The cast after the recent re-enactment (from left): John Booth (who acted the part of Richard Davis); Kipa Munro (descendant of Te Pakira); Grant Hodgson (descendant of William Puckey and Richard Davis); Marty Robinson (descendant of Henry Williams AKA "Karuwhā" and Richard Davis); Darryl Hape (descendant of Hongi Hika) and Manaki Hape (descendant of Hongi Hika).
The cast after the recent re-enactment (from left): John Booth (who acted the part of Richard Davis); Kipa Munro (descendant of Te Pakira); Grant Hodgson (descendant of William Puckey and Richard Davis); Marty Robinson (descendant of Henry Williams AKA "Karuwhā" and Richard Davis); Darryl Hape (descendant of Hongi Hika) and Manaki Hape (descendant of Hongi Hika).
A re-enactment of a momentous conversation between a group of missionaries and a number of Northland rangatira recently took place – 200 years ago to the day of the event.
Descendants of Church Missionary Society missionaries Henry Williams, William Gilbert Puckey, and Richard Davis, together with descendants of the famedNgāpuhi rangatira (chiefs) Hongi Hika, Ururoa, Hihi, Rewa, Titore, Pakira and Tenana, assembled on the lawn in front of Kemp House recently to re-enact that very interesting conversation (kōrero).
The historic interaction is the subject of a recently published book Rangatiratanga and Gentlemanship by Wellington author and organiser of the re-enactment, Grant Hodgson.
Now cared for by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, Kemp House is New Zealand’s oldest building and, at the time of the historic conversation, was the centre of the Church Missionary Society’s Kerikeri Mission. Kemp House turned 200 in March 2022.
Hodgson, who is descended from Puckey and Davis, had come across the meticulously recorded conversation as part of wider research he was undertaking into his family genealogy.
What he found has been described by historian Professor Paul Moon as “a nugget that reveals so much about the nature of interactions between Māori and Pākehā in the earliest stages of settlement”.
The “nugget” is extraordinary, according to Hodgson.
“Richard Davis had kept a full written record of the conversation at the time, and his original manuscript is still held in the Hocken archives in Dunedin,” he said.
“It is a very unusual primary source in that young William Gilbert Puckey – who was translating and who was fluent in te reo – not only heard and relayed the main conversation between missionaries and Māori, but also many snippets of the often-humorous conversation and byplay between the rangatira themselves.”
The re-enactment was mainly staged to honour the memory of the rangatira and the missionary ancestors, but also to bring to the surface the tone and dynamics of the interchanges, in which it largely succeeded – so much so that Hodgson is keen to pursue the project of developing a short film of the event.
