A History of the English Church in New ZealandPurchas, Henry Thomas
History
A History of the English Church in New Zealand
Purchas, Henry Thomas
Church of the Province of New Zealand -- History; New Zealand -- Church history
After ten days' voyage down the eastern coast, the schooner which
conveyed Henry Williams, Hadfield, and their Maori retinue rounded Cape
Palliser; but, meeting there the full force of the west wind through the
straits, was unable to make direct for Kapiti, and took shelter in a
harbour which opened out on their starboard bow. "Very different from
what is represented in the map of Captain Cook," remarked Williams, thus
showing how little had hitherto been known about this magnificent inlet
of Port Nicholson. But once inside its capacious recesses, he found that
others had just discovered its value before him. Two Wesleyan
missionaries had been there during the year, and had left a native
teacher behind them; while a still more important visitor had arrived
even more lately in the person of Colonel Wakefield, advance agent for
the New Zealand Company, whose emigrant ships were every day expected.
Much to Williams' displeasure he learned that Wakefield was claiming
possession of the shores of the harbour--thus leaving to the Maori
inhabitants no place of their own for the future. This information came
from one of his old Paihia boys, Reihana, who had secured a passage with
the Wesleyan expedition, and was now engaged in teaching his own fellow
tribesmen. Reihana complained that he with others had opposed the sale
of their lands, but that the Europeans would take no account of their
rights, and insisted on having the whole.
Henry Williams was not opposed to colonisation if rightly undertaken,
but his blood began to boil at this story; nor did he feel happier when
he found that a savage quarrel had arisen between two parties of Maoris
over some of the land in question, and that during the last fortnight
many men had been killed. No protest could be made at the moment, as
Wakefield had left for the north; but, finding Reihana anxious to leave
a place where his property was thus in jeopardy, Williams bought of him
the land for a mission station. The Society at Home, however, decided
not to form a station in the place, and the section (which comprised
about 60 acres of what is now the heart of Wellington) remained in
Williams' hands. The Maoris would never allow it to be pegged out by
the Company's surveyors until Henry Williams himself, on his next visit,
presented all but one acre to the Company in consideration of their
undertaking to make reserves for the benefit of the natives. The one
acre he afterwards sold, and devoted the proceeds to the endowment of a
church at Pakaraka. This is the real history of a transaction which, by
frequent misrepresentation, has brought undeserved obloquy upon a
generous man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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