NZHistory, New Zealand history online - missionaries

William Williams

William Williams was an early missionary and linguist who later criticised the government’s policy of land confiscation during the New Zealand Wars.

William was brought up in Nottingham in a family of Dissenters (nonconformist Protestants) but from an early age came under the influence of his brother-in-law, Edward Garrard Marsh, an evangelical Anglican clergyman. Marsh interested Henry, one of William’s older brothers, in the work of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), which in turn affected William.

After a surgical apprenticeship, William underwent training at the CMS’s college in 1825. From the outset there was a tacit agreement with the CMS that he would follow Henry to New Zealand. William and his new wife joined Henry at the CMS mission station at Paihia, Bay of Islands, in 1826.

At Paihia William Williams was in charge of the English boys’ school and for a time the mission doctor. His fluency in spoken Māori was soon noted by Henry Williams. In 1826 he began the first serious, sustained effort to produce the Scriptures in Māori. By the end of 1837 he had completed the whole of the New Testament and most of the Book of Common Prayer.

In the 1830s William made a number of missionary journeys overland to Waikato and by schooner to the East Coast. Apart from a visit to England in 1851–52, William remained based at the mission station at Tūranga (the area of present-day Gisborne) from 1840 to 1865. For many years the only ordained CMS missionary in the church’s eastern district, he walked north to East Cape, south to Hawke’s Bay and inland to Waikaremoana as part of a regular visiting schedule. In 1859 he was installed as bishop of the predominantly Māori diocese of Waiapu.

William Williams spent his later life training Māori pastors and securing the future of the Māori schools he had founded. He was a critic of the government’s Waitara purchase, and reflecting on the fragile state of Pākehā New Zealand in 1868, he wrote: ‘As a community and as a government we have been puffed up…. We are now brought very low.’

By Frances Porter; adapted by Matthew Tonks

Read full biography on William Williams (DNZB)

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Thomas Kendall

Thomas Kendall, one of New Zealand’s first Christian missionaries, was based at the Church Missionary Society (CMS) station in the Bay of Islands from 1814 until 1821. He pioneered the transcription of the Māori language, and also investigated how Māori understood the universe. In doing so, however, he attracted hostility from others in the Australasian mission world.

On a trip to London in 1805, the 26-year-old Lincolnshire grocer and draper from Lincolnshire had a profound religious experience. Soon afterwards he sold his business, moved his family south, and became an ardent member of the congregation of Bentinck Chapel, in Marylebone. In 1808 Kendall asked the CMS to send him to New Zealand, but it was not until 1813 that he was chosen to be the schoolmaster at the planned mission settlement and finally set sail.

The mission was founded at Rangihoua, in the northern Bay of Islands, in December 1814, under the patronage of the chiefs Hongi Hika and Ruatara. It comprised three missionary familiies. The following year Kendall had the first book in Māori published in Sydney, and in 1816 he opened his missionary school. Education was an important way of introducing Māori children to Biblical scripture and European ways.

In a series of letters written between 1822 and 1824, mostly to the CMS, Kendall attempted to describe Māori cosmological thought. One of Kendall’s conduits into understanding the Māori way of life was Tungaroa, the daughter of the tohunga of Rangihoua, with whom he had an affair. On learning of this, Samuel Marsden, his Sydney-based CMS superior, dismissed Kendall from his post. Although Kendall went on to hold another clerical post in Chile, he claimed in 1822 that the ‘apparent sublimity’ of Māori ideas had ‘almost completely turned [him] from a Christian to a Heathen’. He resolved this contradiction in his own mind by maintaining that Māori beliefs must somehow have been derived from scriptural knowledge.

By Judith Binney; adapted by Matthew Tonks

Read full biography of Thomas Kendall (DNZB)

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Rangihoua Pā and Oihi Mission Station

Rangihoua Pā and Oihi Mission Station (1814)

Christianity’s detention camp

Picturesque on a sunny day, bleak at any other time, south-facing Oihi provides an object lesson in the importance of geography and topography. Getting there is a breeze by water, but by land, even with modern roads, it is wearying - boats have always worked better than cars in the Bay of Islands. Trek down the farm road, though, and you immediately understand. In 1814 several hundred Ngāi Tawake crowded the now deserted stronghold of Rangihoua, a coastal ridge that looked commandingly south out over the Bay, then bustling with whaling ships and Māori traders. To the north, Rangihoua also looked down on Christianity’s beleaguered first beachhead in New Zealand.

Chief Ruatara was an adventurous young cross-cultural traveller. He had visited New South Wales and, willing to chance his arm, invited ‘the flogging Parson’, Samuel Marsden, to establish a mission in New Zealand. The porcine parson waddled ashore from the ship Active in December 1814 to celebrate New Zealand’s first Christian service. It has been honoured by stamps and by penny-dreadful historiography ever since, but fewer have dwelled on the fact that Marsden’s missionary mechanics had to wait almost two decades to make a single convert. Māori wanted European trade goods, not their superstitions.

