The opposition between the Māori, the original inhabitants of Aotearoa/New Zealand, and the Pākehā, the European newcomers, has been central to New Zealand’s recent history. Some Māori chiefs were open to dialogue with the Europeans and even fought alongside them. However, others, like Te Whiti, chose the path of passive resistance, sabotaging settlers’ machinery and fences and disrupting their crops. Others, such as Te Heuheu Tūkino IV, decided to collaborate with the Europeans to protect their sacred lands.
1. Hōne Pōkai Heke: The Warrior From the Bay of Islands
Hōne Heke’s name is synonymous with both the Treaty of Waitangi (te Tiriti o Waitangi), the founding document of New Zealand, and the Northern War against British settlers. By 1840, when the Treaty was signed, Hōne Pōkai Heke (1807-1850) was an influential and well-respected leader. Born in 1807 in Pākaraka in the Bay of Islands on the east coast of the North Island, he was a member of the Ngāpuhi iwi (tribe), today the largest and most influential tribe in New Zealand, and a descendant of Rāhiri.
From 1824 to 1825 Heke attended the mission school in Kerikeri, after his village was attacked and sacked by a Ngāti Whātua war party. He embraced Christianity and acquired even more mana (force/authority) after marrying Hariata Rongo, the daughter of a respected leader and warrior Hongi Hika (1772-1828), and his senior wife Turikatuku, in March 1837. Heke’s first wife, Ono, daughter of Ngāpuhi leader Te Pahi, had died two years earlier.
In 1840, Hōne Heke was the first of the 45 northern Māori chiefs to sign the Treaty of Waitangi, as he believed that an alliance between the Māori and the Pākehā could benefit both. Over the years, however, Heke became increasingly disillusioned with the Treaty, and his name became linked to the Northern Wars (also known as Flagstaff Wars). In 1844, he ordered the cutting down of the British flagpole on Maiki Hill at the north end of the Russell settlement (known among the Māori as Kororāreka).
In the 1840s, Russell was a major ship-provisioning and trading center, as well as the fifth-largest town in New Zealand. Heke’s right-hand man, Te Haratua, chopped down the flagpole on July 8, 1844. It was cut down a second time on January 10, 1845, this time by Heke himself. Finally, on March 11, 1845, Heke and a hundred Ngāpuhi warriors launched an attack on the settlement.
Far from desiring harm or death upon European settlers, Heke’s men aimed to pressure the British into honoring the Treaty of Waitangi and respecting Māori chiefly authority (rangatiratanga), customs, and lands. Eventually, British forces, with the support of a group of Māori tribes, bombarded, sacked, and looted Kororāreka.
Heke wrote and sent letters and petitions first to Colonial Governor Robert FitzRoy and then to his successor, George Grey. His prestige grew in time, even when he fell sick with tuberculosis. He was particularly close to Grey, as his letters suggest, despite the differences that had divided them in the past.
Heke died on August 6, 1850. The missionary Richard Davis from Kaikohe, who had been close to him in the last months of his life, conducted Heke’s funeral service before Heke’s body was buried secretly at Pākaraka. The burial ground, called Kaungarapa, was where other tribal leaders had been laid to rest in the past.
2. Te Wherowhero: The First Māori King
Hōne Heke was the first chief to sign the Treaty of Waitangi. Pōtatau Te Wherowhero (1800-1860) was the first to be crowned and anointed King of the Kīngitanga in 1858. He belonged to the Ngāti Mahuta Tribe and was a descendant of the captains of the Tainui and Te Araw canoes. He was born in the Waikato region, in the upper North Island, a region that he fiercely defended—sometimes unsuccessfully—against the repeated attacks of Hongi Hika, chief of the musket-armed Ngāpuhi Tribe, during the so-called Musket Wars.
During the four-decades-long intertribal conflict, Te Wherowhero became a respected and feared warrior and leader among the Māori population of the North Island. He defended the Mātakitaki village (pā) in May 1822, even single-handedly at one point, as his people fled, terrified by the “new” weapons of the Ngāpuhi.
In 1823, he finally made peace with the Ngāpuhi Tribe. As his people began to return to their homes, Te Wherowhero’s brother, Kati, cemented the peace by marrying a woman of the Ngāpuhi, Matire Toha. In 1828, Te Wherowhero’s daughter, Tīria, married trader J.R. Kent (known among Māori as Amukete), and muskets finally reached warriors in the Waikato territory.
