One final honour due to great Ngapuhi chief

AN EXTRAORDINARY LIFE: William Ludbrook, great-great-grandson of missionary Henry Williams, looks back on his forbear's extraordinary life and his relationship with Ngapuhi chief Hone Heke, and the ideal resting place for Heke.

A Christian burial service for Hone Heke Pokai 160 years after his death, in Henry Williams' church at Pakaraka, would be a surreal, and historic day.

The on-going relationship of honour, courage, respect, aroha and mana between these two great warriors until their lives ended was unusual but cannot be denied, and it would be entirely appropriate and fitting that Hone Heke is given the Christian burial service he deserved.

Henry Williams' association with the Ngapuhi people over a very long period of time is the backbone of an important period of early European Bay of Islands history. It commenced on the arrival of Henry and Marianne Williams and their three children in the Bay of Islands on August 3, 1823.

Henry had spent his youth, from a very young age, in the Royal Navy, fighting the French and the Americans. He had suffered the terrifying experiences of battleship warfare, hand to hand combat and the hardships of life at sea in the early 1800s. He had killed men and survived to see the Navy decommissioned in 1815, at the end of the brutal and bloody Napoleonic wars.

At the age of 24 Henry became an officer in the Royal Navy. The experiences of war were defining for him; in that same year he left the Navy, a committed pacifist.

Back in England he came under the influence of his brother-in-law, Rev Edward Marsh, of the Church Mission Society, who persuaded him to go to New Zealand to head the Church Mission Society of New Zealand in the Bay of Islands.

Because at that time there was much unrest among Maori he was advised to reconsider but was determined to go, not only as a missionary but also as a peacemaker.

He and Marianne prepared themselves for three years, knowing the hardship they would face away from the comforts of their wealth in England, and knowing they would never return to see their friends and families.

They settled at Paihia and established a mission station.

Henry Williams was a courageous young man who had immense physical strength and determination, and a strong, unyielding belief in his God. Right until his death at Pakaraka in 1867 he was revered by Maori. No one in the country had greater mana than Henry Williams.

In May 1867 he was dying when inter-tribal war broke out, within a few miles of Pakaraka, where he was living. Blood was being shed and the whole district was rapidly being drawn in; the bitterness became intense.

A day was fixed for further engagement, a pitched battle, the result of which would have been to plunge the North into irremediable conflict. At daylight the fight was to commence. But suddenly, passion was stayed, arrested in mid-course. The word had passed. Te Wiremu was dead. The Maori were paralysed.

The peace that was voluntarily agreed to between the warring tribes was felt by them to be the most fitting tribute to his memory.

Henry was laid to rest in the church grounds at Pakaraka, part of his farm, known as Pouerua. Across the paddocks is the sacred Mountain of Pouerua - two posts, named after the house of the great ancestor of Ngapuhi, Tahuhunuiorangi. This is the birth place of Ngapuhi, dating back over 800 years.

In the forefront of Pouerua Mountain is the house built by Henry Williams' sons in 1843 and lived in by his eldest son until it was passed down to grandsons Henry and William Ludbrook.

Pouerua and the surrounding land was sold to Henry Williams in January 1833 by Hone Heke, Marupo, Te Kamera, Haratua, Ana Hamu and other powerful chiefs and Ariki.

On the sale deed are written these words: "Know all men by this paper of ours that we do give over and sell to Mr Williams, to his children, and his seed forever, the land known as Pouerua and the land adjoining it on either side".

This great place has been protected and cared for and loved by the Williams family and generations of the Ludbrook families since 1833, until it was sadly, accidentally sold in 1989 by a late member of the family.

Chiefly descent Hone Heke Pokai was Ngapuhi of chiefly descent and a convert to Christianity in his early years, maintaining throughout his life a close association with the Williams' mission settlement at Paihia and later at Pakaraka. He was ambitious to assert his mana.

