our question. Usually it's better to leave out small words like 'the', 'a' and 'of' and just choose the main ones, e.g [Colonisation impacts]. We can always change our keywords or add more if we need to.

New Zealand's public radio service on news, current affairs, Pacific, Te Ao Māori, sport and more has useful information on New Zealand history.

Go to the tab called Podcasts & Series.

Select the series on The Aotearoa History Show.

Scroll down to the podcast on Early Encounters about the impact Europeans had on Māori food, culture, technology, weapons and conflict.

Books

There have been some excellent books written about the impact of European exploration on Māori. Check out your local public library or school library for titles like these:
SCIS no: 1896614

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The first encounters between Māori and Europeans were important and set the tone for future relationships. These websites are a good place to find information about what happened. Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand Te Ara is an excellent starting point for all questions about New Zealand Aotearoa.

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The Māori past

Canterbury was first settled by Māori 600-700 years ago. They lived mainly beside the productive wetlands near the coast, and around Te Waihora (Lake Ellesmere) and Wairewa (Lake Forsyth) - renowned eel and flounder fisheries.

Horomaka (Banks Peninsula) was important because it combined the resources of forest and sea. Artefacts have also been found inland, at summer camps for expeditions to gather moa and weka, eels and rats.

Ngāi Tahu

Canterbury lies within the traditional boundaries of the main South Island iwi (tribe), Ngāi Tahu. Originally from the North Island's east coast, the Ngāi Tahu people migrated south to Wellington, and then to the South Island. As they moved south they fought several battles with two tribes already living there, Ngāti Māmoe and Waitaha, and today's tribe members are linked to these earlier peoples. By the end of the 18th century Ngāi Tahu had reached Foveaux Strait, at the foot of the South Island, and occupied the West Coast.

The most important pā was at Kaiapoi, a centre of trade in pounamu (greenstone) from the West Coast. In the early 1830s it was sacked by the Ngāti Toa chief, Te Rauparaha, but his raids from the North Island did not succeed. Ngāi Tahu kept their ownership of Canterbury.

Rivers revert

Since European settlement, relatively few local Māori place names have remained, but three rivers keep their original names. The English names of Courtenay for the Waimakariri, Cholmondeley for the Rakaia and Alford for the Rangitātā did not catch on.

European discovery

Captain James Cook sighted the Canterbury coast in 1770, but did not land. From well offshore he mapped Banks Peninsula as an island. The first recorded European landing came in 1815 or 1816, when a sealing ship put into Akaroa to trade for potatoes and flax.

In the 1830s, whaling ships began anchoring in Port Cooper (Lyttelton Harbour) and Akaroa Harbour. Shore whaling stations were established in the southern bays of Banks Peninsula.

Organised settlement

Signatures to the Treaty of Waitangi were gathered at Akaroa in 1840, opening the way for British settlement. But organised settlement began when a French captain founded the Nanto-Bordelaise Company, which sent out French (and German) settlers who arrived in August 1840. Though British sovereignty had been proclaimed by this time, the French settlers stayed to found Akaroa.

From a Banks Peninsula whaling station, a small party of Englishmen set out in 1840 to establish a farm on the plains. After 18 months at Putaringamotu (Riccarton), they abandoned the venture. But in 1843 brothers John and William Deans returned to the same site to found the first permanent European settlement on the plains.

Land purchase

Most of the region was purchased from Ngāi Tahu by the government in 1848. In an atmosphere fraught with misunderstanding, 16 Ngāi Tahu chiefs signed a deed prepared by Commissioner Henry Tacy Kemp at Akaroa on 12 June. This allowed them to keep their settlements and food-gathering sites as well as other reserves. But when the land was surveyed later that year, many of the reserves agreed in the Kemp Purchase were reduced or ignored. The people of Ngāi Tahu never gave up their claim for compensation.

The Canterbury Association settlement

In 1848 the Canterbury Association was founded in England, inspired by Edward Gibbon Wakefield and John Robert Godley, to start a settlement in New Zealand. They sent out Captain Joseph Thomas, who was not deterred by the swamps lack of timber, and tricky access between port and plains. He had laid out the port town of Lyttelton and the plains town of Christchurch, and begun a road over the Port Hills, by the time the first settlers arrived.

The first four Canterbury Association ships (the Randolph, Cressy, Sir George Seymour and Charlotte Jane) arrived in December 1850. By 1853, 3,549 settlers had arrived. Of these, 400 were land purchasers and the rest mostly labourers and servants. The association's goal was to replicate England's stable, class-based society in Canterbury.

Exploring the interior

The northern mountains were explored by men trying to find ways to bring sheep from Nelson and Marlborough into Canterbury. Routes were discovered from the upper Clarence River onto the Hanmer Plain in 1850-51.

Another aim was to find routes over the Southern Alps. Leonard Harper had a Māori guide when he crossed Harper Pass in 1857. The main routes to the West Coast goldfields - Arthur's Pass and Browning Pass - were crossed in 1864 and 1865 respectively. In the 1860s, Julius Haast, as Canterbury provincial geologist, penetrated most of the mountain valleys. But remote areas of the alps were not explored until the 1930s.

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The Māori past Canterbury was first settled by Māori 600-700 years ago. They lived mainly beside the productive wetlands near the coast, and around Te Waihora (Lake Ellesmere) and Wairewa (Lake Forsyth) - renowned eel and flounder fisheries. Horomaka (Banks ...

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Where they came from

These New Zealand websites have the best information on where early settlers came from and their journeys to Aotearoa New Zealand.
Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand
Te Ara is an excellent starting point for all questions about New Zealand Aotearoa. If we scroll down to the bottom of the page we can see that the website belongs to the Ministry for Culture & Heritage, so the information is well-researched and reliable.

Scroll down to Sections

Choose New Zealand Peoples, then select Origins and arrivals.

Choose New Zealand Peoples, the link Peoples will link to early settlers such as French, Dutch, Irish, Dalmatians and Welsh.

Choose the section New Zealand in brief, then select History.

Tips: We like sites that are from government or other reputable organisations, because we can trust the information. You can sometimes tell these sites by their web address - they might have .govt or .edu in their address - or by looking at their or Contact pages.

NZHistory is a great website for information about New Zealand Aotearoa. If we go all the way down the page we can see that the website belongs to the Ministry for Culture & Heritage, so the information is well-researched and reliable.

Tips: Remember to explore 'Further information' found on each of these pages as they link to other websites that have related information.

Topic Explorer is an online tool from the National Library of New Zealand. It contains a wide range of quality resources for students in a range of formats. These resources have been selected from reliable national and international sources.

Tips: We like these links because they have all been chosen by librarians, so the sites will be trustworthy. It is a good idea to find the About us link on each site, to see what the site's missions and values are.

