My Waitangi Day Part 5

What Maori leaders understood has been the subject of discussion ever since. Certainly there was dispute at the time.

William Colenso

The Pakeha who expressed reservations about this at the time was Colenso, the printer for the mission in the Bay of Islands. He took notes of the speeches and published them later, so that is how we know the details of the discussions.

Colenso got the impression none of the Maori leaders really understood what the implications of the proposal were; at one stage he said so publicly, and was replied to by Henry Williams, the senior missionary, and the official translator between English and Maori. Hobson dismissed the objections rather promptly.

Another who was unhappy was Hone Heke. Then there was Bishop Pompallier, the Catholic missionary leader from across at Kororareka, who didn't like the cosy relationship between the Anglican missionaries and Hobson and his staff. He got a promise that all the churches would be treated equally.

 

When I first read Colenso's account while preparing the script for our re-enactment in 1975, the thing that struck me was the great variety of points of view at the time; there are as many different positions as people on the Treaty House lawn.

 

We had thought there were but two angles on the Treaty: Maori and Pakeha.  But in reality there were differences between the Anglican missionaries as the exchanges between Colenso and Williams make clear. Then on the Maori side there were differences between Hone Heke and Tamati Waka Nene to start with. And among the spectators there were another variety of angles: traders, landowners, and sailors, for instance, all had different ideas.

 

Even from the first day of talks, the Treaty was a complex and complicated issue, and it certainly hasn't been made simpler by the history since then.