The Otūmoetai beachfront
pathway was traversed for centuries by resident Māori iwi as well as iwi from
outside the region with peaceful or warlike intentions. During the 1800s, a
succession of European missionaries, traders, sailors, scientists and colonial
officials also walked the pathway, after first crossing the Wairoa River from
the Te Puna Peninsula to the west or the Waikareao Estuary from the Te Papa
Peninsula to the east.
Reverend John Wilson
After
ten years’ service in the Royal Navy, John Alexander Wilson was employed by the
Anglican Church Missionary Society as a catechist. He was posted to their
missions in New Zealand, arriving at the Bay of Islands with his wife and
children in 1833.
By
1835 mission stations had been established beyond the Bay of Islands including
Mangapouri (Hamlin and Stack), Matamata (Alfred Brown), Rotorua (Thomas
Chapman) and at Te Papa, Tauranga, by John Wilson. However, as the intertribal
fighting in the Tauranga region escalated, Wilson and the missionaries Alfred
Brown and James Stack at Te Papa sent their families aboard the missionary brig
Columbine for safety on 31st
March 1836. They remained at the Bay of Islands and did not return to Tauranga
until the following year.[1]
In
1836, Wilson and the Rev. Thomas Chapman set out from the Bay of Islands in the
hope of ending the intertribal war in the Bay of Plenty. The missionaries first
visited the Ngati Haua iwi at Matamata, before crossing the Kaimai Range to
meet with Tauranga iwi who were jointly planning an attack on the Te Arawa
people at Maketu and Rotorua. Alone at Te Papa during July 1836, Wilson
describes crossing the Waikareao Estuary by boat, before undertaking the (one
hour) beachfront walk to and from Otūmoetai Pa.
9th. --Mr. Chapman left to-day for Rotorua. I walked
some distance with him. On my return had a visit from one of the head chiefs of
Tauranga, old Taharangi. He was very pleasant but sorry to see me left alone
and grieved that everyone had left the station. Flooring my back room--found it
hard work planing boards and getting them to fit, I being a very unskilful
carpenter.
Sunday, 10th. --A few people came to morning
service at the settlement [the Te Papa Mission Station]. Spoke from Matt xiii.
13 to 16. Felt deeply the fulfilment of the prophecy here quoted by our Lord as
applicable to the present state of the Māori people. They appear alike
uninfluenced by the love or the terror of God.
“At
Otumoetai only sixty natives were present at service. Walked solitarily
homewards, if a desolate house can be called home. And as I sauntered along the
shore [the Otūmoetai harbour front walkway], the loneliness of the mission
station, surrounded on two sides by water, without a habitation near, or
native, save one [Taharangi, the elderly rangatira who protected the mission
station], open and exposed to the enemy, gave rise to sad forebodings. But
soon the thought flashed into my mind that it was for the Lord, and my gloom
was gone.”[2]
Intertribal
warfare in fact escalated during the remainder of 1836. Following the storming
of Maketu and Te Tumu Pa and the slaughter of their inhabitants, and the
plundering of the Rotorua mission station, Wilson and Chapman temporarily
abandoned the region and retraced their steps over the Kaimai range.
Rev. Richard Taylor, 1839
Rev.
Richard Taylor
Richard Taylor (1805–1873) was ordained as an Anglican priest in
1829. He was later appointed a missionary with the Church Missionary Society
(CMS) and settled at the Bay of Islands in 1839. He took part in Treaty
discussions at Waitangi in February 1840 and in later years he evangelised at
Whanganui and Taupo with considerable success.[3]
In
1839, Taylor had only been in New Zealand for a few days before he
set out from the Bay of Islands with missionary William Williams on the cutter Aquila
for the East Coast. They called at Tauranga during the voyage where they met
the missionaries Alfred Brown, his wife Charlotte and John Morgan. Like the Rev
William Colenso, Taylor was a keen student of natural history and the life and
customs of Māori. He also kept a diary in which he detailed all that he saw and
experienced. [4]
Monday 25 March – “I walked with Mr Morgan to the pa at Otutumoiti [Otūmoetai] which is a very populous one and much like the other distant about 3 miles [Maungatapu?]. I called upon a Mr Bidewell residing there [John Carne Bidwill, botanist and explorer]. He is supposed to be sent to spy the land by the New Zealand Association. He is a very gentlemanly and well-informed person. He returned with us to dinner and then accompanied us to see the mount [either Mount Drury or Maunganui]”. [5]
Taylor, Williams and their Māori crew remained for a week at the Te Papa Mission Station awaiting favourable winds, before they and the Aquila exited the harbour entrance to continue the voyage to the East Coast.