At the Treaty of Waitangi signings he expressed his faith in the missionaries as his "fathers", saying the Maori were "children". But this faith was tested as Heke came to question the Treaty and the motives of the Government. Thus the Treaty became critical to the relationship between Henry Williams and Heke in ways that neither of them anticipated.

Heke is traced back to his descent from Rahiri of Pouerua, the eponymous ancestor of Ngapuhi, so his whakapapa credentials are solid. But at the time of the Treaty's signing he was still young, around 32 or 33, and was only the third-born son in his family. However, what he lacked in seniority he made up for in determination and daring.

Heke's baptism in 1835 clearly reveals an acceptance of Christian influence. Heke had married Hongi Hika's daughter only after the death of his first wife Ono, the daughter of Te Pahi, another Ngapuhi chief. She was baptised alongside Heke in 1835; the evidence suggests it was Henry Williams who baptised them. Heke took the Christian names Hoani Wiremu, or John William, while Ono took the name Riria, the Maori transliteration of Lydia. They were referred to in the church register as "Gentleman - Native Chief" and "Lady - Native Chief". Both their baptismal names were after Henry Williams' children.

The year of his baptism marks the clear beginning, at least in the written record, of Heke's close association with the Williams family, and Henry Williams in particular. Even during the years of political uncertainty in the mid-1840s Heke continued to make contact with Williams, and vice versa.

During the period of August 1834 to January 1835 there are 10 separate recordings concerning Heke in Williams' journal. Heke appears to have been in close proximity to the Paihia mission settlement during these months, and often sought out Williams to discuss spiritual matters. It seems that Williams took Heke's sick wife and child into their home at Paihia in September 1834.

Williams' journals do not record her death, and she obviously rallied for some time as the date of her and Heke's baptism is recorded a year later, as August 9, 1835. Such an act of kindness towards Heke's family probably cemented the friendship of the Williams family with Heke, even in the years when loyalties became divided.

Despite Williams' clear insistence that Heke need not take up arms against the flagstaff, Heke himself still maintained contact with Williams. He visited Williams at the Paihia mission at least six times during this period (January 9 to March 17), even more than Williams visited him. And it would seem that Marianne played host on a number of occasions, feeding his men with "stirabout" (a water, flour and sugar mix) for breakfast. Williams was twice given significant gifts or taonga (treasures) by Heke, a hatchet and his gold-laced cap, the last "to tangi over" in event of him being killed.

It is difficult to deny the presence of some personal feeling between the two during these events, even despite the strain of the circumstances and the tension between their different perceptions of the flagstaff and its meaning. It is even harder to deny the basic fact of a continuing relationship between them at this time.

There is much that is enigmatic about Heke. He could be flamboyant and boisterous, and carried himself with an air that held in contempt any rules or restrictions, man-made or divine. Yet he must be taken seriously. Of all the chiefs of the North who foresaw the whittling away of mana as a result of European settlement, Hone Heke Pokai was one of few who had the courage to act. He felt the imposition of a flag and sensed what it might lead to.

There is little doubt that Heke respected Williams as a man of mana. There also seems little doubt that Heke was genuinely impacted in a personal way by the hospitality and generosity of the Williams. Heke dined with them, and even brought his men to church after Ruapekapeka and before the cementing of peace.

The "space" between Heke and Williams was a matrix of their background experiences and cultural and religious imperatives. Yet these should not be allowed to totally define them. Their interactions show us that each was capable of appreciating the cultural priorities of the other. Williams and Heke were both men of mana and standing within their own worlds.

They both acted with a strong sense of conviction and destiny.

They were caught in a time when the socio-political aspects of their respective cultures began to clash. In the midst of this conflagration they still largely respected each other's human qualities and demonstrated an uncommon generosity of spirit.

They are fascinating and dynamic exemplars of their representative groups - an Evangelical missionary and a rangatira Maori, both of whom deserve acknowledgement that this was a rare relationship of aroha and respect for each other's long-lasting and unyielding mana among Ngapuhi and all of the tribes of New Zealand.