Pai Marire (goodness and peace) was one of several Maori Christian faiths to emerge in the 19th century. Like many others, it was closely tied to issues of land and politics.
In the late 1830s the British government became concerned about how land was being obtained from Māori. Action was needed, it decided, to protect Māori from the worst ravages of European contact.
On 7 March 1842 Maketu Wharetotara, the 17-year-old son of the Ngāpuhi chief Ruhe of Waimate, became the first person to be legally executed in New Zealand.
Samuel Leigh and William White established Wesleydale, a Wesleyan (Methodist) mission station at Kaeo. Leigh was friendly with Samuel Marsden of the Church Missionary Society and the two missions worked closely together.
At Oihi Beach in the Bay of Islands, Marsden preached in English to a largely Māori gathering, launching the Christian missionary phase of New Zealand history.
French Bishop Jean Baptiste François Pompallier, a priest and brother of the Society of Mary, arrived at Hokianga. His party celebrated their first mass three days later.
Matene Te Whiwhi, about 1870. Henare Matene Te Whiwhi was of Ngati Raukawa and Ngati Toa. As a young man he lived through the turmoil of his people's migration to the Cook Strait region. This may have formed the major theme in his life – the preservation of peace.
Missionary Thomas Kendall is painted with Waikato and Hongi Hika in London in 1820. In 1815 Kendall wrote the first book to be published in the Maori language.
The Catholic mission fuelled fears of French plans to annex New Zealand, but the number of French missionaries and mission stations remained heavily outnumbered by the Protestant faiths.
The Christian missionaries of the pre-1840s have been described as the 'agents of virtue in a world of vice', although they were not immune to moral blemish themselves.
