Hongi Hika was born into a powerful family near Kaikohe around 1772. For Maori It was a time of change as New Zealand began to be visited by explorers from the northern hemisphere. Captain Cook sailed around New Zealand in 1769, putting it on the map just three years before Hongi’s birth.
Hongi descended from a long line of ferocious Ngapuhi warriors, including a giant called Mahia whose jawbone he carried into battle.
In the 1800s Hongi Hika became the war leader of the Ngapuhi tribe. Along with explorers came Christians missionaries. Hongi provided the first Christian mission with patronage and protection. In turn, the mission offered him influence and the ability to trade.
Although Hongi Hika protected the mission, he did not need or want their God. He didn’t agree with Jesus’ teaching about love for enemies in Matthew 5:43 and considered Christianity to be a religion for slaves.
Hongi lived by the law of Utu, a Māori concept of reciprocation or balance. Utu demanded revenge. Forgiveness never entered into it.
Utu was the Sumerian sun-god of justice.
Utu led to a spiral of war, war and more war. The Maori were a warrior race and Utu held sway over them for generations. Who was going to prevail on the blood soaked soil? Utu, or Jesus Christ?
Sometimes treasure comes from darkness. Hongi desired muskets, power, and revenge while the early missionaries desired to communicate with Māori in order to convert them to Christ. Formal study of Māori language and cultural traditions began. Hongi Hika was instrumental in getting the Maori language into writing. The Maori would learn to read, and the first book off the printing press would be a book that taught the opposite of Utu.
Jesus taught love for enemies; “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” Matthew 5:43
Walks related to Hongi Hika
In the early 19th century (1800s) the Ngapuhi tribe controlled the Bay of Islands, the first point of contact for most Europeans visiting New Zealand. Kororipo pa was the pa of Hongi Hika, the paramount chief of the north.
Mount Maunganui, Bay of Plenty
In 1820 Ngapuhi, armed with muskets, took Mauao (the name given to the Mount by the Patupaiarehe). The pa was never reoccupied.
In 1823 Hongi Hika attacked Arawa in Rotorua. Using the track as a portage, they spent 12 days dragging their war canoes from Lake Rotoehu across to Lake Rotoira, and from there through a canal into Lake Rotorua. On Mokoia Island, thousands were slaughtered.
St Pauls Rock, Whangaroa, Northland
In 1827 Hongi Hika invaded Whangaroa. He died at Whangaroa the following year, see the timeline on the links below.
Links
NZ’s Infamous Founding History
The Musket Wars
The musket was first used in this campaign when Ngāpuhi fought with small numbers of them in 1808. Ngapuhi were overrun by the opposing Ngāti Whātua while reloading. Despite this Hongi recognised the potential value of muskets in warfare if they were used tactically and by warriors with proper training.
Wanting to get hold of muskets, Hongi befriended Thomas Kendall, one of three lay preachers sent by the Church Missionary Society to establish Christianity in New Zealand.
Soon after Hongi acquired the guns, the Musket Wars started.
Across from the Mission station, Ngāpuhi assembled at Kororipo Pa, Hongi Hika’s residence at Kerikeri from 1819 to 1826, before going to battle. The pa was associated with the launching of great Taua – war parties. When the war party was ready, the flotilla would commence its journey. Hongi and Ngapuhi wreaked devastation on Tāmaki, Waikato, Rotorua, Tauranga and beyond.
They came back victorious with slaves, thousands of slaves.
The spread of Christianity
As for the Mission, although the number of Māori converts was slow to begin with, numbers increased over the 1830s and 1840s. Māori became evangelists themselves and spread the Christian message to other iwi. One such was Piripi Taumata-ā-Kura, who learnt of Christianity while a captive of Ngāpuhi and took it back to Ngāti Porou (on the East coast below Tauranga) when he was released.
Piripi Taumata-ā-Kura began meetings by saying, ‘I have come from Keri Keri and from Paihia and I have seen Williams of the four eyes.’ This was a reference to Henry Williams and his spectacles. When Williams came in 1840 to establish a mission station at Manutuke, he found the Maori evangelists had already built several places of worship and that there was a Christian congregation of about 1500 people, some of whom could read and write.
The timeline of Hongi Hika
In 1814 Hongi visited Sydney with Kendall and met the local head of the Church Missionary Society Samuel Marsden. Marsden was later to describe Hongi as “a very fine character … uncommonly mild in his manners and very polite”. Hongi invited Marsden to establish the first Anglican mission to New Zealand in Ngāpuhi territory.
