Tauranga, 10 April-23 May 1840

Between 10 April and 23 May 1840 21 signatures were collected in Tauranga. However, the Tauranga treaty sheet was not signed by Hori Kingi Tupaea, a prominent chief of Ngāi Te Rangi who lived at Ōtūmoetai pā (fortified village). He had heard that Te Heuheu had not signed and therefore would not either. [1] Tupaea ‘had refused in very positive terms to make peace with Rotorua’, wrote Brown. [2] Other chiefs who had close links to Tupaea also refused to sign. [3]

Officials and witnesses at the signing of the Tauranga sheet of the Treaty of Waitangi included James Stack, Henry Taylor, Alfred Brown (supervisor of the Church Missionary Society at Tauranga) and Hoani Āneta. The latter, Brown’s mission assistant, both witnessed the signing of the Tauranga sheet and signed it.

[1] Claudia Orange, The Treaty of Waitangi, Allen & Unwin, Port Nicholson Press with assistance from the Historical Publications Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington, 1987, p. 71; Lindsay T. Buick, The Treaty of Waitangi or how New Zealand became a British colony, S.W. Mackay, Wellington, 1914, p. 180

[2] R.S. Bennett, Treaty to treaty: a history of early New Zealand from the Treaty of Tordesillas 1494 to the Treaty of Waitangi 1840, vol. 3, R.S. Bennett, Auckland, 2012, p. 288

[3] Orange, Treaty of Waitangi, p. 71