Russell Northland New Zealand

Hongi Hika, born at Kaikohe into one of the chiefly families of the Ngāpuhi, being a son of rangatira Te Hotete, once said he was born in the year explorer Marion du Fresne was killed by Māori—in 1772—though other sources place his birth around 1780.

His name can mean fish smell (this does not have an offensive connotation in Māori).

Hongi Hika had risen to prominence as a military leader in the Ngāpuhi campaign, led by Pokaia, against the Te Roroa hapu of Ngāti Whātua iwi in 1806–1808.

In over one hundred and fifty years since the Maori had first begun sporadic contact with Europeans, firearms had not entered into widespread use.

Ngāpuhi fights with small numbers of them in 1808, and Hongi Hika is present later this same year on the first occasion that muskets are used in action by Māori.

This is at the battle of Moremonui, at which the Ngāpuhi are defeated; the Ngāpuhi are overrun by the opposing Ngāti Whātua while reloading.

Those killed included two of Hongi Hika's brothers and Pokaia, and Hongi Hika and other survivors only escape by hiding in a swamp until Ngāti Whātua calls off the pursuit as an act of mercy.

Hongi Hika has become the war leader of the Ngāpuhi, and in 1812 he leads a large taua (war party) to the Hokianga against Ngāti Pou.

Despite his earlier experiences he seems to have become convinced of the value of muskets, which are used during this campaign.

New Zealand's indigenous Māori had quickly recognized the great advantages in trading with European and American strangers, whom they call tauiwi, whose ships had begun visiting New Zealand in the early 1800s.

The Bay of Islands offers a safe anchorage and has a high Māori population.

Māori had begun to supply food and timber to attract ships.

What Māori want are respect, plus firearms, alcohol, and other goods of European manufacture.

Kororareka (present Russell) had developed as a result of this trade but had soon earned a very bad reputation, a community without laws and full of prostitution, and has become known as the "Hell Hole of the Pacific", despite the translation of its name being "How sweet is the penguin", (korora meaning blue penguin and reka meaning sweet).

European law has no influence and Māori law is seldom enforced within the town's area.

The Ngāpuhi control the Bay of Islands, the first point of contact for most Europeans visiting New Zealand in the early nineteenth century.

Hongi Hika has protected early missionaries and European seamen and settlers, arguing the benefits of trade.

He has befriended Thomas Kendall—one of three lay preachers sent by the Church Missionary Society to establish a Christian toehold in New Zealand.

In 1814 Hongi Hika and his uncle Ruatara, the then-leader of the Ngāpuhi, had visited Sydney, Australia, with Kendall and met the local head of the Church Missionary Society, Samuel Marsden.

Ruatara and Hongi Hika invited Marsden to establish the first Anglican mission to New Zealand in Ngapuhi territory.

Marsden had remained based in New South Wales.

By the early nineteenth century there had been increasing contact between Māoris and Europeans, mainly by the many whalers and sealers around the coast of New Zealand and especially in the Bay of Islands.

A small community of Europeans has formed in the Bay of Islands made up of explorers, flax traders, timber merchants, seamen, ex-convicts who had served their sentence, and some escaped convicts.

Marsden, concerned that they are corrupting the Māori way of life, had become determined to find a mission station in New Zealand.

Marsden had lobbied the Church Missionary Society successfully to send a mission to New Zealand.

Lay missionaries John King, William Hall and Thomas Kendall had been chosen in 1809, but it is not until March 14, 1814, that Marsden had taken his schooner, the Active (captained by Thomas Hansen), on an exploratory journey to the Bay of Islands with Kendall and Hall, during which time he claims to have conducted the first Christian service on New Zealand soil.

He had met Māori Rangatira, or chiefs from the iwi or tribe Ngapuhi, who control the region around the Bay of Islands, including the chief of the Ngapuhi, Ruatara, and a junior war leader, Hongi Hika, who had helped pioneer the introduction of the musket to Māori warfare in the previous decade.

Hongi Hika had returned with them to Australia on August 22.

At the end of the year Kendall, Hall and King return to start a mission to the Ngapuhi under Ruatara's (and, later, Hongi Hika's) protection in the Bay of Islands.

Hongi Hika returns with them, bringing a large number of firearms from Australia for his warriors.

The first full-blooded European native born in New Zealand, Thomas King, is born in the Bay of Islands.

Ruatara dies in 1815, leaving Hongi Hika as protector of the Anglican mission at Russell.

Hongi Hika had studied European military and agricultural techniques while in Australia, and had purchased muskets and ammunition.

