Timatonga/ Beginnings
Princess Te Puea Hērangi was born November 9, 1883, into the Kāhui Ariki, the family of the first Māori King, Pōtatau Te Wherowhero.
Te Pue Herangi was known to her family as Te Kirihaehae.
In the difficult years following the wars of the 1860s and the extensive confiscation of Tainui lands, she was to play a crucial role alongside three successive kings in re-establishing the Kīngitanga (King movement) as a central force among the Tainui people, and in achieving national recognition of its importance.
25 generations before Te Puea was born ( between 1000- 1290 AD), 7 Polynesian tribes, in 7 canoes came from Hawaiki (a mythical land usually identified as Tahiti) to New Zealand -together they were known as the Maori.
The tribes were the Tokomaru, Tainui, Aotea, Kuahaupo, Mataatua, Takitimu, Te Arawa.
Te Puea’s ancestors were the chiefs of the Tokomaru tribe.
They called their new land Aotearoa- meaning the long white cloud.
In Māori tradition, the Tokomaru was one of the great ocean-going canoes used in the migrations that settled New Zealand.
It was commanded by Manaia.
His brother-in-law had originally owned the canoe.
When Manaia’s wife was raped by a group of men, he slew them, including their chief, Tupenu.
After killing his brother-in-law, Manaia took the Tokomaru and set sail with his family for New Zealand.
Landing at Whangaparaoa, they finally settled at Taranaki.
Aotearoa was first called ‘Nieuw Zeeland’ (later New Zealand) after a region in the Netherlands and was founded in 1642 by a Dutch explorer Abel Tasman.
He visited the islands, but his party high-tailed it out of there after several of his crew were killed by Maori who mistook their trumpets for a battle cry.
Abel Tasman’s travel journal (1642)
In 1769, British Captain James Cook came to the islands.
In 1788, a portion of Australia called New South Wales became a penal colony.
The colony, then also included the island territories of New Zealand, Van Diemen’s Land, Lord Howe Island, and Norfolk Island.
Over the next 60 years, approximately 50,000 criminals were shipped from Great Britain to the “land down under,” in one of the strangest episodes in criminal-justice history. The guards who volunteered for duty in Australia seemed to be driven by exceptional sadism, so many convicts escaped to New Zealand for a new life.
Whalers, missionaries, and traders followed.
The New Zealand Company, chartered in the United Kingdom, was a company in the first half of the 1800s on a business model focused on the systematic colonization of New Zealand.
The company formed to carry out the principles devised by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who envisaged the creation of a new-model English society in the southern hemisphere.
Under Wakefield’s model, the colony attracted capitalists who would have a ready supply of migrant laborers who could not initially afford to be property owners but would have the expectation of one-day buying land with their savings.
The company’s board included aristocrats, members of Parliament, and a prominent magazine publisher, who used their political connections to ceaselessly lobby the British government to achieve its aims.
The company indulged in many questionable land purchases from Māori, in many cases reselling land, it did not own and launched elaborate, grandiose, and sometimes fraudulent advertising campaigns.
It vigorously attacked those it perceived as its opponents—chiefly the British Colonial Office, successive governors of New Zealand, the Church Missionary Society and prominent missionary the Rev Henry Williams—and it stridently opposed the Treaty of Waitangi, which was an obstacle to the company obtaining the greatest possible amount of New Zealand land at the cheapest price.
The company, in turn, was frequently criticized by the Colonial Office and New Zealand Governors for its “trickery” and lies.
Missionaries in New Zealand were also critical of the company, fearing its activities would lead to the “conquest and extermination” of Maori inhabitants.
But in 1840 Britain formally annexed the islands and established New Zealand’s first permanent European settlement at Wellington.
That year, the Maori signed the Treaty of Waitangi, by which they recognized British sovereignty in exchange for guaranteed possession of their land. 
This made New Zealand a colony of the British Empire, so their ruler is actually the Queen Victoria of England-just 3 years before this she ascended the throne as a teenager.
A large increase in the number of immigrants in the 1850s led to demands for greatly increased land purchase by the government.
