Story by Brent Kerehona | Image Caption: Bust of Hongi Hika, possibly self-portrait, carved 1814 in Parramatta, NSW Australia. Brighton Hove Museum, United Kingdom, photo © Brent Kerehona.
Ki te whei ao, ki te ao maarama,
Ki te whei ao, ki te ao maarama,
Tihei Mauri Ora!
(From out of the darkness, into the light,
From out of the darkness, into the light,
Ah, the sneeze of life!)
Ka tangi te titi,
Ka tangi te kaka,
Ka tangi hoki ko au,
Haumi e, hui e, taiki e!
(The titi calls,
The kaka calls,
I too call,
Join all together, bind all together, let it be done!)
Whakataka te hau ki te uru,
Whakataka te hau ki te tonga,
Kia makinakina ki uta,
Kia mataratara ki tai,
E hi ake ana te atakura,
He tio, he huka, he hau hu,
Tihei mauriora!
(Cease the winds from the West,
Cease the winds from the South,
Let the breeze blow over the land,
Let the breeze blow over the ocean,
Let the red-tipped dawn come with a sharpened air, a touch of frost, the promise of a glorious new day,
Ah, the sneeze of life!)
Welcome to you all. When I came in, I gave a tauparapara which is an opening to a formal speech.
I referred to two types of birds, the tītī or sooty shearwater and the kaka or the parrot and the calls that they make. That was me telling you that I am about to present, I am about to call as well. I made a non-denominational prayer to clear and bless the space. I now acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we stand, those who came before, those who are present and those yet to come.
This presentation on Hongi Hika is highly researched and includes information that has only come to light in the last few months.
Hongi, was an enigma, a man of fine intellect, charismatic. He was a decisive yet sometimes brutal leader. But for his family and friends he was a loving and compassionate husband and father.
Photo: Margaret Cassidy
He was born somewhere between 1772 and 1780, to a chiefly father, Te Hotete, of the Te Uri O Hua hapū (subtribe) from the areas around Mataraua and Kaikohe and Taiāmai, and his mother, Tuhikura, was of the Ngati Kahu hapū from Whangaroa in the Far North District of New Zealand. Hongi was related, like many European nobility, to many of the chiefly families within the iwi (tribe) of Ngāpuhi.
As he was growing up, he was taught the art of mau rakau, which is similar in many respects to Asian martial arts, and military strategy. Life was sometimes quite brutal and some people experienced trauma which for Hongi was a catalyst for what he would do later in his life.
In 1807 there was a battle at Moremonui south of Maunganui Bluff between Hongi’s group, the Ngāpuhi iwi, and the Kaipara branches of the Ngāti Whātua, Te-Uri-o-Hau and Te Roroa iwi. Members of the Ngāpuhi were ambushed at sunrise as they sat down near the river mouth to eat. While only the Ngāpuhi had a small number of muskets, they were over-run in this ambush due to the time it took to reload the muskets. After their leader fell, the Ngāpuhi withdrew northwards.
This battle is known by two names, Te Haenga o te One (The Marking of the Sand), and Te Kai-a-te-Karoro (The Seagulls’ Feast).
A Ngāti Whatua warrior, Tieke, was directed to sprint up the beach and draw a line in the sand beyond which the Ngati Whatua weren’t to pursue the Ngāpuhi. With close personal relationships between the two groups, the Ngati Whatua didn’t want to kill all of their opponents. The Ngati Whatua also didn’t want to consume all their powers or mana, and so some bodies were left on the sand for the seagulls to consume.
This event would be the catalyst which set Hongi, a young rangatira (tribal chief) on a future collision course with Ngāti Whatua and other tribes, who had ‘wronged’ his hapū and/or iwi, and was the catalyst for Hongi’s role in the Musket Wars.
