Pages tagged with: treaty of waitangi

Henry Williams (1792-1864) was a former Royal Navy lieutenant who served in the Napoleonic Wars. In 1823, as an Anglican priest, he was appointed to head CMS's mission in New Zealand. Under his forceful personality, the mission was highly successful, influencing several thousand Maori to convert and spreading its influence through much of the North Island. By the late 1830s, Williams and most missionaries actively supported British annexation, believing it necessary to protect Maori from lawless Europeans.

William Colenso (1811-1899) arrived at the Bay of Islands as the Church Mission printer in December 1834. Among his notable printing achievements were the Declaration of Independence of New Zealand (printed in 1836), a complete New Testament in Maori (1838) and Hobson’s proclamations and the Treaty of Waitangi in Maori (all in 1840).

William Spain was born in England in 1803 and trained in the law. In 1841 he became a Land Claims Commissioner in New Zealand. His task was to investigate the New Zealand Company's claims that it had purchased a total of some 20 million acres (8 million hectares) in 1839. Even though most of these purchases were hotly disputed by Maori, hundreds of settlers had arrived to take up the land.

Edinburgh-born James Busby (1802-1871) was British Resident, a consular representative, in New Zealand from 1833.

An experienced soldier, Bunbury (1791-1861) had fought in the Napoleonic Wars and, in the 1830s, was commandant of Norfolk Island. In March 1840, he was instructed by Governor Gipps to come to New Zealand with 100 men of his 80th Regiment to back up Hobson and, given Hobson's failing health, take over the Lieutenant-Governorship if necessary.

After a lengthy Royal Navy career in which he saw action in the Napoleonic Wars and was twice captured by pirates in the Caribbean, William Hobson (1792-1842) became New Zealand's first Governor. Governor Bourke had already sent him to New Zealand in 1838, and his report so impressed Lord Glenelg that when he decided, in December 1838, to appoint a Consul to New Zealand, he offered the post to Hobson.

Hōne Heke Ngāpua, of Ngā Puhi, was born in 1869 at Kaikohe. He was named after his great-uncle, Hōne Heke Pōkai, who had opposed Crown sovereignty in the mid-1840s and famously (and repeatedly) cut down the British flagstaff at Russell .

A leading Ngā Puhi chief, Nene was an early friend of Pākehā and one of the Wesleyan missionaries' first converts, taking the baptismal name of Thomas Walker (Tāmati Waka). He protected the Anglican and Wesleyan missionaries and also greatly assisted the British Resident, James Busby.

Kawiti, probably born in the 1770s in northern New Zealand, was a notable Ngā Puhi chief and warrior and a skilled military tactician. In 1840, when William Hobson arrived in New Zealand, Kawiti vigorously resisted British rule.