In the mid-1830s, the first missionaries arrived in the region. Te Wherowhero was never baptized, but he was often seen attending church services. In March 1840, he was one of the northern chiefs who refused to sign the Treaty of Waitangi. When Governor William Hobson passed away in 1842, Te Wherowhero decided to write directly to Queen Victoria. He wanted to suggest the kind of man his people believed should replace Hobson.
In 1849, he made a vow and signed an agreement to defend and provide military protection for the city of Auckland. He placed the city under his tapu, making it a sacred place that should not be violated. As a gesture of thanks, the government built a house for him in Auckland.
In offering his advice to the Queen and then swearing to protect Auckland (and the tribes of the Auckland isthmus), Te Wherowhero was making a strategic, as well as symbolic, move. On one hand, he was protecting his lands and his people from the threat of physical and cultural alienation. On the other, he was asserting his people’s right to participate in the management of their lands alongside the British.
In June 1858, he was crowned King of the Māori at Ngāruawāhia. Several chiefs supported his coronation. As the leader of the Kīngitanga (Māori King Movement), his mission was to unite the northern tribes, to be the “eye of the needle through which the white, black and red threads must pass,” as he declared in his speech of acceptance.
Te Wherowhero never intended to threaten the sovereignty of Queen Victoria and was willing to consult with the government. However, British encroachment on Māori lands forced him to oppose the governor, especially his plans to acquire land and build a road connecting Auckland to Wellington. Pōtatau Te Wherowhero died at Ngāruawāhia, where he had been crowned king, on June 25, 1860, and was succeeded by his son, King Tāwhio.
3. Tāwhiao: King and Prophet
Tāwhiao (1822-1894) was one of Te Wherowhero’s sons and the second Māori King. His reign lasted 34 years. For three decades, he guided his people through one of the most violent eras of Māori-Pākehā relations, a time of conflicts, displacement, alienation, land confiscation, settler invasion, and smart diplomacy.
In July 1863, the British invaded the Waikato region after crossing the Mangatāwhiri stream. Tāwhiao had made it clear that crossing the Mangatāwhiri was tantamount to an act of war, as he had declared the stream an aukati, “a boundary marking a prohibited area,” a “line over which one may not pass,” according to the definition provided by Te Aka. After months of battles, in December 1863, the British captured Ngāruawāhia, the capital where Tāwhiao’s father had been crowned King of the Māori five years earlier.
Tāwhiao and the Kingite forces were forced to retreat southwards. They fled to Tokangamutu (Te Kuiti) in the territory of the Ngāti Maniapoto on the western North Island. Tāwhiao declared it Te Rohe Pōtae (Rohe Pōtae o Maniapoto), or, as it has been known ever since, King Country.
For 20 years, he governed it as an independent state. During this time, he traveled extensively, meeting with other tribes, particularly the Taranaki, and addressing crowds. His sayings were prophetic and visionary. Baptized as Matutaera (Methuselah) by the Anglican missionary Robert Burrows, Tāwhiao carefully blended the Scriptures with the stories and customs of his ancestors, particularly the rites of the Tainui priesthood. He foresaw the arrival of a “child” who would rectify past wrongs by leading his people into a new era for the Māori community. His people embraced his words as a path out of their current suffering and discontent.
After years of negotiations, Tāwhiao eventually agreed to lay down his weapons, and his people were finally allowed to return to Waikato. The year was 1881. Overall, they had lost over a million acres to the government and settlers, mainly young families from the British Isles. For Tāwhiao and his people, this was just the beginning (or rather the continuation) of a new phase of opposition to British encroachment.
Tāwhiao was fundamentally a pacifist. In 1884, he led a group of chiefs to England to petition Queen Victoria “to have the Treaty of Waitangi honoured.” Without denying the Queen’s authority, Tāwhiao requested an independent commission of inquiry into land confiscations and a separate Māori parliament, but to no avail.
In 1890, he established Te Kauhanganui (now known as Te Whakakitenga), a pan-Māori parliament that would become a rallying force for the tribes of the Kīngitanga. He died on August 26, 1894, at Pārāwera. Thousands of people came for his tangi (or tangihanga) ceremony to pay their respects to the second King of the Māori. He was succeeded by one of his three (recognized) children and eldest son, Mahuta Tāwhiao (1855-1912).
4. Te Whiti: The Pacifist Prophet
Like Tāwhiao, Te Whiti (1830-1907) was a leader and a prophet. Also known as Te Whiti-O-Rongomai III, today his name is synonymous with the village of Parihaka, on the western coast of the North Island. Some sources suggest that Te Whiti moved there with his family as a child in the 1840s, while others claim he founded the pā (village) around 1866.