. In 1857 several tribes of the Waikato area of North Island elected Te Puea’s grandfather, Te Wherowhero, as a king, who reigned as Potatau I.
Not all Maori accepted the authority of the king, but the majority shared with the King Movement the resolve not to sell the land.
The Māori used the term Māori to describe themselves in a pan-tribal sense.
Aotearoa, Maori Iwi, Māori tribal boundaries, Māori tribes
Māori people often use the term tangata whenua (literally, “people of the land”) to identify in a way that expresses their relationship with a particular area of land, a tribe may be the tangata whenua in one area, but not in another.
Meaning their land was their identity.
In the 1860s war broke out and it carried on for 12 years and the Maori who resisted had their land confiscated.
In addition to electing a king, they established a council of state, a judicial system, and a police organization, all of which were intended to support Maori resolve to retain their land and to stop the intertribal warfare over the issue.
Te Puea’s family moved to Pukekawa and then to Mangatawhiri, near Mercer, she attended primary schools in Mercer and Auckland.
As the eventual successor to her grandfather, she was educated in the traditional Māori ways but did not attend school until she was 11, because of the ban on schooling by Tawhiao.
However, it was her grandfather who foresaw her future.
Once this valiant Maori Warrior refused, his land was confiscated, but he prophesied his people would once again come to the top ” like the bubbles which rise to the surface of the waters”. To his family, he left that duty as a heritage.
It was up to Te Puea, whose name means “the rising bubbles” to realize the dreams of two generations.
Mutunga/Destiny
At age she began attending Mercer Primary School and then went on to attend Mangere Bridge School and Melmerly College in Parnell.
She was fluent in speaking and writing Māori and she could speak English but her written English was very poor.
Although her formal schooling was limited, she had evening Bible studies under her father’s guidance and supplemented this by her growing interest in Maori lore.
Te Puea absorbed as much as she could of tribal knowledge by listening to the elders in speech and song. She was also encouraged to give speeches at gatherings.
It is said this made her individualistic and inclined to be arrogant.
She would also order around adults and behave boisterously.
She was told to be an example to her people and the elders sent her saying, ” you are a chief’s daughter, no one can command you, and one day you will command everybody. ” –
This was an experiment to be tried out. That same day, Te Puea’s mother came home and found Te Puea whipping two children about her own age. She explained the children had not obeyed her orders.
That same day, Te Puea’s mother came home and found Te Puea whipping two children about her own age. She explained the children had not obeyed her orders.
Her mother told her, she had the people to thank for her position in the tribe and she must always be humble and helpful to them.
She then received the same punishment she administered, but Te Puea never forgot that lesson.
When her mother died in 1898, Te Puea returned home reluctantly at the age of 15, to take her mother’s place.
She took a leadership position in Te Paina, a tiny Maori village on the banks of the Waikato River where her hapu, (extended family) lived. In 1910 about one hundred people lived there. It became a sanctuary where elderly people who had lost their land were welcomed.
However, being young and believing also that she was dying of tuberculosis, she rejected the traditional role expected of her and cut herself off from her people.
She lived a wild and promiscuous life.
Once she was given Ariki status she developed an arrogant and demanding personality and was often in conflict with her family and Whānau over her many partners and her drunken bickering – a lifestyle she later came to bitterly regret.
This led to conflict with “King” Mahuta and influential elders and subsequent open criticism of Te Puea.
Mahuta, Te Puea’s uncle and successor to Tawhiao intervened in about 1910 to draw her back to the tribe.
He had picked her out in her childhood as having special abilities and spent many hours passing on his knowledge to her.
Now he appealed to her to remember her duty to the Kingitanga and the people.
Te Puea returned to Mangatawhiri and took up a burden that sat heavily upon her.
Reconciliation with Mahuta came when Te Puea dragged him to safety from a mob of horses following a defiant session with him in the street when he tried to change her attitude.
As a result of this reconciliation, Te Puea became more prominent at meetings and hers was a voice listened to with respect.
In 1911 she returned to her people and resumed her hereditary role.
The early years, in particular, were difficult, because there was some resentment of her new position (her main support came from the people of Mercer and the lower Waikato); but she persevered with courage against the odds.
She had her first test as a leader.