If you look hard enough beyond the hefty Celtic ‘Marsden Cross’ in the grass you will see the archaeological platforms of the cottages erected on Oihi’s slopes by the Church Missionary Society’s disputatious guinea pigs. Here Thomas Kendall, William Hall and John King bickered and schemed against each other and sold guns while their Maori overlords looked down on them, literally and metaphorically. ‘Touched by God but otherwise not all that strange’, conservator Fergus Clunie notes, ‘the missionaries wanted to forsake this barren, claustrophobic cove.’ You cannot blame them, especially if you visit on a wet, windy day. Marsden, as usual, thought he knew better and kept them cooped up here until 1832. During that entire time the CMS toilers made no converts, though the same could not be said of Māori.

In 2012/13 the University of Otago and the Department of Conservation conducted the first archaeological survey of the Oihi site in the lead-up to the bicentennial celebrations.

Further information

This site is item number 9 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

On the ground

At the time of writing (2013) a visitor centre is planned to be ready in time for the site’s bicentennial celebrations in 2014.

Websites

Book

Judith Binney, The legacy of guilt, Bridget Williams Books, Wellington, 2005

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Contemporary images: Gavin McLean, 1998

Historic images:

Alexander Turnbull Library
References: Curios-021-008, PA1-o-141-87 (photographed by Russell James Duncan) and WA-10311-G (photographed by Whites Aviation)
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of their images.

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Date established:

1814

Mary Aubert

Suzanne Aubert – later Mary Joseph Aubert – was a Catholic nun, nurse, teacher and pioneering social worker, who sometimes had to battle church and government authorities in order to help those in need. Her career spanned six decades.

Read biography of Mary Aubert

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: 1/2-197333-F
Photographer: Joseph Zachariah
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa must be obtained before any reuse of these images.

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Mary Aubert

In 1860, after working as a nurse in her homeland, France, Suzanne Aubert voyaged to New Zealand to work as a Catholic missionary in Auckland. She joined the Marist Māori mission in Hawke's Bay in 1871, then the mission at Hiruhārama (Jerusalem) on the Whanganui River in 1883.

To help fund Jerusalem she marketed herbal remedies, and used her family inheritance to buy a farm for growing saleable produce.

In May 1892 she established an order, the Daughters of Our Lady of Compassion, and became Mother Aubert, first superior. She began taking in unwanted Pākehā children at Jerusalem, and grew interested in social work among the urban poor.

In 1899 Aubert and three sisters from her order moved to Wellington. There they established St Joseph's Home for Incurables. Most inmates were elderly men without family, who had lived hard and now suffered from chronic and degenerative conditions.

In April 1907 Aubert opened Our Lady's Home of Compassion, for children who were handicapped or born out of wedlock. She also opened St Anthony's Soup Kitchen, and a day nursery to help women who needed to support themselves. In 1910 Aubert extended her work to Auckland.

In 1913 she travelled to Rome and gained papal recognition of her order as well as jurisdiction over it as superior general. This allowed her to decide her order’s own priorities.

She forged important links to other welfare agencies, and by the time she died she was a nationally admired figure.

By Margaret Tennant; adapted by Johanna Knox

Read full biography of Mary Aubert (DNZB)

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Missionaries and muskets at Kerikeri - roadside stories

In the 1820s the Kerikeri mission station was under the protection of Hongi Hika and the Ngāpuhi tribe. Hongi had encouraged the establishment of the mission – largely because he wanted access to muskets, which gave Ngāpuhi a great military advantage over other tribes. Today the 1822 mission house is New Zealand’s oldest building.

Transcript

Archival audio: After an introduction, Ernest Kemp talks about Kemp House.

English missionary (actor): This day Shungi and his people with some other tribes arrived here from the fight with the dead bodies of Titi and Arpu. The widow of Titi and other women rushed down upon the beach in a frenzy of rage, and beat into pieces the carved work at the head of the canoes with a pole. Then they got into a canoe and pulled out several prisoners of war into the water and beat them to death.

Narrator: During the 1820s, members of the Church Missionary Society regularly witnessed gruesome scenes at Kerikeri as returning warriors from the Ngāpuhi tribe handed over captives to the widows of their comrades slain in battle. The missionaries could only look on as these women took revenge on the prisoners, who then became a part of the cannibal feasts that followed.

The missionaries did not understand that the Ngāpuhi custom of eating slain enemies restored the mana, or prestige, of the warriors killed in battle. Defenceless in an unfamiliar landscape, the missionaries were entirely dependent on the protection of Hongi Hika and his Ngāpuhi tribe.

