Rangihoua missionary settlement

A fanciful painting of the missionary settlement and Ngāpuhi village at Rangihoua in the Bay of Islands, home of the chief Ruatara.

Ruatara had described Rangihoua as paradise. Not all agreed. In the opinion of local historian Jack Lee, 'Had Marsden and his catechists searched the whole coastline, a more dismal location for their settlement could scarcely have been found.' Quoted in James Belich, Making peoples, 1996, p. 142.