Mahuta had decided to approve Maui Pomare (a Maori statesman and physician whose public health work helped revive New Zealand’s Maori population, which had declined nearly to extinction by the late 19th century) as a parliamentary candidate for Western Maori in place of Henare Kaihau, previously the nominee of the Kingitanga.
Te Puea accompanied Pomare around the villages of the lower Waikato; her support ensured his election.
In her twenties, Te Puea settled at Mangatawhiri and began dairy farming.
She began collecting and recording Waiata (songs), Whakapapa (genealogies) and Korero Tawhito (history) from her extended family.
She became a woman of action whose interest lay in community improvements.
During 1913 and 1914 the Māori community suffered a smallpox epidemic.
The main problem was that many of them believed that disease was a punishment from displeased spirits, and refused to go to Pākehā hospitals and no one in her tribe had been vaccinated.
In response, Te Puea set up a small settlement of nikau huts devoted to nursing people back to health.
Te Puea helped to feed the sick and nurse them back to health. It was exhausting work and it took several weeks before her patients began to recover.
Besides isolating the sick, no one was allowed in the village to bring food, so they ate eels and fresh fish from the river of pigeons from the bush.
This was successful, and though thousands of New Zealanders died, not one person died and the isolation of the village largely prevented the spread of disease.
In 1913, Te Puea adopted 60 girls whose mothers had died previously.
World War One began in 1914, but in the tiny village of Te Paina life continued on as it had for centuries. The Waikato Maori were reluctant to go to war.
However, this is when Te Puea’s influence became more firmly established among Tainui people during the First World War when she led their opposition to the government’s conscription policy.
She understood the sense of alienation that the military invasion, occupation, and confiscation of land had imposed upon the people, and understood, too, that the Kingitanga held the key to restoring their sense of purpose.
During the war, she drew on Tawhiao’s words forbidding Waikato to take up arms again after he had finally made his peace with the Crown in 1881.
Before he died, he said “The killing of men must stop.”
Towards the end of the war, however, the men were forced to join the army and sent to train as soldiers.
While it’s common to think that support for the war effort in 1914-18 was more or less unanimous in New Zealand, the reality was quite different.
Many Maori had mixed views about the First World War.
More than 2000 Māori would served in the Maori Contingent and Pioneer Battalion (later the Maori (Pioneer) Battalion) but, Waikato and Maniapoto were the most iwi to volunteer for service, under the leadership of Sir Apirana Ngata and Sir Māui Pōmare.
Meanwhile, many Māori from Taranaki and Tainui-Waikato resisted the call to fight for ‘King and Country’.
The varied reactions reflected Iwi experiences of British actions in the previous century.
It had only been 50 years since the first Taranaki war and invasion of the Waikato, which led to widespread land confiscation.
Those Iwi who had land confiscated as a punishment for having been deemed to be in rebellion against the British Crown in the 1860s mounted a campaign of resistance.
They opposed the war and did not want to fight for the British Crown.
Eventually, in June 1917, conscription was extended to Māori, but the target of this extension was really one iwi – Waikato, which brought this issue to a head.
Te Puea later fell out with Pomare because he supported Māori soldiers fighting for New Zealand overseas.
Te Puea worked against this behind Pomare’s back.
He became aware of her attitude and in the winter of 1918 attended an anti-conscription hui called by Te Puea where he was roundly abused by all the elders of the Kingitanga.
Following bureaucratic delays, the first ballot was drawn on 3 May 1918
Although the North Island had been divided into six Māori recruitment districts, the ballot was only applied to the Waikato-Maniapoto District.
Just 59 of the 200 men called up in this ballot reported for examination to the medical board, and more than half of them were found to be unfit.
It was up to the police to find the 141 defaulters and determine whether they had a valid reason for their non-appearance.
If they did not, they would be arrested and taken to the Narrow Neck military camp in Auckland, where they were subjected to severe military punishments if they refused to wear the uniform.
The potential for violence to break out was high, yet never realized.
One of the balloted men who failed to appear before the medical board was the Māori King’s youngest brother, Te Rauangaanga Mahuta.
When conscription began the enlistment age went from twenty to eighteen.