In this battle Hongi lost two brothers and his sister, Waitapu, who sacrificed herself (whariki) to save Hongi and ensure the survival of their family line. Losing his sister would affect him greatly – he would later name one of his muskets ‘Teke Tanumia’ after his sister’s death. The women in Hongi’s family greatly influenced him with his mother, Tuhikura, reinforcing his responsibility to seek utu (revenge) for losses of his family and his principal wife, Turikatuku, acting as a tohunga-matakite (seer) and advising on military strategy during his many battles throughout the 1820s – even after she lost her sight.
In August 1814 Hongi became a traveller, arriving in Sydney with his son Riparo, as well as some peers and missionary Thomas Kendall, and staying for most of the time with the Reverend Samuel Marsden on his farm in Parramatta. Here Hongi observed Western methods of agriculture, infrastructure, and took an interest in legal proceedings, and was exposed to many European cultural beliefs and practices.
In October 1814, Hongi carved a wooden bust of himself, from a fence post at Marsden’s Parramatta farm. Marsden said to him:
‘I wanted his [Hongi’s] Head to send to England, and he must either give me his Head, or make one like it of wood’ (Salmond 1997: 443).
The head was the most sacred part of his body so it could have been construed as an insult, but it wasn’t.
Marsden wanted to send examples of traditional Maori art and artefacts to England as gifts to the Church Missionary Society (CMS) to assist with his goal of establishing a New Zealand mission station and raising money. In October 1814, Marsden shipped a carved wooden bust to the CMS Museum in London, which is now in the Brighton Museum in England.
While there are three busts known of Hongi Hika, the question is, which is the self-represented bust created by Hongi in Parramatta in 1814?
Prior to his departure from Sydney, Hongi was appointed a Magistrate by Governor Lachlan Macquarie; as he didn’t need the title as he was rangatira (tribal chief), maybe it was to honour him, to create and maintain a positive relationship between Māori and the New South Wales Government.
Hongi returned to New Zealand in December 1814. After Marsden established the first CMS mission station at Rangihoua, Hongi became the patron of the CMS and its missionaries and protected them; he could see the benefits of the missionaries living with him and he helped CMS missionary Thomas Kendall compile a Maori-English dictionary titled A Korao no New Zealand, which was published at Circular Quay in Sydney in 1815. Although 200 copies were printed, there is only one surviving copy held at the Auckland Museum. It has been added to the World Heritage Register.
Within a tribe, there were paramount (ariki), war and diplomat chiefs. Initially, the role of ariki was not going to be bestowed upon Hongi as he had three elder brothers. However, two brothers had been killed in the battle at Moremonui in 1807 and the remaining brother died in late 1815.
After travelling for six months, Hongi, his nephew Waikato and Thomas Kendall arrived in London to a lukewarm reception in August 1820. As a lay missionary, Kendall was seeking to be ordained without the blessing of Marsden. However, the CMS realized the importance of Hongi’s visit and the positive relationship they wanted to maintain with the Māori chief.
The three men went to Queens’ College, Cambridge, where they assisted talented linguist Professor Samuel Lee in compiling a Māori-English dictionary titled A Grammar and Vocabulary of the Language of New Zealand (1820). Kendall felt compelled to contribute toward this work and probably believed that his own work would be relegated to obscurity if Lee’s work was completed without his contribution. The grammar was published in November 1820 and signed copies are held in the State Library of NSW and the National Library of Australia.
A painting by James Barry when they were in England shows Hongi wearing a korowai or kakahu– a woven flax coat. This is a very luxurious and well-made piece of clothing with five or six whenu or vertical strands of flax per centimeter. The whatu or weaving is only about 1.4 cm wide all the way down and it has thousands of hukahuka (tassels) attached to it. Unusually, it is stained with a certain red kokowai pigment, the colour associated with rangatira or chiefliness.
On 21 October 1820, Hongi and Waikato were introduced in the House of Lords, Westminster, where the Lords were excited to be in their presence. The two rangatira looked splendid, dressed in elegant, black, court clothing. It was described at the time,
‘Their faces were much disfigured by tattooing and in consequence of the scars having been rubbed with some vegetable acid there was a polished green jade upon the natural colour ground of the skin which had a most novel and extraordinary appearance….and the Lord Chancellor had great difficulty in getting their Lordships back to their seats.’
(Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser 1820: 3).
We can imagine them crowding around and then being asked to sit down and observe. Thomas Creevy MP, who was present, wrote:
‘I found his royal face to be one of the fairest specimens of carving I have ever beheld. The Chamberlain’s face was fair; the sunflowers on it were highly respectable but the King’s…was a blaze of stars and planets.’
(Maxwell 1903: 330).
On 13 November 1820, Hongi and Waikato were granted an audience with King George IV, who welcomed him with “How do you do Mr King Hongi!” as they stood before him. Hongi personally gave the King the gift of the korowai.
In return, Hongi was given a double-barreled flintlock musket, a chainmail suit of armor, a gilt officers’ helmet and a sword (amongst other gifts) as well as tours of the Royal Armory at the Tower of London and the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. We have found the invoice for the gifts of helmets and swords given to Hongi, they are uncatalogued documents in the Georgian collection.
Prior to Hongi, Waikato and the now-Reverend Kendall’s departure for New Zealand, Hongi had come to an agreement with young French law student, Charles Philippe de Thierry, who was studying at Queens’ College, Cambridge. De Thierry’s aim was to secure a sizeable tract of land in New Zealand, declare that land as French sovereign territory and acquire French title.
Hongi’s trade of 40,000 acres of land in New Zealand for 400 muskets, powder and shot had different results; Hongi uplifted his firearms in Sydney on his return voyage to New Zealand, whilst de Thierry was not able to pay the debt of £843 for the firearms and was sent to a debtors’ prison. When de Thierry finally arrived in New Zealand in the 1830s, he discovered that Hongi was dead and that the land he had been promised hadn’t been Hongi’s to gift.
Whilst in Parramatta in mid-1821, Hongi crossed paths with two chiefs from other tribes, Te Hinaki, from Ngati Paoa (Auckland), and Te Horeta, from Ngati Maru (Thames, in the Coromandel area). Hongi had picked up his weapons and was polishing the metal components of his muskets so that they were shiny in the sunlight. Te Hinaki asked Hongi who the muskets were for. Without hesitation, Hongi replied “Mou aku pū” meaning ‘that gun is for you’. While Te Hinaki and Te Horeta had been planning to travel onto England, they travelled straight back to New Zealand on a different ship than Hongi.
On his return to New Zealand, Hongi and the Ngāpuhi unleashed a vicious assault on a number of tribes across the North Island. He fought Te Hinaki’s tribe, the Ngati Paoa at Mauinaina and Mokoia, and then went on to Thames where Te Horeta’s Ngati Maru tribe was taken by deceit.
The face of warfare in New Zealand changed forever. Prior fighting had predominantly been hand to hand resulting in relatively small numbers of deaths. The Maori weren’t full-time warriors, spending most of the year cultivating their crops. At harvest end, warriors would attack other tribes, leaving the family vulnerable at home. Knowing that tribal lands back home remained safe with a cache of weapons to protect the family, Hongi and his warriors could continue for months. However, I won’t talk much about the Musket Wars as this is an issue in New Zealand history that still causes a lot of hurt and pain.
While Hongi Hika engenders pride with the Ngāpuhi, the mere mention of his name can provoke deep-seated anger and resentment if mentioned in a number of other tribal communities, reflecting intergenerational trauma.
For four or five years, Hongi waged war every couple of months against different tribes about different things. The Ngāpuhi never went and took other people’s land but they would seek utu or revenge for past losses – maybe an insult, or that our people were killed. They would wage war and then return home.
In 1825 Hongi led a war party to Kaiwaka to seek revenge for the deaths of his brothers and sister back in 1807 at the hands of the Ngāti Whatua at Moremonui. We Ngāpuhi routed them on this occasion. I have asked Ngāti Whatua to tell their story so we could get a balanced view for our documentary but they find it very difficult to talk about this event.