Early settler life

There was a lot of work to do in early colonial New Zealand. Land had to be cleared to build communities and for farming. The following websites have information about daily life in 19th century New Zealand.
Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand
Te Ara also has information about the daily life of early settlers in New Zealand.

Scroll down to the section Daily life, sport and recreation.

Then select Home and daily life.

Explore the stories here to understand different aspects of early settler life in New Zealand.

Go to the section Settled Landscape.

The section Social Connections has information about religion which was a core part of people's lives and their identities.
Explore the link Religion to explore the beginning of different Christian churches in New Zealand.

Tips: Many web pages have links to further information or to other recommended sites. Following these links is a great way to find out more. This searching method is called "pearl growing" because you are picking up pieces of sand to make a beautiful pearl!

DigitalNZ is a search site that focuses on New Zealand history and brings together results from lots of different New Zealand libraries, museums, universities and government sites all at once. It is a good source of primary sources.

Type search words 'early settlers' into the search box.

The results are grouped into images, audio, videos, and stories.

The tab More will lead to newspapers, articles and research papers.

Tips: Search words, or keywords, are the most important words in our question. Usually it's better to leave out small words like 'the', 'a' and 'of' and just choose the main ones, eg [early settlers]. We can always change our keywords or add more if we need to.

You can read newspaper articles from the early days of European settlement on PapersPast, a website for digitised New Zealand newspapers.

Go to the tab called Newspapers.

Explore newspapers By Region and choose a region eg Auckland.

A list of the newspapers will appear alphabetically showing dates of publication from First year to Last year eg Albertland Gazette started in 1862.

Tips: Paperspast has other useful sections. Explore Magazines and journals, Letters and Diaries, and Parliamentary Papers for different types of primary sources.

Economy

Whaling, farming, logging and gold mining were some of the first occupations that contributed to the economy and the setting up of communities.
Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand
Different sections on Te Ara will lead you to different aspects of what helped the economy in colonial New Zealand.

Tips: Te Ara has lots of information on this topic. We recommend you explore other sections to expand your understanding of this topic.
Te Papa Tongarewa: Museum of New Zealand
Te Papa has lots of collections that help illustrate early settler life. One long running exhibition is their Passports collection.

Under Related content select a topic to read about the object.

Whale harpoon gives an overview of whaling in New Zealand.

New Zealand gold nuggets looks at the gold rush in New Zealand.

Tips: We like sites like this because they're reliable. You can tell because of their web address - they have either .govt or .ac, meaning they are from government organisations. They're also New Zealand sites, so relevant for us.

Politics and Government

The websites below are the best places to look for how early settlers went about setting up a government in New Zealand.
Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand
Te Ara has a good section on the history and role government in New Zealand.

NZHistory is another reliable source of New Zealand politics, including history.

Interaction with Māori

Have a look through these links for information about interactions between Māori, the tangata whenua, and European settlers.

NZHistory has a section on Culture and Society that explores Māori and early settler interactions.

Pre-1840 contact has a link to Encounters that has lots of details about first meetings between people, and

the link to A frontier of chaos? is about Māori values and practices that guided their responses to early Europeans.

Under Decade studies look at A history of New Zealand 1769-1914 to read about the Musket Wars, the New Zealand Wars, and the Treaty of Waitangi.

Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Under Sections find New Zealand in brief , then select Māori to find out about Māori before and after Europeans arrived in New Zealand.

The Settled Landscape section has a link to Claiming the Land - which is about how the settlers took over land owned by Māori.

Books

Here are some books to look for in your public library or school library:

Ask your local librarian for more suggestions, especially for books that tell you about the early history of your local area.
SCIS no: 1875659

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These New Zealand websites have the best information on where early settlers came from and their journeys to Aotearoa New Zealand. Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand Te Ara is an excellent starting point for all questions about New Zealand Aotearoa.

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Ti Kouka Whenua provides information and photographs relating to 50 significant local Maori sites. You can use an interactive map or an alphabetical list

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Tī Kōuka - a symbol for our city
Tēnā koutou katoa
He tautokongia tēnei te mahi tino whakahirahira o Ngā Kete Wānanga-o-Ōtautahi pēnei
Kia…

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The history of Māori migration and settlement in Aotearoa and the stories of Te Ao Māori (The Māori World) have been retained in the oral histories of each iwi (tribe) and hapu (sub-tribe). Histories of the Māori people are told in the creation stories.

European discovery of New Zealand occurred in 1642 with the arrival of Abel Tasman and contact was extended from 1769-70 when James Cook's expedition mapped much of the coastline.

By the late 1830s, the inhabitants of New Zealand consisted of approximately 125,000 Māori and about 2000 settlers. The largest European settlement was Kororāreka (now known as Russell).

Sealers and whalers were the first Europeans to establish settlements on the coasts of New Zealand. They were soon followed by traders who traded with Māori for food and natural resources such as flax and timber in exchange for clothing, guns and other products. Missionaries also came to New Zealand and introduced Māori to the Christian religion, using Māori translations of the Bible to teach reading and writing as fighting and lawlessness in general were threatening trade and relations.

Pressures on Māori from European settlers

Europeans settled permanently in New Zealand and wanted to buy land for farms and houses. Most settlers did not understand Māori land tenure processes and Māori law concepts, or structures for social cohesion and due to these misunderstandings many skirmishes - some quite bloody - occurred.

Other European countries, in particular France, were becoming more interested in New Zealand as a source of trade or as a possible colony for settlement. In 1831 a petition signed by 13 northern Māori chiefs was sent to King William IV, asking for protection and recognition of their special trade and missionary contacts with Britain.

Declaration of Independence of New Zealand

James Busby was appointed in 1833 as the British Resident in New Zealand to act as a go-between for Māori and European and to watch over British interests. In 1834 Busby invited the northern chiefs to Waitangi to choose a New Zealand flag, which could be used on New Zealand ships to identify them. This flag was known as 'The United Tribes flag'. This was replaced after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi by the Union Jack, the flag of Great Britain.

Sovereignty and possession of land and trading rights were issues for both Māori and Pākehā throughout the 1830s. The British were worried about French interest in New Zealand. This was exacerbated by Baron Charles de Thierry declaring himself 'Sovereign Chief' of New Zealand in 1835 when he took possession of land he claimed he had bought in the Hokianga.

On the 28 October 1835, James Busby organised a meeting at Waitangi where 34 chiefs signed a 'Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand - He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni' and formed a 'Confederation of the United Tribes of Aotearoa'. In the Declaration they asked for William IV, King of England, to act as the Protector of the new state against any attempts on its independence. By 1839 a total of 52 Māori chiefs had signed the Declaration, which they saw as the guarantee of their independence.

Recommended reading

Further reading on pre-1840 New Zealand from Papers Past and the New Zealand Electronic Text Collection. This content needs to be considered in relation to the time and context in which it was written:

Next page: The Signing of the Treaty

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New Zealand before the Treaty of Waitangi was signed

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The history of Māori migration and settlement in Aotearoa and the stories of Te Ao Māori (The Māori World) have been retained in the oral histories of each iwi (tribe) and hapu (sub-tribe). Histories of the Māori people are told in the creation stories.