They needed more soldiers, and they were going to get them.
When they came calling in the Waikato, those who said no were arrested and sent to Narrow Neck Military Camp in Auckland for training.
One of them was the fourth Māori King Te Rata’s youngest brother, Te Rauangaanga Mahuta.
Despite the young chief being only sixteen years old and therefore not eligible for the ballot, a telegram was sent to him asking why he had not appeared.
When no reply was received, police in Hamilton were instructed to proceed immediately to arrest him.
With no legal requirement for Māori births to be registered, he would have trouble proving his age to the satisfaction of the authorities.
His attestation isn’t like the ones handwritten by men volunteering to serve.
It was typewritten, and because they didn’t know much about him, barely any of the questions were answered.
They forced him to sign. He marked an X.
In the section declaring his age, they’d written “Unknown, About 20 Years.”- though he was just sixteen.
Almost a week passed before police reconnaissance determined that Te Rauangaanga and other defaulters were almost certainly attending a ‘big meeting’ at Te Paina, Mercer.
On Tuesday 11 June, a deliberately small party of eight policemen chosen for their tactfulness and led by Sergeant Cowan of Pukekohe met at Mercer.
Sergeant Waterman, the township’s former policeman who was at that time stationed at Ponsonby, was one of the party, probably because of his wide knowledge of Māori customs.
At 2 p.m. they boarded two police motor wagons to proceed to Te Paina, where they found about 400 people gathered at the pā.
The Hui was evidently expecting them, as a number of young women played brass band instruments as they passed through the gate.
The police were escorted into the crowded hall, where ‘Princess’ Te Puea Hērangi invited Sergeant Waterman to state the purpose of their visit.
‘We have come to apprehend the men whose names have appeared in the papers as having been balloted,’ he told an attentive audience.
‘We look to you, Te Puea, to help us to identify the men whose names I will read from this list.
Although I would like it better if the men themselves would come forward as I read out their names.’
Rising to her feet, Te Puea greeted those present and their guests in the traditional manner. Then she responded to Waterman.
‘These people are mine … I will not agree to my children going to shed blood. Though your words are strong, you will not move me to help you. The young men who have been balloted will not go … You can fight your own fight until the end.’
Sergeant Cowan then read the list of names and asked any who were present to step forward.
As expected there was no response, and after waiting for a minute or two, Sergeant Waterman and two constables moved first to arrest Te Raungaanga.
The young Raungaanga was seated in the place of honor at the head of the room, surrounded by a number of young women, three of whom spread a flag in front of their chief as if to protect him.
When Te Raungaanga did not come forward, the constables stepped over the flag and picked him up.
A ‘great sigh went through the meeting’ as they carried him out of the whare.
Te Puea’s parting words to her young cousin cut the tense atmosphere. ‘Be patient. Let the spirit of your father and also the spirit of your ancestors be with you. God bless you.’
An attendee at the hui later said that ‘if Te Puea had but raised her little finger there would have been bloodshed.’
Instead, she walked up and down in front of the rows of sitting people, murmuring that they must remain calm and quiet.
The policemen then waded into the audience, arresting those whose names had been called.
In the end, only six other men were taken out. All had to be carried. When the operation was finished, Te Puea addressed the policemen again.
‘Return to your Government and tell them what I have said. I am not afraid of the law or anything else excepting the God of my ancestors … I will not allow any violence or blood to flow through my fingers … Go in peace and goodbye.’
In reply, Sergeant Waterman thanked Te Puea and the people for their behavior.
He also assured them he would return.
Despite the stressful experience, those present at the Hui considered that by making the authorities fetch the young men from the pā they had made a protest sufficient to satisfy the requirements of Māori honor and etiquette.
When the war ended in November 1918, the Māori in training were sent home, and all outstanding warrants were canceled.
Deciding what to do with the defaulters in custody was trickier.
By 1919 only 74 Māori conscripts had gone to training camp out of a total of 552 men called up, and none were sent overseas.
Despite the military’s objections, Cabinet decided in May 1919 to release all Māori prisoners.
Before their training had completed, Te Puea welcomed them home with a feast of celebration.