The Church Missonary Society’s interest in the area followed a visit to Sydney in 1814 by Hongi Hika, who wanted to encourage a mission in his tribal area. Ngāpuhi cared little for Christianity, but Hongi Hika understood that a mission would attract traders and allow his tribe to acquire muskets, which were the key to Ngāpuhi’s remarkable military successes in the 1820s.

In 1814, a mission, led by the Reverend Samuel Marsden, was established at Rangihoua Bay, near the mouth of the Kerikeri Inlet. Despite [the original Rangihoua mission] being a total failure, Marsden tried again in 1820. This time he located the mission station beside Kororipo Pā, a fortified village at the head of the Kerikeri Inlet. It was the centre of Ngāpuhi’s extensive empire and where Hongi Hika based his war canoes.

Muskets gave Ngāpuhi a great military advantage, and Hongi Hika successfully used them to invade the Bay of Plenty and Waikato. Hongi Hika was wounded in 1827 at the battle of Mangamuka.* He died from his wounds the following year.

While Ngāpuhi extended its tribal empire, the Church Missionary Society consolidated its foothold at Kerikeri. In 1822, an English-style mission house was built for John Butler, the first missionary. Butler did not have the opportunity to enjoy his new dwelling for long, as a dispute with Marsden led to his dismissal a year later.

A succession of missionaries then occupied the house until James Kemp took up residence in 1832. By then Hongi Hika had died, European diseases had decimated Ngāpuhi, and Kerikeri had lost its strategic importance. The mission house was lived in by Kemp and his descendants until 1974, when it was donated to the New Zealand Historic Places Trust.

Kemp House, as it is known today, is the country’s oldest building, and is little changed from its 1822 structure.

Nearby stands the stone store. It was built in 1832 by an ex-convict stonemason and intended as a storehouse. However, by the time it was completed, Kerikeri’s strategic importance had diminished, so it was unnecessary. It has since been used as a library, ammunition magazine, kauri gum trading post and general store. The New Zealand Historic Places Trust purchased it in 1974.

A nearby path leads to the remains of Kororipo Pā, where some of the old earthworks are still evident. On the [opposite] riverbank is a reconstruction of a Māori village.

*The audio suggests that Hongi Hika was wearing his chain mail suit at the battle of Mangamuka, but this is not correct. This is an error which came to light after the video was made. Other corrections and clarifications to the text have been made inside square brackets.

Manatū Taonga - Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 2011. Part of the Roadside Stories series

Archival audio sourced from Radio New Zealand Sound Archives, http://www.soundarchives.co.nz/. Sound files may not be reused without permission from Radio New Zealand Sound Archives (Reference number T906).

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Russell - roadside stories

Today a picturesque tourist town, Russell was once a lawless settlement. Then called Kororāreka, it was the site of the flagpole famously cut down four times by Ngāpuhi chief Hōne Heke, sparking the Northern War of the mid-1840s.

Transcript

Victorian voice: There are many spirit shops, and the whole population is addicted to drunkenness and all kinds of vice. As Kororāreka is the capital, a person would be inclined to form his opinion of the New Zealanders from what he here saw. This little village is the very stronghold of vice; although many tribes, in other parts, have embraced Christianity, here the greater part remains in Heathenism.

Narrator: In the 1830s, the town of Russell, which was known as Kororāreka until the 1840s, was a lawless town where drinking, brawling, and prostitution were rife. The town was called ‘the hellhole of the Pacific’. Whaling ships from around the world would stop at Kororāreka to resupply, and for their crews to have some rest and recreation.

By the 1830s, Kororāreka had become the biggest whaling port in the southern hemisphere. Up to 30 ships, many of them American or French, were anchored there with up to 1000 men ashore. Kororāreka was one of the first points of contact between Europeans and Māori – a meeting of cultures that shocked many observers.

Victorian voice: The town is a Gomorrah, the scourge of the Pacific, and should be struck down by the ravages of disease for its depravity.

Narrator: Whalers, seafarers and merchants mixed with adventurers, deserters and escaped convicts from Australia. Prostitution was one of the town’s main industries, and sexual favours were used by Māori in the purchase of many things, including muskets. Three-week marriages were commonly negotiated, and many local Māori women bore the tattoos of their temporary lovers.

Victorian voice: 30 to 35 whaling ships would come in for three weeks to the Bay and 400 to 500 sailors would require as many women. These young ladies go off to the ships, and three weeks on board are spent much to their satisfaction, as they get from the sailors a musket, blankets, and gowns.

Narrator: There were various Christian missionaries in the area. Most were Protestant, but in 1839 some French Catholics, led by Bishop Pompallier, established their headquarters in Kororāreka. They built a two-storied printery and produced thousands of copies of Catholic books, mostly in Māori. The Catholic missionaries left in the 1850s but Pompallier House remains today.