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NZ History is an amazing mine of information. Here you will find Pre-1840 contact information on many topics

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand

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Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand

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Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand offers many pathways to understanding New Zealand. It is a comprehensive guide to the country’s peoples, natural environment, history, culture, economy, institutions and society.

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Marlborough Sounds Whaling

For nearly 140 years, whales on their annual migration north were spotted by whalers from hilltop lookouts at the entrance to Tory Channel. Whale chasing boats then raced out to harpoon them and tow the carcasses to a shore-based whaling station, where oil was rendered from the whale blubber. 1

Te Awaiti, a shore whaling station, was set up on Arapawa Island in the Marlborough Sounds in the 1820s. In 1911 the Perano family founded a whaling industry at Arapawa Island that lasted until the end of whaling in 1964. 2

An Australian ex-convict, John (known as Jacky) Guard was one of the first Europeans to settle in the South Island. He was driven into Tory Channel by a southerly storm in Cook Strait and chose Te Awaiti to set up his first whaling station. 3 There were 100 Europeans at Te Awaiti by 1838 4, including Jacky Guard's wife, Elizabeth, who was one of the first European women in the area.

In September 1839, Jerningham Wakefield wrote about the activity at Te Awaiti. "A large gang were busy at the try-works, boiling out the oil from the blubber of a whale lately caught....The men were unshaven and uncombed and their clothes covered with dirt and oil," He described the intolerable stench of the bay and also commented on about twenty five Māori/European children: "all strikingly comely...active and hardy as the goats." 5

The shore-based whalers initially hunted and chased their prey using rowing boats and hand-held lances and harpoons. The Peranos, an Italian family living in Picton which turned to whaling when coastal trading proved unsuccessful, were the first to use motor launches in 1911. 6 Harpoons with exploding heads, introduced in the 1920s, were fired from onboard harpoon guns and achieved a quicker kill. 7

The Perano whaling enterprise worked out of three different whaling stations over the 53 years from 1911 to 1964.Fishing Bay, the Perano's third Tory Channel whaling station and the most important, was established in 1924. Once at the station, the whale carcass was winched out of the water, the blubber stripped off and the pieces then thrown into a digester for cooking. The oil was taken off the top, with up to five tonnes of oil considered a good haul from a humpback whale. 8

Marlborough Sounds whaling peaked in 1960, with 78 whales being killed in 16 days during June and a total of 226 humpback whales being caught in the whole season. In 1962, however, humpback numbers were so low that the Peranos started hunting Orca for oil, but it proved to be an uneconomic enterprise. 9

The Peranos caught 114 sperm whales and nine humpback whales in 1963. The last whale was harpooned in New Zealand waters on Monday 21 December, 1964 by gunner Trevor Norton. Falling prices for sperm whale oil and competition from foreign fleets had led to the end of the industry. 10

Whalers were tough, resilient steel-nerved men who lived lives of hardship and high adventure during the winter whaling season. Whaling was in the blood - over the years, the crew of a fast, sleek Perano whale-chaser was likely to include a selection of Nortons, Jacksons, Toms, Peranos, Keenans, Loves and Heberleys - descendants of the first whalers. 11
Whaling in New Zealand
For the first 40 years of the 19th century, whaling was the most significant economic activity for Europeans in New Zealand. They first hunted sperm whales from visiting ships and then mainly right whales from shore-based whaling boats. 12 Their whale boats were 20 to 30 feet long and sharp at both ends, with each boat carrying a collection of sharp lances and harpoons. 13

Whale oil was prized for lighting and lubrication, but was also used in the manufacture of products such as soaps, paint and rope. Baleen, the fine filtering tissue from the mouth of a right whale 14 was used in many nineteenth-century products, such as buggy whips, corset stays and umbrella ribs. 15 Whale meat was also used for human and pet consumption. 16

Former Sounds whalers have now joined with Department of Conservation staff to conduct an annual survey of whales visiting Cook Strait.
2009 (updated 2022)
Sources used in this story

Grady, Don (1982). The Perano Whalers of Cook Strait (1911-1964) Wellington : A.H.&A.W. Reed Ltd , p.1

McSaveney, E. (2008) Nearshore islands. Retrieved from Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand
https://teara.govt.nz/en/nearshore-islands

Ponder, W. Frank (1986) A Labyrinth of Waterways : The forgotten story of New Zealand's Marlborough Sounds. Wenlock House, p.22.

Dawber, Carol (2001). The Jacksons of Te Awaiti. Picton, N.Z.: River Press, p. 41.

Dawber, p. 25

Grady, p. 27

Dawber, p. 20

Grady, pp. 26,29,67,78

Taylor, Mike. (2002) Slice of life; Whaling in New Zealand. New Zealand Memories, 37, p.38

Grady, p.197

Grady, p.11

Phillips, J. (2007) Whaling. Retrieved from Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand
http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/whaling

Dawber, p. 25

Dawber, p. 15

Whales and Whaling 2 (2009) Retrieved from Cool Antarctica:
http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/wildlife/whales/whaling2.htm

Grady, p. 151-4

Want to find out more about the Marlborough Sounds Whaling ? View Further Sources here.

Do you have a story about this subject? Find out how to add one here.

Further sources - Marlborough Sounds Whaling

Books

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For nearly 140 years whalers spotted whales from hilltop lookouts at the head of Tory Channel. Whale chasing boats then raced out to harpoon them and tow the carcasses to a shore-based whaling station, where oil was rendered from the blubber.

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Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, NZ

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Māori and other South Pacific people harvested food and materials from whales that occasionally stranded on their shores. This kind of low-impact 'whaling' changed in the early 1800s, when ships from Europe and America came to hunt the bonanza of whales in Pacific waters. Shore-based whaling stations were soon established in New Zealand.

In the twentieth century, whaling became more industrialised and deadly. But during the 1970s, New Zealand's attitude to whaling changed - from general support to active opposition. Now whale watching is one of New Zealand's most lucrative tourist enterprises.

Early harvest

A beached feast

Māori welcomed the meat, bone, and ivory that could be gathered when whales stranded. Such events provided enormous amounts of protein - something not readily available in a place with no large, naturally occurring land mammals. Artisans fashioned weapons out of the bone and ornaments from the ivory.

Gift of the sea

Maori also began to understand where and when these gifts from the sea might appear, developing rich traditions around stranding sites. Harvesting of this kind had minimal impact on whale populations.

Going commercial

The practice of harvesting stranded whales continued into the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also became a small-scale commercial operation, with oil being boiled out of blubber from the carcasses.

Back to customary use

Today, Maori sometimes take bone and ivory from stranded whales for customary uses such as carving.