It was wonderful to have their young men home unharmed. With them, however, came a silent enemy- ‘the Spanish Flu’.
Within a week of the soldier returning more than half of the village lay sick- very sick.
Almost everyone between twenty and forty years of age caught the illness.
Te Puea watched broken-hearted, as one person died, then another, then dozens. Too many to write down all the names.
Before long only three men were still well. One made coffins and the other two evacuated the dead onto Te Puea’s boat.
Each morning while the river was misty and silent they made a long trip paddling to their burial ground. There they struggled to lift the coffins ashore, dug wide graves and buried them.
People were too sick to mourn. For three weeks, village life was a nightmare.
Te Puea was sick too, but she had promised her mother to care for her people. Day after day, she dragged herself out of bed, hardly able to stand up.
Her head pounded painfully, as she boiled water on the fire. Gasping for breath, she carried the water to those who had no one to care for them.
She cooked Kumara and shared it with the hungry. Then her body still aching, would crawl into bed.
One morning Te Puea struggled to get out of bed to get clean water. The whares (homes) were beginning to smell. She felt too weak this day to carry the water from the river.
Gazing at the few young children who hung listlessly around, she suddendly heard a high pitched scream. Water ! Water! Give me water , Please ! Te Puea winced in pain. A roumor had gone around the village that the sick should not be given water. Was this truth or lies?
She wondered. The English doctor from a nearby town hadn’t come to help them. Te Puea struggling gave the water to those she was caring for, but others didn’t.
Tears fell down her cheeks as she listened to the desperate pleas for water.
Suddenly a man burst from a whare, screaming. Her heart quickened as he ran towards her, arms flailing, raving mad, shrieking loudly!
He raced past and plunged into the river gulping the fresh cool water.
Then he crawled up the bank and stumbled back home. A few days later he was better.
When the disease passed the long tangi (funerals) were held, and the survivors mourned their dead. Everyone had lost family and friends and the survivors mourned their dead.
Following the influenza epidemic of 1918, Te Puea gathered up 100 orphaned children from lower Waikato and placed them in the care of the remaining families. But she needed a better home for them.
The epidemic thrust on her the responsibility of nursing the sick and caring for the orphan children of the deceased, this caused her to feel as though she needed to return her tribe to their ancestral land – the Waikato.
The land which had been confiscated would have to be bought back and would require contracts for road work, flax cutting, and draining.
Her people labored tirelessly for this great objective.
Te Puea was now determined to rebuild a center for the Kingitanga at Ngaruawahia, their original home before the confiscation, in accordance with Tawhiao’s wishes
She was dissatisfied with the swampy conditions at Mangatawhiri and wished to make a new start in the wake of the tragic influenza epidemic of late 1918, which had devastated the settlement, leaving a quarter of the people dead.
In 1920 Waikato leaders were able to buy 10 acres of confiscated land on the bank of the Waikato River opposite the township.
Then in 1921, the Tokomaru Maori’s returned to the Waikato- their homeland just as her grandfather predicted.
Te Puea was ready to begin moving the people from Mangatawhiri to build a new marae, to be called Turangawaewa (A place to stand).
The construction of their carved meeting house was strongly supported by Sir Āpirana Ngata and the Ngāti Porou people.
She became friendly with the Prime Minister, Sir Gordon Coates who was raised in a rural community where many Maori lived.
Coates was keen to lift Waikato Maori out of their sullen depression by addressing land grievances.
Coates had been shocked at the conditions in which Waikato Maori lived-calling them the poorest people he had seen in his life.
It was through her friendship with Ramsden that articles about her and her work began to appear in the national newspapers.
In these she was usually identified as Princess Te Puea, a title that she herself deplored, saying that the role of a princess does not exist in Māoritanga.
Pomare pointed out that neither does King.
Portrait of Te Puea Herangi from the early 1900s. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Ref: 1/2-001920-G.
At this difficult time, Te Puea’s leadership was of great importance to Tainui.
The revival of the Pai Marire faith, brought to Waikato from Taranaki by Tawhiao, helped to strengthen the people.
It seemed an impossible plan, given the distance the people had to travel and their lack of resources and Te Puea was frank with them about the difficulties they would face.