The village, nestled among low hills and close to the Tasman Sea and Mount Taranaki, was situated in a strategic location in the Taranaki region, away from the areas most densely populated by settlers. After just a few years from its foundation, Parihaka was home to about 300 people. The settlement had over 100 whare (houses) and two marae, which are the sacred meeting grounds of the Māori people. By the late 1870s, the population of Parihaka had grown from 300 to 1500.
As anger among the European settlers towards Te Whiti’s leadership grew, so did the commitment of the Māori people to passive resistance against European encroachment and land confiscation. Māori men, women, and children resisted by disrupting the surveyors’ camps, work, and plowing long furrows in the settlers’ pastures. In 1879, many of these “plowmen” were arrested and brought before the court.
Two years later, on November 5, 1881, troops of the Constabulary Field Force invaded Parihaka, accompanied by about 1,600 volunteers. Encouraged by Te Whiti, the Māori inhabitants offered no resistance. 2,500 of them had been waiting since midnight, sitting peacefully in their marae at the center of the village.
Te Whiti along with two other leaders, Tohu and Titokowaru, were arrested. He was not released until 1883 and was imprisoned again in 1886. Meanwhile, plowing campaigns continued in the Taranaki region.
Te Whiti died on February 4, 1907, at Parihaka, eleven months after Tohu. A leader, teacher, prophet, and believer in nonviolent resistance, Te Whiti combined his deep knowledge of Christian scripture with Māori knowledge, myths, and prophecies. Along with Te Wherowhero and Tāwhiao, who reportedly sent twelve “apostles” to live at Parihaka in 1866, thus acknowledging the village’s role in Māori resistance, he remains one of the greatest Māori leaders of the 19th century.
5. Te Heuheu Tūkino IV and the Three Peaks
In 1846, after his parents died in the massive avalanche of mud that destroyed their village, Te Heuheu Tūkino IV (1821-1888) took the name Horonuku, which means “landslide” in the Māori language. He was born around 1820 on the southwestern side of Lake Taupō, on the North Island. His father was Mananui Te Heuheu Tūkino II, leader of Ngāti Tūrumakina and paramount chief of the Ngāti Tūwharetoa Tribe, whose lands extend across the central plateau of the North Island, including Lake Taupō and Mount Tongariro.
The Ngāti Tūwharetoa Tribe claims to be the descendants of Ngātoro-i-rangi, the priest (tohunga) who navigated the Arawa canoe when the ancestors of the Māori sailed to Aotearoa/New Zealand. Te Heuheu’s name has been linked to Mount Tongariro since 1887.
The 1860s and 1870s witnessed an influx of European settlers to the central plateau of the North Island. They constructed fences, engaged in sheep farming, and cultivated crops on lands that for centuries had belonged exclusively to the Ngāti Tūwharetoa. In October 1862, he became paramount chief of Ngāti Tūwharetoa, succeeding Iwikau, his father’s brother, and took the name Te Heuheu Tūkino IV. In 1869, government forces invaded the Taupō region. Despite support from Tāwhiao, Te Heuheu, and his followers, were compelled to surrender and flee the region.
In 1887, Te Heuheu made a revolutionary move. He gifted the three volcanic peaks of the central North Island—Mt. Ruapehu, Mt. Ngauruhoe, and Mt. Tongariro—to the people of New Zealand, the Māori and the Pākehā, to be preserved as a national park. The government agreed. In September, the Native Minister John Ballance (1839-1893) and Te Heuheu signed the deed.
Te Heuheu’s decision was bold and controversial, even among Māori chiefs. The mountains were sacred to Te Heuheu and his tribe. They were tapu, protected peaks, too sacred to be sold or leased, and thus placed under atua protection, “removed from the sphere of the profane and put into the sphere of the sacred,” according to the definition of “atua” provided by Te Aka.
By offering the mountains of his ancestors in partnership with the Crown, Te Heuheu ensured that his tribe and his descendants would have a say in the future management of his ancestors’ mountains. His decision aimed to protect the mountains and ensure his tribe’s future with one move. At the same time, he was also affirming his mana among neighboring Māori tribes.
Te Heuheu died at Waihī in late July 1888 and was succeeded by his son, Tūreiti (1865-1921), who would become the fifth paramount chief of Ngāti Tūwharetoa. Together with Tāwhiao, his father Te Wherowhero, Te Whiti, Hōne Heke, and Te Heuheu have contributed to shaping the history of New Zealand, each in his own way. Their legacy can still be felt today in the national parks of the North Island and in the country’s commitment to honoring the original owners of Aotearoa/New Zealand.