Ocean hunting

Southern abundance

From about 1800, whaling ships sailed from Europe and America to hunt in unexploited southern waters. They came for the staggering numbers of whales that had been seen there. One ship in 1792 reported sighting 15,000 whales off the coast of Australia in less than two weeks!

Target: sperm whales

This oceanic whaling involved large vessels that routinely spent several years at sea. They targeted sperm whales, which yielded the highest-quality 'oil'. The bulk of this oil was also easily obtained - bucketed directly out of the spermaceti chamber in the whale's head.

Right oily

Oceanic whalers also hunted southern right whales, which yielded large quantities of oil when their blubber was boiled.

Danger money

haling was both lucrative and dangerous, requiring skill and considerable courage. Whalers chased their huge quarry in flimsy boats. Sperm whales often fought back, flicking their huge tails and smashing boats that pursued them. They dived when harpooned, sometimes causing boats to sink. A whaler's career could end suddenly with drowning.

Lubricating progress

Oil from whales lit city streets and lubricated machines in rapidly industrialising countries like Britain and America. Baleen (flexible bony plates from the mouths of baleen whales) also provided the 'bones' to stiffen corsets, or was used in the manufacture of such things as umbrellas.

Life on shore

Harsh comforts

Shore-based whalers kept lookout for and gave chase to whales literally from their backyards. This may seem less arduous than years at sea on a sailing vessel, but the shore stations were often remote and conditions harsh. Several of these whalers had deserted the even harsher conditions found aboard some whaling ships.

Making do

The whalers' homes were made from materials to hand. Furniture was improvised, often out of the bones of whales themselves. Supply vessels could be few and far between.

Here for good

Since these whalers lived years on shore, they often married Maori women and settled permanently. Indeed, a large part of modern New Zealand's founding population came from early whalers. This was the origin of many famous New Zealand whaling families, such as the Guards, Heberleys, and Barretts.

Industrialised slaughter

Deadly pursuits

By the 1950s, whaling had become highly mechanised and deadly in its efficiency. Ships with diesel engines had long ago replaced steam ships, which had been the successors to sailing vessels. This meant that fast-swimming whales that could outpace sailing ships - blue whales, minkes, fin whales - had now come into harpooners' sights.

Explosive demise

Helicopters lifted off from mother factory ships to spot whales. Once sighted, whales seldom escaped. Fleets of chaser boats accompanied factory ships. On the chasers, harpooners fired harpoons with exploding heads - guaranteeing the kill.

Factory finish

As the name implies, a factory ship had a 'production line' style of organisation. Once the whale was hauled on to the ship, the flesh was flensed (cut away), blubber boiled for oil, and bones ground up for fertiliser. An average 100-tonne whale could be reduced to raw 'product' in as little as 20 minutes.

Consuming whales

The only break in the global slaughter of whales in the twentieth century came with World War II. Once the war was over, the whaling resumed with renewed vigour. For many nations, whales represented a cheap and easy source of protein after war shortages. Whale products also went into margarine and ice cream, cosmetics, and even pet food.

'Save the Whales!'

Killers to conservationists

New Zealand's attitude to whaling has changed radically since about 1970. From a nation which, like other nations in the nineteenth century, ruthlessly exploited whales, it now promotes a worldwide ban on commercial whaling.

Extinction on the horizon?

Even as late as the 1950s, New Zealanders welcomed whaling fleets to their ports. Their attitude began to change with the collapse of the small shore-based whaling industry in the country in 1964 - a direct result of overfishing by foreign fleets in the previous decade. People were shocked by the near-total disappearance of humpback whales that normally migrated to New Zealand shores.

Consciousness raised

The growth of the 'green' movement in the 1970s coincided with the recognition of whales as intelligent and sophisticated creatures. People were also shocked by graphic and gruesome footage of whales being slaughtered, which was released around this time.

Official position

From 1991, opposition to whaling became official - the promotion of a global ban on commercial whaling entered New Zealand Government policy. After a 200-year association with whaling, New Zealand is now a 'committed conservation country'.

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Māori and other South Pacific people harvested food and materials from whales that occasionally stranded on their shores. This kind of low-impact 'whaling' changed in the early 1800s, when ships from Europe and America came to hunt the bonanza of whales in Pacific waters. Shore-based whaling stations were soon established in New Zealand.

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Discover The Delights Of Peeling Back History

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On 8 th October 1923, in close relationship with the Canterbury Historical Association, the 'Canterbury Pilgrims Association' was formed. This was founded '...to perpetuate a feeling of veneration for the early pioneers and promote social, literary and historical interest...'

Unlike the early Canterbury Historical Associations 'in your face' approach to keeping Canterbury's history alive-and-well with the current generation, the Canterbury Pilgrims Association was more focused on the remaining settlers from the First Four Ships and their descendents. Many reunions around historical dates, families and properties took place along with important markers being situated around Christchurch to help our history not be forgotten.

Happily, these two associations still work hard to '...promote and preserve...' Canterbury's history today. With the Canterbury Historical Association still deep-rooted in the University of Canterbury - where it began in 1922 - the public are always welcome to attend their meetings and discussions about our past.

The latter, now known as the Canterbury Pilgrims and Early Settlers Association, has since been opened to all members of the public who share this same interest. Their impressive collection of diaries, clothing and artifacts are now housed in the Canterbury Museum.

Pictured here is a small group of our first settlers at the Godley Statue during the Canterbury Anniversary celebration in December 1871.

*Image courtesy of the University of Wellington - http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz*

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The Canterbury Pilgrims And Early Settlers Association Formed - 8th October 1923

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On 8 th October 1923, in close relationship with the Canterbury Historical Association, the 'Canterbury Pilgrims Association' was formed. This was founded '...to perpetuate a feeling of veneration for the early pioneers and promote social, literary and historical interest...'

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After occasional earlier visits, whaling ships began to frequent Akaroa Harbour in large numbers in the 1830s. Whalers from France were among those putting into Akaroa Harbour and it was French whaling captain, Jean Francois Langlois, who played a key role in the founding of Akaroa in 1840.

Initially the whalers caught and processed the whales at sea, putting into harbour mainly to replenish supplies. In 1837, Captain George Hempelman established a shore whaling station at Peraki. (This was the first permanent European settlement in Canterbury.) Subsequently, shore whaling stations were established in four other Peninsula bays. At shore stations, the whale carcasses were dragged ashore and cut up on the foreshore.

The large iron pots known as trypots were used to "render down" the whale blubber into whale oil, one of the main products of the industry. The oil was taken to markets in Australia, Europe and America. In the early 20th century, trypots abandoned in the remote bays where the shore stations had been were brought into Akaroa. At least one of them came from Peraki.

There is now one trypot above the beach near the war memorial and three, mounted in a brick base, near the French landing site.