Hongi became protector of the first mission at Rangihoua Bay. Other missions were also established under his protection at Kerikeri and Waimate North. While in Australia Hongi Hika studied European military and agricultural techniques and purchased muskets and ammunition.
As a result of Hongi’s protection, ships came in increasing numbers, and his opportunities for trade increased. He was most keen to trade for muskets but the missionaries (particularly Marsden) were often unwilling to do so. This caused friction but he continued to protect them, on the basis that it was more important to maintain a safe harbour in the Bay of Islands, and in any event others visiting the islands were not so scrupulous.
In 1817 Hongi led a war party to Thames where he attacked the Ngāti Maru stronghold of Te Totara, killing 60 and taking 2,000 prisoners. In 1818 Hongi led one of two Ngāpuhi taua against East Cape and Bay of Plenty iwi Ngāti Porou and Ngaiterangi. Some fifty villages were destroyed and the taua returned in 1819 carrying nearly 2,000 captured slaves.
In 1819 he granted 13,000 acres of land at Kerikeri to the Church Missionary Society in return for 48 felling axes. He personally assisted the missionaries in developing a written form of the Māori language.
In 1820 Hongi Hika travelled to England where he met King George IV who presented him with a suit of armour.
In 1821 he returned to NZ. He was reported to have exchanged many of the presents he received in England for muskets in New South Wales, to the dismay of the missionaries, and to have picked up several hundred muskets that were waiting for him.
Using the weapons he had obtained in Australia, within months of his return Hongi went south. He led a force of around 2,000 warriors (of whom over 1,000 were armed with muskets) against those of the Ngāti Pāoa chief, Te Hinaki, at Mokoia and Mauinaina pā (Māori forts) on the Tamaki River (now Panmure). This battle resulted in the death of Hinaki and hundreds, if not thousands, of Ngāti Paoa men, women and children.
This battle was in revenge for a previous defeat in around 1795, in which Ngāpuhi had sustained heavy losses. Deaths in this one action during the intertribal Musket Wars may have outnumbered all deaths in 25 years of the later New Zealand Wars.
Hongi and his warriors then moved down to attack the Ngāti Maru pā of Te Tōtara, which he had previously attacked in 1817. Hongi and his warriors pretended to be interested in a peace deal and then attacked that night while the Ngāti Maru guard was down. Hundreds were killed and a much larger number, as many as 2,000, were captured and taken back to the Bay of Islands as slaves. Again, this battle was in revenge for a previous defeat before the age of muskets, in 1793.
In 1823 Hongi invaded Te Arawa territory in Rotorua, having travelled up the Pongakawa River and carried their waka (each weighing between 10 and 25 tonnes) overland into Lake Rotoehu and Lake Rotoiti.
Hongi also went to attack Te Koutu Pa at Lake Okataina.
In 1825 Hongi’s son was killed in a battle against Ngāti Whātua, and he grieved deeply.
In 1826 Hongi Hika moved from Waimate to conquer Whangaroa and found a new settlement. In part this was to punish Ngāti Uru and Ngāti Pou for having harassed the European people at Wesleydale, the Wesleyan mission at Kaeo. On 10 January 1827 a party of his warriors, without his knowledge, ransacked Wesleydale and it was abandoned.
In 1827, Hongi Hika was shot in the chest by the warrior Maratea during a minor engagement in the Hokianga. Hongi lingered for 14 months. He invited those around him to listen to the wind whistle through his lungs and some claimed to have been able to see completely through him.
He died of an infection on 6 March 1828 at Whangaroa.
Source: Wikipedia
If you want to learn more about Hongi Hika and the start of the Musket Wars, I recommend videos by Kiwi Codger. Here’s where to start:
Episode 67; Hongi Invades Whangaroa (Part 3)
Episode 68: Hongi Invades Whangaroa, Part 4 ‘The Attack’
Episode 69: Hongi Invades Whangaroa (Part 5; The Chase)
Episode 70:Whangaroa Part 6 ‘Wesleydale Goodbye’
Episode 71; Hongi’s Journey to Death
Te Reo, the Maori Language
In 1820 Thomas Kendall, a lay preacher sent by the Church Missionary Society to establish Christianity in New Zealand and the chiefs Hongi Hika and Waikato visited England to work with Cambridge University linguist Samuel Lee to produce the first Grammar and vocabulary of the language of New Zealand. Source: Pioneers of Māori studies
NZShortWalks 