The Ngāpuhi were victorious but Hongi’s son Hare was injured and died. Hongi acted as a surgeon and saved my ancestor, the chief Te Kaingamata, but couldn’t save his own son. From this point his power begins to collapse.
He decided to relocate to Whangaroa on his mother’s land but quarrelled with people and chased them as far westward as the Hokianga, where he was shot through the chest in a conflict in January 1827. Unbelievably, he survived this injury, living with a gaping chest wound for more than a year; it is said that the air made a whistling sound whenever he took a breath. When he returned home, he discovered that his favourite wife, Turikatuku, had died from illness in his absence. Hongi died on 6 March 1828, at Whangaroa.
Waiata Moteatea – Uia Te Patai
Uia te patai,
Me kowai rahau e,
He uri no Rahiri,
Tauramoko, I runga e,
Taku putiputi pono,
He ngakau pouri e…
I am singing now a song about Hongi and about everyone in the room who may share this common ancestor. This is saying if anyone asks the question whom I am, I can say that I am a descendent of Rahiri, our common ancestor, and those who came before him.
We are still undertaking research into the three carved wooden busts purported to be of and carved by Hongi himself. I have been fortunate to hold and examine all three busts. We don’t talk about them as artefacts as we believe that they are imbued with the mana and the character of the person who is carved. This is the first recorded instance of a Maori carving of a living person. It had been our practice to carve people who have passed on. It is almost like having photographs of our ancestors.
The three busts are located today in three museums, at the Brighton Museum in the United Kingdom, in the Nicholson Museum at the University of Sydney, and in the Auckland Museum. While we know that one of these busts was carved in Parramatta in October 1814, the 1814 image of New-Zealand chief Shunghee, which was the accepted spelling of Hongi at the time, is closest to that of the bust in Brighton. While it is really interesting to find out which one is the 1814 bust, I have an internal struggle with this. I really like the idea that each of the three countries to which Hongi travelled has one bust. This provides a meaningful link between each country and the institutions which act as kaitiaki (protectors) for Hongi’s carved images.
In January 2019, I was fortunate to have been given access to the korowai (woven flax cloak) which Hongi gifted King George IV at Carlton House on 13 November 1820. The British Museum didn’t know that it was given by Hongi. I felt the life force, the mauri. I was mesmerised by it and decided to research the method and materials used in its creation, who may have woven it, whether it has a name, and looking into the providence of the taonga (treasure).
I was fortunate to be able to go back with korowai weaver Rae Midwood in October this year to examine the korowai and I plan to write either a research paper or a journal article. We have also arranged for Tohunga Raranga (Master Weaver) Te Hemo Ata Henare, to re-create this kakahu, after she examines it in January 2020.
I want to acknowledge a number of people associated with this journey:
- Crispin Howarth & my brother Kris Kerehona – National Gallery of Australia
- Dr Jude Philp & Rebecca Conway – Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of Sydney
- Helen Mears – Brighton Museum & Art Gallery and Royal Pavilion, UK
- Dr Gaye Sculthorpe, James Hamill & Jill Hassell – British Museum, London, UK
- Rev Dr Johnathon Holmes – Queens’ College, University of Cambridge, UK
- Chanel Clarke – Auckland War Memorial Museum, NZ
- Dr Ngarino Ellis & Dr Deidre Brown – Auckland University, NZ, and most importantly
- My wife and sons, who have been so patient and understanding with my work
Further references:
Brown, Deidre. 2016 Hongi Hika’s self-portrait. Muse Magazine. Issue 14: pp 19-21 Available online at: http://sydney.edu.au/museums/publications/muse/muse-jun2016.pdf
Kerehona, Brent. 2019 ‘Hongi Hika: A Portrait’ Journal of Museum Ethnography. No. 32: pp 209-224
Maxwell, Sir Herbert (ed). 1903 The Creevy papers, A Selection from the Correspondence and Diaries of the Late Thomas Creevy, MP, vol. 1 London: Murray
Salmond, Anne. 1997 Tears of Rangi: Experiments Across Worlds Auckland: University of Auckland Press