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After occasional earlier visits, whaling ships began to frequent Akaroa Harbour in large numbers in the 1830s. Whalers from France were among those putting into Akaroa Harbour and it was French whaling captain, Jean Francois Langlois, who played a key role in the founding of Akaroa in 1840.

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Level 1

After the European explorers came the whalers and then the settlers, permanently changing New Zealand's landscape and society.

Can you imagine being eight months pregnant and sharing a makeshift V-hut with your husband, your three children under five, another couple and their daughter?

Those were the conditions for Mrs Emma Barker when she first arrived in Canterbury in 1851. A quick look into the family's hut will give you an idea of just how cramped the family was on the wide open plains of Canterbury.

The Barkers were not the first Europeans in Canterbury. Explorers, traders and missionaries had been making visits since the late eighteenth century. The first permanent European settlement was a whaling station at Peraki on Bank's Peninsula set up in the 1830s.

Even though a handful of European settlers were already here, the biggest impact came from the systematic immigration schemes sponsored by the New Zealand Company. Hundreds of settlers, including the Barkers, arrived within a short span of time forever changing the landscape and local society. A quick look at Dr A C Barker's panorama shows just how much the landscape had changed by 1860.

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Level 1 After the European explorers came the whalers and then the settlers, permanently changing New Zealand's landscape and society. Can you imagine being eight months pregnant and sharing a makeshift V-hut with your husband, your three children under five, another couple and their daughter?

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The story of Charles Reay who was a missionary in 1840 Aotearoa NZ

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In a talk specially recorded for RNZ, John Bluck puts forward the case that the life of a forgotten Victorian missionary Charles Reay (1810-1848) is a good role model for Pakeha in Aotearoa / New Zealand.

My friend the missionary

Chapter One

This is a strange time to be a Pakeha New Zealander, even for those who resist that label. What used to give us a place to stand and a way to belong here has now become a slippery and sometimes volatile description of who we are: the New Zealanders who are not Māori but have no other place to call home.

And the legacy that defines a Pakeha, namely a history that stretches back for 150 years and more, is suddenly up for grabs. The place names that shape that legacy - Auckland, Hastings, Napier and the statues of Hamilton, Grey, Wakefield, Cook, Tasman and Nixon are all under fire, some of them already tucked away in cold storage. How we teach this history to our children is equally under the gun.

I choose that image deliberately because it is an explosive time. Just about as polarised as the climate change debate. You have the Pakeha deniers on one end who can't see there's a problem and even if there is we should just get over it; and on the other end are Māori leaders who call Hamilton a "murderous arsehole", Cook a "syphilitic bastard" and the Government's treaty settlers "Clowns from the Crown."

No one with half an eye on what's happening in Aotearoa since the '70s should be surprised by any of this. With the slow return of the Treaty of Waitangi to centre stage and a groundswell of Māori renaissance, we've all had to rethink our colonial past and refocus on what a mixed bag it is.

If your settler forebears won land and a livelihood from that history then you got lucky. If your forebears had their land confiscated and were plunged into poverty and disease, that inheritance is catastrophic.

Somehow in this early 21 st century, we have to find a way of justice and restoration through that divide.

So how do we do that without continuing to abuse or ignore each other in the process? Where do we look for role models and stories of how justice and restoration can be found, piece by piece, and how real bicultural partnership can be achieved?

Pakeha people have to reach a long way back in our history because so much of it is lopsided, especially since the NZ Wars of the 1860s, where the seeds of Māori poverty and dispossession were first planted.

But there is a period before that, understudied and stereotyped by historians, where Pakeha men and women lived as a minority alongside Māori and made the first steps in shaping a partnership that we take for granted today. Some of the earliest were sealers and whalers, ships' crews, traders and shopkeepers. But the ones that provided the most powerful role models were European missionaries - Anglican, Catholic, Wesleyan.

By 1840 there were about 300 of them in the country, out of a total Pakeha population of around 2000. And although the Treaty had been signed and the Crown thought they'd secured sovereignty, it was Māori, all 80,000 of them, who were really in charge.

The missionaries had no doubt about that, which is the first comparison they have to offer us today. They knew they were guests in this land, dependent on the grace and favour of their Māori hosts, under the protection of the local chief, reliant on the hapu for food, shelter and survival. And what's more, they had come to New Zealand in order to serve Māori rather than get rich and famous themselves.

You may disagree with their motives and argue that Māori didn't need or ask for the Christian faith. But in the context of the time, being a missionary was an honourable career for clergy, much admired by the folks back home, in the same way that astronauts and medical volunteers are today.

These missionaries were the first canaries in the Pakeha cage we still live in today. What can we learn from them as we struggle now to work out what this partnership with Māori is all about, even as the ground beneath our feet keeps slip-sliding away?

Best way I know to do that is to introduce you to one of those missionaries and ask of him the same questions that we face as we go on struggling to learn the art of living in a bicultural society.

The missionary who has become my friend as I've spent years reading his diaries and trying to figure him out is Charles Reay. Not a well-known name like Marsden or Williams. There are no statues or memorials in your honour, not even a street name. And if there were, I doubt anyone would want to pull them down if they knew his real story.

But few people do. History has not been kind to you, Mr Reay. You might have expected more credit for leaving your privileged life among the English gentry and coming to the other side of the world to work with people your countrymen and women back home considered to be savages, however noble. Happily, you have been largely forgotten by our historians, who haven't liked missionaries much anyway, and ignored all but the well-known ones like Henry Williams and Bishop Selwyn.

That bishop was your boss and even though you started out as one of his best and brightest, a college friend from your days at Oxford together, and sailed with him to New Zealand as ship's chaplain, learning te Reo on the voyage, you quickly fell out of favour. In your short, downwardly mobile career of six years you managed to upset him time and again, helped along by the adventures of your wife Marianne who was considered by the tight circle of respectable missionary wives to be a little strange, a wanoke as they called her, an immoderate person.

We'll never know how Mr Reay would have coped with New Zealand in the 2020s, but we can take heart from how he coped with his much greater difficulties in the 1840s as he laid the foundations of what it means to be Pakeha in Aotearoa. He didn't live long enough to enjoy the fruits of his work, but his son certainly did.

Robert Charles was taken back to England by his mother Marianne after his father's death, but returned to work as a surveyor in the Bay of Plenty, had a daughter with a Te Arawa woman called Huhana, then later married a Hannah Paraki in Wairoa and produced a large family that continues to honour the Reay legacy to this day.

The short career of this obscure Victorian parson, the vicar of Swanbourne who ended his life as the missionary at Rangitukia, lives on in the Māori world far more vividly than in the Pakeha memory. Which says something about the way our two cultures keep bumping into each other, mostly in the dark.

Chapter two

New Zealand was a very different place in 1842 but were our Pakeha forebears so different in fact? We're trying to find out by comparing the way Pakeha back then and now, cope with the challenges to who they are and where they fit into a bicultural society. And we're using the story of a Victorian-era missionary called Charles Reay to help us in our search.