Years of hard work followed, draining and filling swampy scrub-covered land, and raising funds for the building of a sleeping house for visitors and, later, a large carved house intended as a hospital.
They had also to overcome the attitudes of the Pakeha citizens of Ngaruawahia, who initially tried to have them removed from the borough.
They made sufficient money to buy the land for the Pa, but the funds were urgently needed for the older members who had been living in bag huts.
So the Kuari gum diggers and the Maori concert party organized tribal singers and musicians to earn money by recording gramophone records.
In the evenings an expert in haka taught the young people, and Te Puea formed a group named Te Pou o Mangatawhiri.
Te Pou o Mangatawhiri set out to raise the hundreds of pounds needed for the carved house by performing in halls and theaters throughout the North Island.
In 5 months they earned enough to build a big assembly and dining hall for the pa.
3 yrs later the concert party went on tour and raised enough money for the flooring. From then, at times if there was a big project the concert party would go on tour again to raise the money.
Te Puea kept morale high on the tours, gathering the young people together to tell them stories and share her hopes with them, joking, jumping to her feet to show them how to improve their Haka, how to Pukana.
In 1927 they toured the East Coast, where Apirana Ngata, MP for Eastern Maori, led Ngati Porou in giving strong support to the building of the carved house.
It was the start of a long friendship between Te Puea and Ngata. At his suggestion, the house was named Mahinarangi, after the ancestor who had united Tainui with the tribes of the East Coast.
Six thousand people attended the hui to open the house in March 1929.
Te Puea was also increasingly becoming known outside Waikato.
Articles about ‘Princess’ Te Puea began to appear in newspapers and magazines.
Although help was obtained from outside the tribe, Te Puea insisted on sacrifices by Waikato craftsmen who responded by working for three years without payment.
In these years a community was welded together under Te Puea’s leadership.
Similar sacrifices were asked of and given by, the men responsible for the dedicated task of canoe construction for the 1940 centenary celebrations.
Meanwhile, the men and women worked on farms and cut flax or dug for kauri gum. The men also did road work or helped in the construction of buildings for the pa.
The resurgence of old-time arts was due to her influence and was one of her most notable achievements.
It was her aim to lift up the Maori people by a regeneration of culture combined with social progress and were exhibited at the museum.
With Turangawaewae Marae established, Te Puea now turned her attention to building an economic base for the people, dependent until now on seasonal wage-labor, and was already feeling the impact of the depression.
Ngata became native minister at the end of 1928, and his legislation providing for state loans to Maori farmers put land development within the reach of Waikato.
The development schemes began on small pockets of land at Waiuku and Onewhero.
Te Puea became the supervisor of the schemes and traveled constantly, taking families from Ngaruawahia to help with the work.
She shared Ngata’s vision of land development and dairy farming as the basis of strong communities; and as the farms were subdivided and homes and milking sheds built, she established or extended marae throughout Waikato.
Sometimes she chose the place herself, as at Mangatangi and Rakaumanga, supervising all the arrangements from cutting the trees to plastering the walls with cement over soaked, cleaned sacks.
Her main effort in social welfare lay in the development of Maori lands, where she set an example by taking part in the hard physical labor of turning idle lands into productive a 377-acre dairy farm where here people could make a livelihood for themselves and their children.
Te Puea’s zeal and leadership led to the success of her land policy in spite of disappointments and lack of finances.
By the mid-1930s the Turangawaewae community was well established.
Te Puea left the Kingitanga strong because of the central beliefs with which the young people grew to adulthood: faith, dedication to the Kingitanga, respect for Kawa, the importance of caring for visitors, and the value of hard work.
Each day began and ended with Pai Marire karakia, drawing the people together from wherever they were working.
This day-to-day expression of unity was of great importance to Te Puea; it reflected long-held Kingitanga beliefs that the burden of the wars and the confiscation must be carried by the people together if they were to find the strength to survive it.
By the late 1930s Te Puea and the Kingitanga had attracted increasing official recognition.
She was appointed a CBE in 1937.
Because of the improvement in Kingitanga relations with the government, Te Puea was willing to contemplate Waikato’s joining the Waitangi centennial celebrations in 1940.
