Signing
| Signature | Sheet | Signed as | Probable name | Tribe | Hapū | Signing Occasion |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | Sheet 1 — The Waitangi Sheet | Reweti Atuahaere | Te Rēweti Atuahaere | Ngāpuhi | Ngāti Tautahi | Waitangi 6 February 1840 |
Kaikohe chief Te Rēweti Atuahaere was an uncle of Hōne Heke Pōkai. He was one of the chiefs who signed a letter to King William IV in 1831 asking for protection from the French, who had sent a naval vessel to New Zealand. He was probably at Waitangi in 1834 when chiefs selected the United Tribes’ flag. He signed the Declaration of Independence in 1835 and the Treaty of Waitangi on 6 February 1840.
By the 1830s Atuahaere had converted to Christianity. In a letter written by his son Mura to William Yate, he asked the missionary to come to Kaikohe to baptise him, describing himself as an ‘old man and the old chief of this tribe’. [1] Yate baptised Atuahaere on 8 June 1834.
Another of his sons, Houmatua, was killed at Ruapekapeka in the last battle of the Northern War in January 1846.
[1] Quoted in William Yate, An account of New Zealand and of the formation and progress of the Church Missionary Society's mission in the northern island, R.B. Seeley and W. Burnside, London, 1835, p. 255, http://www.enzb.auckland.ac.nz/document?wid=80&page=1&action=null
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