The country that greeted him in 1842 was still a Māori-driven one, even though the Treaty had been signed and Pakeha settlements were forming, in the Bay of Islands and Auckland, Wellington and then more recently Nelson. Christchurch and Dunedin were yet to be invented. The first cricket match had already been played in Wellington, and the first horse races held in Petone. Six newspapers in English and Māori were in circulation.

Missionaries were finally starting to make some headway with their teaching and evangelising, thanks to the help of Māori catechists and teachers, after a quarter of a century of little success. Charles Reay as a leading light in the newly appointed Bishop Selwyn's staff was set to ride this wave. Here was a highly educated, socially presentable and well-connected Pakeha man, fluent in te Reo, sympathetic to the Māori cause, eager to help. He should have been the very model of a modern major missionary, and yet, ever so slowly, the wheels began to fall off. His privileged beginning in New Zealand quickly started to unwind.

The first unravelling began with news that Bishop Selwyn received soon after arriving in New Zealand that his bright young friend Charles was escaping from a debt built up back home in England. £30 and 15 shillings, to be precise. About $10,000 in our money. He hadn't disclosed this to his missionary society sponsors who had hired him and paid for his passage but didn't find out until after the ship had sailed. And they were very, very upset. Charles left his wife Marianne behind to try and sort out the debt and join him later.

That got things off to a rough start with his bishop in New Zealand, which may explain why Charles was posted quickly off to Nelson, about as far away from Auckland as major Pakeha settlements had reached.

And while Charles's work did win the admiration of his boss, particularly his championing of Māori education and setting up schools in Nelson, his peacemaking work among warring tribes, and his long and often hazardous journeys around Marlborough bringing books and medicines, he still managed to annoy the bishop, most dramatically by taking off to Sydney to support a cousin in trouble with the law.

The cousin came back to Nelson and eventually became superintendent of the province, which just goes to show that ex-prisoners from Australia can prosper here, both then and now.

This unauthorised leave-taking was too much for Selwyn's stern standards and Charles was transferred soon after to Hicks Bay on the East Coast, the most remote and challenging of mission stations, where both his predecessors had succumbed to sickness and mental breakdown.

Charles was probably not the easiest of characters. He had an acid tongue. One of the good settler ladies of Wakefield remarked on the church that he'd helped to build with his wife Marianne's help in the design. "I'm sure it will do us proud', she said. "That depends, Madam, on how well you fill it", Charles replied.

And he certainly didn't endear himself to Nelson's new settlers when he took the side of Māori following the Wairau Massacre, so-called at the time. The leader of the German settlers he branded as an old scoundrel, and that led to formal complaints to the bishop.

But for all the difficulties, both imposed and self-inflicted, Charles worked tirelessly to build a community where settler and Māori could coexist respectfully and justly. He understood the conventions that governed the world of Te Ao Māori, the constraints of tapu and tikanga, because he lived within constraints himself - the severe Victorian conventions of class and social respectability that left him and Marianne on the edges of polite society, even more than other missionaries who struggled as the poor cousins of the rising middle class. He was a man under orders as rigid as the ones that governed Māoridom. His bishop could be as autocratic as any tribal chief.

Charles Reay knew that the future of this still fledgeling bicultural society depended on both parties making room for each other, treating each other with dignity. He knew how fragile this contract was, with the Wairau killings erupting only a year after he arrived in Nelson, the settlers barricaded themselves against the imaginary threat of invasion, just as the Auckland settlers were frightened into a similar mindset twenty years later. But despite that hysteria, he continued to travel around the region, visiting Māori communities, holding services, settling disputes when invited, dispelling conspiracies, and there were plenty of them swirling about.

"The great evil to which we on this island are subject," he wrote, "is perpetual anxiety and uncertainty arising from reports and rumours. For example, (it's been said) that all native chiefs are to be sent to the island where Napoleon Bonaparte died and short work will be made of the residue left behind. I have had to go to this pa for several days to show them the utter absurdity of this idea."

Then, as now, Charles lived as a Pakeha in the middle of tension and distrust about the founding partners. The fact that he was part of a small and nervous minority didn't seem to make it easier than it is today where Pakeha live as the comfortable majority, but it certainly made it clearer.

But who is it that has tried to honour Charles's story? Not his Pakeha community for he is among the most neglected of English missionaries, perhaps because his track record was less than straightforward. But the Māori side of the Reay family has embraced and celebrated his life and claimed him as their own.

All of which says to me that there is much excavating to be done in the spaces that lie between our often-separated histories as Pakeha and Māori, without always forcing a choice as to which side of the debate you must choose to stand on. The space between is at least as interesting as either side.

I doubt that Charles would have wanted to polarise the argument in that way. He lived his short life in New Zealand refusing to do so.

Chapter three

As we try to work out what it means to be Pakeha in Aotearoa, who better to look to than the men and women who first wore the label. For those earliest settlers, being Pakeha was a perfectly acceptable description. The term New Zealander was reserved for Māori only. It took a generation or two before everyone who lived here could claim it. Charles Reay the missionary understood very clearly what it meant to be Pakeha. We ought to be able to work him out and discover any lessons he might have for us. It was only 180 years ago, after all, and he left us his diaries, a gravestone, a church or two and a whole canoe-load of descendants.

That ought to be enough, but the more you learn about him, the more mysterious his story becomes. Which is strangely reassuring. He refuses to fit the stereotype of a pious man of God; the kind of missionary preacher that historians love to mock. His life is as complicated and conflicted as the rest of us.

There is no photograph or portrait of Charles, no image to ponder as we wonder what he was really like. But there is a photograph of his son Robert as an adult, full-bearded and solemn as was the Victorian fashion. I like to think that Charles would not have looked so solemn, given his sharp wit and propensity to annoy his bishop. In several of his diary entries, we meet a cheerful, outgoing and optimistic man.

There is nothing dour in his account of meeting with an old Māori catechist called Caleb and his family, where he spends several hours chatting, "reading to them, singing and eating potatoes." And his diaries also reveal someone open to surprise and delight, from encounters with the beauty of bush and sea to the endless variety of the characters he met on marae and the villages he visited.

Central to the mystery that surrounds this man is why he came here in the first place. He had a perfectly good church career ahead of him as the vicar of Swanbourne and chaplain to an Irish earl, Baron of Ghuznee, Afghanistan and Cappoquin no less. There was, of course, the small matter of a debt that Charles and Marianne fell into, and that Marianne stayed behind to try and pay off while Charles headed off to New Zealand.

But that hardly answers the question of why he would sail to the other side of the world with little hope of ever being able to return.

Whole books have been written about what really motivated the missionaries to come so far and give up so much, with little hope of ever going home. It wasn't any sort of upwardly mobile career in Victorian times, romanticised though it did become. A missionary lucky enough to have a passage back to England found a ready audience in crowded lecture halls as he told often lurid tales of converting cannibals and savage warriors in exotic lands afar.