Some years before she had set out to restore the skill of canoe building. Ranui Maupakanga supervised the refitting of the old canoe, Te Winika, by a team of younger carvers.
Te Puea’s vision of a fleet representing the traditional voyaging canoes came closer to fulfilment.
In 1936 the government seemed willing to help a project that could also serve a purpose at the Waitangi centennial; but the funds were slow in coming, and eventually, only one canoe, Nga-toki-mata-whao-rua, was completed in time.
Tainui ultimately stayed away from Waitangi in 1940.
However, Te Puea was affronted by the government’s refusal to exempt Koroki from the necessity to register under the Social Security Act of 1938, seeing this as evidence of its continuing failure to recognize his Mana.
But she was also angered by the fate of an action brought by Hoani Te Heuheu Tukino, of Ngati Tuwharetoa, against the Aotea District Maori Land Board to prevent Maori land being charged for the payment of debts.
Late in 1938, the case went to the Court of Appeal, which would not countenance Ngati Tuwharetoa attempts to rely on the Treaty of Waitangi because it was not part of domestic law.
The Tainui boycott of the Waitangi celebrations made the headlines.
But she was very anxious for a settlement so that the people could begin to put the pain of the past behind them.
In 1946 she decided to accept Prime Minister Peter Fraser’s offer of £5,000 per year in perpetuity, to be administered by the Tainui Maori Trust Board, not because it was an adequate settlement of the people’s losses, but because she was immensely practical, and knew it was the best deal she could get at the time.
Above all, it was a vindication.
Te Puea’s depth of feeling about the confiscation, however, never affected her many personal friendships with Pakeha – some of them very close – nor her strong belief that the two peoples should learn to respect one another’s cultures so that they could live comfortably together.
She sometimes talked intensely about this, tracing along with two fingers the parallel paths of two canoes – Maori and Pakeha.
Maori, she said, should show the Pakeha what was good in Maori culture, and should, in turn, take from Pakeha friends what was good in theirs.
In informal conversation, she tried to convey to Pakeha politicians an understanding of central Maori values.
One of the measures of Te Puea’s achievements is that she achieved a national status for the Kingitanga among both Maori and Pakeha.
Mahuta had tried to bridge the gap between Tainui and the Crown by going to Wellington as a member of the Legislative Council; Te Puea bridged it by inviting governors-general and politicians – Reform, United, and Labour in succession – to Ngaruawahia.
If distinguished visitors came to honor the Kingitanga it would help the people to overcome their suspicion of government.
Yet friendship with the government never meant compromise when Maori rights were at stake.
During the Second World War, Te Puea still would not encourage Tainui men to enlist, though she raised thousands of pounds for the Red Cross. In 1941 she told Fraser, ‘Look, Peter, it’s perfectly simple.
I’m not anti-Pakeha; I’m not pro-German; I’m pro-Maori.’ And in 1940 she supported Ngati Whatua against the government and the Auckland City Council, who were trying to evict the people from their remaining fragments of ancestral land at Okahu Bay.
During WWII, Some Maori leaders, such as Apirana Ngata, saw participation in war as the ‘price of citizenship’.
Others, such as the Kingitanga leader Te Puea Hērangi, questioned why Māori should fight for an Empire that had, within living memory, invaded and occupied their lands.
When the Second World War began, some Māori opposition to participation remained. One concern was the ability of Māori to maintain a combat force, given the size of their population.
Most elders, however, were resigned to the fact that they were obliged to allow their sons to serve. As one of the volunteers in the Second World War later wrote:
Their request could not be denied them by their elders and chieftains, all their long history had been steeped in the religion of war, and the training of the Maori child from his infancy to manhood was aimed at the perfection of the warrior-class, while to die in the pursuit of the War God Tumatauenga was a sacred duty and a manly death.
While leaders such as Apirana Ngata stressed the ‘price of citizenship’ line, ultimately many Māori enlisted for a mixture of reasons – to escape poverty or life in the backblocks or to follow their mates.
Throughout her life Te Puea strengthened Kingitanga networks beyond Tainui.