Joseph Cochrane, 1855
Joseph Cochrane
Like the
traders James Farrow and John Lees Faulkner, the former Londonderry auctioneer
Joseph Cochrane also located his store near the busy Otūmoetai pathway and
foreshore. On passing Joseph Cochrane’s
new store, from 1855, people travelling the beachfront would stop to converse
with the trader - described by his peers as ‘a cheerful, intelligent kind and
generous hearted man’. The store was a large building from which Cochrane
supplied other traders along the Bay of Plenty coast. Located by his patron and
protector Hori Ngatai on land, between the Faulkner's land at Okorore and Otūmoetai
Pa, Cochrane regularly forded the Waikareao Estuary to stay and converse with
his good friends Rev Karl Volkner and his wife Emma at the Te Papa Mission
Station.6
On one occasion when Archdeacon Brown was away from the Te Papa Mission
Station, Cochrane crossed the Waikareao Estuary and saw Rev Volkner and his Māori
schoolboys engaged in clearing a patch of scrub near the cemetery. Wishing to
assist, Cochrane set fire to the heaps of cut scrub, but when the wind suddenly
changed and the fire threatened to spread, someone, hoping to preserve the
wooden grave markers, pulled them up and threw them into the estuary. As the
estuary entrance was rendered tapu by this act, Māori fisherman and traders
were unable to enter or exit in their waka and sailing boats. To redress this
offence and transgression of tikanga (customary law), a Māori taua muru (ritual
plundering party), approached the mission station, but withdrew when Rev
Volkner, a former Prussian Army soldier, confronted them with his rifle. [7]
Another Māori muru party later crossed the Waikareao Estuary to
Cochrane’s premises seeking redress, but as he had considerable mana, being
Hori Ngatai’s Pakeha, Cochrane’s store was not plundered. Nevertheless, utu
(redress) was still required as without satisfaction the affected Māori traders
and fishermen would be rendered huka kore or people of no consequence. To the
satisfaction of the offended parties, utu was achieved when Cochrane’s wheat
theshing machine was ritually struck and damaged with a tomahawk, an act
considered tika - a perfectly correct response to the considerable
inconvenience he had caused them. [8]
[Editorial note: Readers may be interested in part one of this article, The
Otūmoetai Beachfront Pathway – Four Early Walkers, published here on Sunday
23 March 2025.]
References
[1] McClymont, W.G; The Exploration
of New Zealand, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington, 1940: 33.
[2] Wilson, J.A; Mission Life and Work in
New Zealand, 1833 to 1885, Star Office, Auckland, 1889: 41-42.
[3] Taylor, Richard – Dictionary of
New Zealand Biography – Te Ara, https://teara.govt.nz ›
biographies › taylor-richard
[4] Taylor, Richard, unpublished journal,
cited in Matheson, A. H; ‘Early Tauranga visitors’, Journal of the Tauranga
Historical Society (Inc.), No. 51, August 1974: 21
[5] Ibid, 26.
[6] Bay of Plenty Times, 23
October 1875: 2. Fletcher, Kathleen, Early Flax Traders Around Tauranga’, Journal
of the Tauranga Historical Society, No. 59, September 1976: 26.
[7] Bay of Plenty Times, 16
September 1884: 2. Matheson, A. H. ‘Otumoetai Pa and the Early Days in
Tauranga’, Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society (Inc.), August -
September 1975, No. 54: 17-18.
[8] Ibid.
Images
Photographer,
Sgroey,‘Otumoetai Beach’, 9 April 2022,https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ot%C5%ABmoetai_Beach.jpg
Wilson, John Alexander, Missionary
Life and Work in New Zealand, 1833-1862, C. J. Wilson (ed.), Star Office,
Auckland, 1899, title page.
Reverend
Richard Taylor. Bates, Arthur Palmer, 1926-2002: Photographs of Reverend
Richard Taylor and associations. Ref: 1/2-C-14302-F. Alexander Turnbull
Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22607779
Hopkins,
Wanda, ‘One of the Right Sort’ Kae Lewis (ed.), The New Zealand Goldrush
Journal, Vol. 4, 2020. Kae Lewis, https://www.kaelewis.com › cochrane
› hopkins
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