Charles never had the chance to do that. And I doubt that his stories would have been lurid. Though he was fond of telling his friends back home how rugged life was among the New Zealanders. He writes in ornate prose about his early journeys, affecting surprise at the hardships they inflicted.

"I was necessitated to climb up some precipitous hills to the great risk of life and limb, and the serious detriment of my attire." That surprise soon wears off as he settles into the drudgery of slogging through wet bush and uncharted coastline.

"You know not of the wearisome walking over heavy and sometimes trackless sandhills and sandy beaches. You know not the cliffs and hills and the burdens which often have to be carried in the shape of books, medicines and tents."

It was a tough life and it took its toll on body and spirit. Charles's two predecessors on the East Coast both had to be withdrawn on medical grounds, one of them a severe mental breakdown. And the illness that killed Charles after less than a year there was probably due to cold and exhaustion.

So why did he do the job? Explaining that is a growth industry among historians, often cynical in their stereotypes of pious Victorians inflicting their beliefs on the supposedly uncivilised.

We can only go on what he wrote, what he achieved in his short six years in New Zealand and how he is remembered. By those fruits, we know him and they were considerable: founding schools, settling bitter disputes, on several occasions by placing himself physically between warring parties, championing the cause of Māori among often-hostile settlers, supporting colleagues during times of illness and anxiety, and heading off to Sydney to secure the release of a jailed relative.

He baptised and married and buried and taught hundreds of Māori, and a few settlers too, though his Māori congregations reminded him often he was there for them, and they couldn't see the point of him having anything to do with Pakeha.

As a good Victorian parson and a man of his time, he, of course, believed he was bringing with him a superior faith and civilisation, but there is little evidence he saw his Māori audiences as in any way inferior or less intelligent.

His diaries show no hint of condescension or disdain. Is the mix of altruism and self-interest that drove him as an early Pakeha any less admirable than what drives us today?

When we examine the reasons for our coming to live here, or the reasons for our own forebears arriving, a generation or three ago, have we more to be proud of than the missionaries of Reay's time? There is many a later story of settler greed and ambition that make the missionaries look rosy by comparison.

People in colonial glasshouses should not throw stones. We are all compromised and judged by this colonial history that brought us here and still waits to be honestly told and taught in our schools. And as we get into that difficult work of decoding and retelling, we need to draw heavily on the early missionary chapters of the story because they shaped our understanding of what it means to be Pakeha, far more sharply and vividly than the later chapters, where we ended up pretending we were all New Zealanders together and the differences didn't matter.

Why Charles Reay came here, and why he stayed on has to be answered as honestly as why we came here as later Pakeha and why we stay?

Answering those questions soon dispels the simple stereotypes of goodies and baddies that dominate the way we tell our story as New Zealanders, both Māori and Pakeha, I dare to say. Because in the end, it is a shared story, with both cultures claiming the right to tell not only their own side but also how the stories interact in the middle ground between us.

It was Archbishop Whakahuihui Vercoe of blessed memory, who said of the divided and divisive history of Māori and Pakeha, "Remember that you are stuck with us and we are stuck with you."

Charles Reay would understand that. And so do the whanau who remember him so fondly. I think Charles would be pleased about that.

Chapter four

When missionary Charles Reay arrived in Paihia in 1842, he, not surprisingly, attended a church service. "The tout ensemble of the Māori congregation is most peculiar," he wrote in his diary, "because of the strange mixture of their attire; but their countenance I like."

A little later he preached to another Māori congregation in te Reo newly mastered during his long sea voyage and was startled by their questions, as they pointed out to him the sins of his own people. "Why was it," they demanded, "that Pakeha swore so profusely, especially the sailors, and why didn't they go to church every day if they claimed to be Christian?" On a later occasion, he was interrogated by another group of Māori converts on why women were not allowed to be ministers when the New Testament records the ministry of women like Phoebe.

This very frank and robust dialogue with Māori grew and deepened during Charles's short career in New Zealand, as did his appreciation of the New Zealanders and his concern for what he could see lay ahead for them under colonial rule.

All of which is extraordinary given the crude way he'd been prepared for meeting Māori. There was precious little at the time by way of reliable written material on Te Ao Māori.

The only contemporary account was written by a disgraced missionary called William Yate which portrayed Māori as cruel, lazy and licentious with a nice mix of kindness, courage and sincerity, but decidedly savage and addicted to cannibalism.

Charles would have read Yates's book, and perhaps a briefing or two from the Church Missionary Society which relied on letters from staff like James Kemp in Kerikeri who warned Samuel Marsden, "The object of Māori in letting us live among them is to get all they can from us."

With this sort of less-than-helpful preparation, it's amazing that Charles began his career here with anything other than prejudice and suspicion of the people he'd come to serve. Yet he very quickly formed his own opinion and developed respectful friendships with Māori, to the point that several of them entrusted their children to his care.

The Wairau confrontation between NZ Company settlers and Nga Toa warriors happened in Charles's first year in Nelson. 22 settlers and four Māori were killed in what used to be called a massacre and is now coyly labelled an affray.

The Nelson settlers fortified themselves in the town, deeply shocked by this first armed clash since the Treaty of Waitangi was signed. And their anger only deepened when their new minister who was travelling north at the time, returned to take the side of Māori, and find out what the clash was all about.

"Spies hiding in the fern challenged me as I went to the pa to inquire what was happening," he wrote, trying his best to act as a peacemaker. But the Nelson settlers branded him as a traitor for daring to take sides against them.

Charles did the same thing two years later when Ngapuhi warriors chopped down the flag pole and took the town of Kororareka or Russell. "This attack,' he wrote, "resulted not from any ill will to the settlers... but entirely from a desire to remove the authority of the British Government... because (Māori) have ascertained that the surrender of their sovereign rights... implies much more than the reception of trifling presents."

All of which suggests that Charles was unimpressed with the Treaty signed the year before his arrival in Waitangi. His critique is carefully considered, knowing how unpopular it would have made him.

"Whether colonisation in New Zealand in the first instance was desirable may be a question," he wrote. "But now that it's proceeding, the question is how it may proceed with the greatest advantage and the least injustice to Māori."

The evidence of that injustice kept piling up for Charles in Nelson and later on the East Coast, deeply involved as he was in peacemaking over land issues. "In all the land disputes I've been involved in, never the slightest allusion to the Treaty of Waitangi has ever been mentioned. Most natives are ignorant of its existence, let alone its Māori version."

And as for the Crown's right of pre-emption under the Treaty, that said Charles is nothing less than a "considerable injustice."

"There's not a dozen natives in New Zealand who know anything about a NZ flag. It's a treaty of only one party... how could Māori have ceded their sovereignty yet retained full, exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands? The two are inseparable, therefore they never understood the meaning of the Treaty."