She traveled a great deal, often (in later years) with King Koroki, and through personal friendships established lasting relationships among many tribes in Taranaki, the Whanganui district, on the East Coast, and in the far north.
This in turn helped the re-establishment of people’s belief in the importance of the Kingitanga and in the Waikato people as its guardian.
Te Puea’s close friendship with Tau Henare of Ngati Hine, MP for Northern Maori, is reflected in the inscription of her words in the meeting house at Motatau, far from home:
‘Ka mahi au, ka inoi au, ka moe au, ka mahi ano’ (I work, I pray, I sleep, and then I work again).
This was also the answer Te Puea had given the Pakeha press when they wanted to know what to write about her when she received her CBE.
Her vision of the unity of the tribes was obvious in her enthusiasm for the celebrations in 1950 for the 600th anniversary of the arrival of the ‘Great Fleet’ of traditional voyaging canoes, conceived by Ngata and Peter Buck as a series of national hui.
Te Puea joined with Ngata in planning the hui, and she had nine model canoes carved for the final hui at Turangawaewae, to be presented to descendants of the chiefs of the first canoes. Beyond New Zealand, she established relationships in the Pacific, traveling in 1947 to Tonga and the Cook Islands.
With her she took King Koroki’s daughter, Piki, the future Maori Queen Te Atairangikaahu.
Te Puea was conscious of past links with other Polynesian peoples and hoped that this visit would make possible future contact with them.
She also saw the importance of the Kingitanga of strengthening a sense of identity with other hereditary Polynesian leaderships.
In other ways, too, Te Puea looked to the future of the people.
She changed her mind about the dangers of Pakeha education, becoming a member of a school committee.
Koroki wanted his adopted son, Robert Te Kotahi Mahuta, to be a mechanic, but Te Puea intervened to send him instead to Mount Albert Grammar School in Auckland.
He would later become principal negotiator for Waikato’s continuing claims against the Crown arising from the confiscation of their land.
She also sent her adopted daughter, Piki to the Anglican Waikato Diocesan School for Girls in Hamilton.
She welcomed the various Christian churches back to the marae, but was particularly close to the ministers and deaconesses of the Methodist church, some of whom were good friends and advisers.
From the mid-1930s she worked closely with the new medical officer of health, H. B. Turbott, to tackle high mortality rates from typhoid and tuberculosis.
Although the Department of Health had long ago foiled her attempt to provide medical care in a Maori environment in Mahinarangi, she succeeded in the early 1940s in opening a clinic at Turangawaewae House (the former Kauhanganui house), where the people felt comfortable.
Driven by a vision of restoring the strength of Tainui, she was able to achieve it because of her mana, her tremendous will, the strength she derived from her faith and the guidance of her ancestors, the loyalty she inspired in others, and her remarkable planning and organizational skills.
She had great warmth and generosity, and a wonderful sense of humor, and she communicated easily with people, whatever their background, in Maori or in English.
She loved children and was greatly loved by them in turn even though they might be growled at.
As she grew older the young ones were in awe of her, watching her direct the affairs of the marae.
Often she was very unwell, but nevertheless, she worked 7 days a week all her adult life.
Although she enjoyed big occasions from time to time, such as balls in Kimikimi with the Te Pou Mangatawhiri band playing, the old people remember her best in her bag apron and hat, working in the gardens, planting flower beds and raspberry canes, grubbing out blackberry roots, feeding the pigs.
She feared the purposelessness of life without work for all the people, just as she feared the impact of drink on family life, and would not let alcohol on the marae.
She tried to protect her young people from repeating what she later saw as the mistakes of her own early life: forbidding them to smoke and marching into hotels to order barmen not to serve drinks to the women, banging her walking stick on the floor.
But if the young people sometimes found her strict, they also recognized her deep concern for them all.
Te Puea died at home on 12 October 1952 after a long final illness.
Tumokai Katipa lived until 1985. They had no children of their own, but adopted many.
Te Puea’s Tangihanga lasted a week and thousands of people made their way to Ngaruawahia.
The prime minister and leader of the opposition attended the funeral; the BBC devoted a broadcast to her memory, and telegrams came from many parts of the world.