From 1818, he introduces European agricultural implements and the potato, using slave labor to produce crops for trade.

Hongi has married the famous Turikatuku, who is completely blind for much of her adult life, and who is an important military advisor for him.

He later takes her youngest sister Tangiwhare as an additional wife.

Both bear at least one son and daughter by him.

It is uncertain if he had other wives.

Hongi avenges the earlier defeat of Moremonui in the battle of Te Ika-a-Ranganui in 1825, although both sides suffer heavy losses.

The New Zealand Company (the first to bear the name) had formed in London in 1825 and sent out settlers, led by Captain James Herd, to the Hokianga in the far north of New Zealand.

The company's investors hoped for large profits, convinced there were fortunes to be made from New Zealand flax, kauri timber, whaling and sealing, but little of permanence had come of the venture.

In 1837, Edward Gibbon Wakefield had persuaded a group of notable men to join him in the New Zealand Association to promote the settlement of New Zealand.

As early as 1829, while in prison for abducting a fifteen-year-old heiress, he had published a pamphlet promoting the colonizing of Australasia.

Wakefield's plan entailed the company buying land from the indigenous residents very cheaply and then selling it to speculators and "gentleman settlers" for a much higher sum.

The emigrants would provide the labor to break in the gentlemens' lands and cater to their employers' everyday needs.

They would eventually be able to buy their own land, but low rates of pay would ensure they first labored for many years.

However, they had encountered strong opposition in London from the Colonial Minister and from the Church Missionary Society, and the Association had lapsed.

The following year, however, several of the intending colonists had formed a joint stock company.

Former members of the New Zealand Association join them and obtain a charter for the New Zealand Land Colonisation Company in 1839.

Once again, Wakefield provides the driving impetus.

The British, concerned over Wakefield’s dispatch of a survey party to purchase Maori lands and suspicious of increasing French activity on South Island, appoint naval captain William Hobson lieutenant governor of New Zealand, still a part of the New South Wales colony.

Events start to push the politicians towards a declaration of British sovereignty over New Zealand.

The officers of the New Zealand Company know that such a declaration, if that were to happen, would involve a freeze on all land sales pending the establishment of effective British control.

They have other plans, which involve treating New Zealand as a foreign country and buying the land directly from the Maori, knowing they can get a better deal that way.

British naval commander William Hobson, offered the position of Superintendent of the Bombay Marine at a salary of two thousand pounds a year, had taken a liking to Australia and had been a candidate for the governorship of Port Phillip, although the salary was not expected to be more than eight hundred pounds a year.

In 1837, he had sailed to the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, in response to a request for help from James Busby, the British Resident, who felt threatened by wars between Maori tribes.

He had arrived on May 26, 1837 and helped to reduce the tensions.

On his return to England in 1838, he had submitted a report on New Zealand to propose a trading system and a treaty with the Maori to obtain land.

At this time, the British government recognizes the sovereignty of the Maori people, as represented in the Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand of October 1835, which Busby had organized.

Concerned over Wakefield’s dispatch of a survey party to purchase Maori lands and by suspicious French activity on South Island, the British government appoints Hobson Lieutenant Governor under the Governor of New South Wales, Sir George Gipps (ratified on July 30, 1839) and British consul to New Zealand (confirmed on August 13, 1839).

Lord Norman issues him with detailed instructions on August 14, 1839, giving reasons for intervention in New Zealand and directions for the purchase of land "by fair and equal contracts."

The land will later be resold to settlers at a profit to provide for further operations.

William Hobson, British consul to New Zealand and Lieutenant Governor under the Governor of New South Wales, Sir George Gipps, arrives in the Bay of Islands on January 29, 1840, with a small group of officials, including an Executive Council comprised of the Colonial Secretary Willoughby Shortland, Colonial Treasurer George Cooper and Attorney-General Francis Fisher.

The Legislative Council comprises the above officials and three Justices of the Peace.

Upon arrival, Hobson almost immediately drafts the Treaty of Waitangi, together with his secretary James Freeman and Busby.

After obtaining signatures at the Bay of Islands, he travels to Waitemata Harbour to obtain more signatures and survey a suitable location for a new capital (he also sends the Deputy Surveyor-General, William Cornwallis Symonds, to other areas to obtain more signatures).

The New Zealand Wars open with the Flagstaff War when, on March 11, 1845, Chiefs Kawiti and Hone Heke lead seven hundred Māori in the burning of the British colonial settlement of Kororāreka (modern-day Russell, New Zealand).