Opinions like this were incendiary stuff in 1840's settler society. From ignoring it completely, Pakeha hostility to the Treaty slowly built as it stood in the way of easy land grabbing, but to criticise it as disadvantaging Māori was to make yourself very unpopular, very quickly.

As we recall the chequered history of the Treaty by Pakeha lawmakers, to the point where it was declared null and void by Justice Prendergast in 1877 and had to wait for another century before our parliament reinstated it; pause to remember Charles Reay's warnings, unheeded at the time.

When Pakeha today are accused of still neglecting the Treaty, it helps to recall there were at least some of our forebears who made their voices heard about its dishonouring, right from the start. And many of them were missionaries.

There's something else equally admirable about this early Pakeha role model. And that is the courage of the man, putting himself in the middle of Māori disputes, acting as a broker, sometimes managing to be a peacemaker.

In 1847, soon after his arrival on the East Coast, Charles ran into a war party 200-strong, armed with pikes, muskets, swords and spears, set to wreak vengeance over a quarrel about pigeon poaching. "I prevailed on them to return," Charles writes in his diary, "but they replied, who was I, a Pakeha, to tell them what to do?"

"Surely we are all brethren together?" Charles pleaded. "So was Cain and Abel," they replied, displaying a biblical knowledge that he couldn't argue with. But he persisted in standing between the opponents, offering medicines and food, and stayed with the korero until peace eventually was reached.

There are many stories like that, with Charles and sometimes Marianne as well, staying on marae for days until a resolution is reached. "Who are you, a Pakeha, to tell us anything?" was a frequent warning, but was not always the last word in the story.

The warning didn't seem to stop Charles from trying to be heard. Modern-day Pakeha are much more inclined to avoid joining debates with Māori and distance themselves when they are not welcome. We shut up for fear of offending, which does nothing to help the partnership.

Chapter five

The novelty of being Pakeha in NZ has worn off since Charles Reay's time. We've become the majority rather than the tiny minority as he was. When he landed in Kawakawa in April 1847 to begin the final and fatal stage in his journey as a missionary, there was a large group on the beach to welcome him. "Visitors came from some distance," he wrote, "to see their new Pakeha." No danger back then of forgetting your place in this still-to-be-forged bicultural partnership, fragile as it was.

No danger of forgetting about it, and taking it for granted as we do, even not bothering to use the name given by Māori to describe who we are and how we belong.

The whole notion of being dependent on Māori for a place to stand here in Aotearoa is easy to ignore when you have no Māori neighbours or workmates or friends or teammates. You'd be hard-pressed to ignore Māori if you played or watched rugby or netball instead of cricket or motor racing.

For Charles, it was very clear where he stood and who he was indebted to for both his physical protection and groceries.

I first met Charles Reay when I visited Rangitukia on the East Coast where he was finally stationed and died, after an arduous trip through the bush down to Gisborne.

Though he'd been there for less than a year, it was long enough to win the affection and respect of the locals. Afraid that someone from his family in Auckland might come and claim his body the locals decided to keep him with them and bury him in a secret grave, outside the churchyard. The burial site is marked by a holly tree, a very English tree that to my knowledge isn't seen anywhere else on the coast.

This much-loved missionary was deeply mourned by Māori: much less so by the Pakeha world who had long considered him a misfit out on the edge of respectability; and his wife even further out. The diaries of Bishop Selwyn and Archdeacon Williams record his passing with little regret or gratitude for his ministry.

And historians ever since have largely ignored his story. But Māori have more than made up for that carelessness, and he continues to be honoured by his large whanau that son Robert founded.

Mrs Reay's life as a widow is another story again, taking Robert off to England, living in poverty, begging from relatives - one of whom, a sister-in-law, wrote scathing letters about her, claiming that Robert was in fact an orphan, secretly adopted.

Marianne's life was as full of mystery as her husband's, but she ended his story in grand style with an impressive gravestone. The memorial had its own eventful journey from Auckland to Nelson to Wairoa and finally Rangitukia, broken but glued together outside the church, but never over the secret grave.

The inscription is worth reading in full, for it offers an early exemplar, told simply and elegantly, of what it is to be Pakeha in Aotearoa, how far we've come and how much further we have to go.
Here Lies
All that could die of
The Rev Charles Lucas Reay
Formerly of Queen's College, Oxford, B.A.
And vicar of Swanbourne Buckinghamshire
In England.
He was an Israelite in deed in whom
There was no guile.
Learned and brave yet mild as a child.
A fond husband and tender parent,
A faithful friend to the commands of
His great Master,
To go forth and preach the gospel among all nations.
He left a Christian home and Christian friends
And here born down by the weight of his labour
In the Lord's Vineyard,
He sank to rest March 31st, 1848, aged 38.
In the hope and faith of a joyful resurrection
A volume would not tell of his many virtues,
But this stone
Is erected to his memory
By his widow.
This is Marianne's story of Charles, set out more clearly than his missionary colleagues at the time and the historians who came later could ever manage to do.

And for Pakeha who come much later and still struggle to work out how to make this partnership with Māori work in just and mutually respectful ways, it could be our story too.

I love the story of Charles precisely because it is so mixed and mysterious. Some bits are admirable, some frankly dodgy. He was less than forthcoming to his bishop but entirely without guile, according to Marianne.

You have to judge him inside the context of his time, which was as full of racism and ignorance as ours, but he rose above all that and as a minority partner, worked out a coexistence with Māori, that we have yet to better as the majority partner today.

You see, it makes all the difference in the world whether you see yourself living inside a partnership, or not. Or even worse, living alongside a partnership: observing but not engaging. Especially when you're looking at issues like who manages and guards the rivers, lakes and coastlines. Who chooses place names? And how decisions about health care are made. What language we use. Even how the seasons are celebrated.

And Charles knew, he had to live inside that partnership if he was to live long at all in this country.

I'd love to know what he thought about the state of the bicultural society we're still trying to build 175 years later. I think he'd be baffled by our reluctance to acknowledge just how central that partnership is to the well-being of all New Zealanders, how reluctant we are to own the mistakes we've made, even though how readily we celebrate its successes.

I think Charles would have enjoyed Denis Glover's poem written in 1940 for the Centennial of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. It begins:
In the year of centennial splendours
There were fireworks and decorated cars
And pungas hanging from the verandahs
But no one remembered our failures.
80 years on we can't help but remember them, and as long as we own and honour the partnership with Māori, the kind of country Charles came to build might be starting to happen.

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A long-dead Anglican missionary shows us how to be Pakeha today, says John Bluck

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In a talk specially recorded for RNZ, John Bluck puts forward the case that the life of a forgotten Victorian missionary Charles Reay (1810-1848) is a good role model for Pakeha in Aotearoa / New Zealand. Chapter One This is a strange time to be a Pakeha New Zealander, even for those who resist that label.