Pewhairangi

When a small group of three English families were landed in the bay below Rangihoua pā in 1814, under the protection of its chief and inhabitants, the story told in Pēwhairangi began. It is the story of New Zealand’s first permanent European settlement, at Hohi, and the church mission that it represented, and of the other mission communities subsequently established in the Bay of Islands, at Kerikeri, Paihia, Te Puna and Waimate. It is a story of Ngāpuhi and Pākehā engagement, as neighbours, over four decades.

More than anything else, the rich fabric of this book is a story of people: of the chiefs Te Pahi, Ruatara, Hongi Hika, Tāreha, Korokoro, of the missionaries John King, Thomas Kendall, James Kemp, John Butler, George Clarke, William Yate and Henry Williams, of the mastermind Samuel Marsden, and of the wives and children of all these men: Hongi’s wife Turikatuku and daughter Hariata, Hannah King and Hannah Butler, Hone Heke and George Clarke junior, Marianne Williams and Charlotte Kemp. And recording the multiple comings and goings in the Bay were the artists, amateur and professional, whose works supply many of the book’s fine illustrations.