After the 1840 signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, the country’s capital shifted to Auckland. This, along with a number of new levies imposed by the colonial government, caused resentment amongst local Māori. Hōne Heke, the first chief to sign the Treaty, was dismayed to see Māori losing their land and natural resources.

In July 1844, he cut down the flagpole he had originally gifted to the British, which stood on a hill above the town. The flagpole was re-erected the following year, only to be cut down three more times. Governor Fitzroy responded by sending troops to Kororāreka and offering a reward for Heke’s capture.

In March 1845, Hōne Heke attacked the town with 600 men. The attackers withdrew after one day’s fighting, in which 20 of the 250 defenders were killed. A powder keg exploded as they left Kororāreka, destroying much of the old town. This proved to be the first confrontation in what became the Northern War, which ended with no clear winner after two years* of intermittent fighting.

Today, Russell is a tourist town. At the northern end of the beachfront is the Duke of Marlborough Hotel, New Zealand’s first licensed bar. Russell’s Christ Church, built in 1836, survived the sacking of Kororāreka in 1845, and still stands today. A variety of cruises and tours leave from Russell, which is the base for many of the big-game fishing charter boats.

* The Northern War actually lasted for 10 months, from March 1845 until January 1846.

Manatū Taonga - Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 2011. Part of the Roadside Stories series

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William Williams

The missionary and linguist, Bishop William Williams (1800–1878), photographed late in his life.

William Williams arrived in the Bay of Islands as a missionary in 1826 and moved to the east coast of the North Island in 1839. Twenty years later he was installed as bishop of the predominantly Māori diocese of Waiapu.

While he criticised the Waitara purchase which sparked the first Taranaki War, Williams conceded the wisdom of the government subjugating ‘rebel’ Māori. However by the time of the fighting with Te Kooti in his own diocese and Tītokowaru on the west coast his views had changed. ‘All this war down to the present time [1868] has sprung out of Waitara…. As a community and as a government we have been puffed up, first with an idea that we were in the right, & secondly that we were able to put down the natives by our own strength…. We are now brought very low.’ He had also come to believe that land confiscation was unjust.

See also: biography of William Williams (DNZB)

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: 1/2-061688-F
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of this image.

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The Elms mission station

The Elms mission house at Tauranga. The building was completed in 1847 on land bought for the Church Missionary Society by missionary Alfred Brown in 1839.

On the evening of 28 April 1864, the night before the assault on Gate Pā, nine officers whose units were to lead the attack gathered for dinner at The Elms. Only one of these men, Assistant Surgeon William Manley of the Royal Artillery, was to survive the chaotic events of the following day. Manley was awarded a Victoria Cross for tending to the wounded with little regard to his own well-being.

Credit:

Shirley Williams, 2005

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Missionary protection of Māori cartoon

This cartoon from the Taranaki Punch, 21 November 1860, shows a missionary protecting a Māori man from being shot by a soldier. The caption reads, 'Perchance it was his hand, That burned down thy cot, But, savage, here I stand, Thy gun shall harm him not.'

Some settlers became angry with what they saw as missionary support for Māori in the war. The prominent Anglican missionary at Ōtaki, Octavius Hadfield, had publicly criticised the Governor for abusing his power in waging war in Taranaki. He believed that Wiremu Kīngi was justified in resisting the Crown over the Waitara purchase. Hadfield made a direct and public appeal for justice to the Duke of Newcastle, colonial secretary, with three pamphlets published in London in 1860 and 1861. Some clergy were concerned at the 'intemperate unwise language' used by Hadfield. Many settlers regarded his actions as bordering on treason, especially when his influence was recognised in the petition of 30 March 1860 of Ōtaki Maori to Queen Victoria for the recall of the governor. Hadfield defended his stand at the bar of the House of Representatives on 14 August 1860.

George Selwyn, Bishop of New Zealand, was also openly critical of the decision to go to war. In 1855 Selwyn had been asked by Governor Thomas Gore Browne to help mediate in the Puketapu feud. While in the province he rebuked local settlers 'for their covetous greed for Māori land'. This sermon was furiously attacked in the local press. Selwyn responded that he spoke what he saw as the truth and was prepared to suffer for this. As conflict spread in the 1860s Selwyn was close to despair. War was a major setback to his hopes for 'a just and equal society'. He continued to defend the Treaty of Waitangi and condemned the policy of land confiscation in the wake of the wars as a 'fatal mistake'.

Credit:

Puke Ariki, New Plymouth
Accession Number: ARC2002-538
Artist: Garland William Woon
Publication: Taranaki Punch, 1860-61
Permission of Puke Ariki must be obtained before any reuse of this image.

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