This month marks the bicentenary of the arrival of the first Pakeha to settle permanently in New Zealand, in the Bay of Islands in Northland. Charmian Smith talks to Dr Angela Middleton about her new book, Pewhairangi: Bay of Islands Missions and Maori 1814-1845.
Archaeologist Dr Angela Middleton is intrigued by the little things of daily life she and her colleagues find in archaeological digs.
''It's the immediacy of material culture, artefacts that have been buried for 200 years and there they are. They might be thimbles, buttons, beads,'' she says.
Some of the artefacts she and her husband, Associate Dr Ian Smith, of the University of Otago, found in excavations at Te Puna, one of the early missionary sites in the Bay of Islands, are on view in ''Whakapono: Faith and Foundations'', an exhibition at the Hocken Library about the early New Zealand missions established by Samuel Marsden, of the Church Missionary Society.
They also feature, along with numerous contemporary images, in her new book Pewhairangi: Bay of Islands Missions and Maori 1814-1845 (Otago University Press).
An honorary fellow in archaeology at the University of Otago, she describes herself as a historical archaeologist, dealing with the period since the first European contact, the late 18th and early 19th century.
''What I enjoy about archaeology is putting it together with the archives, so you can put together the place, the artefacts, the story.
"The archives may include, in the case of Te Puna, the accounts missionaries have to keep, all the things that came into the mission used for trade with the Maori to buy pork and potatoes or to pay for labour - hoes, plane irons, shirts, trousers, tobacco, spades, iron pots, knives, adzes, axes, jackets and so on.
"From reading those sources you understand more about everyday stuff, what was going through the mission house, what was being used, the economy, really.
"Economy can be a dry word but I think that when economy turns into objects that we use to buy and sell, then it's much more interesting,'' Dr Middleton says.
For example, the missionaries sometimes used to redeem slaves with part payment of an axe and a pound of tobacco followed by an iron pot as the subsequent payment, she says.
Much of her archival research has been in Samuel Marsden's letters and journals and other missionary material in the Hocken Library and its new Marsden online archive, as well as other sources such as the Waitangi Tribunal reports, which include oral histories and other iwi sources.
At Te Puna they excavated the cellar of the mission house, which had been demolished and turned into pasture many years ago.
She likes to think the house might have been similar to that at Te Waimate, which is still standing and has a cellar of similar dimensions, or the Elms at Tauranga, which was built about the same time.
This month marks the bicentennial of the arrival of the first group of missionaries, the first Pakeha to settle permanently in New Zealand, and the first Christian sermon, given by Marsden on Christmas Day.
On December 21, 25 Europeans landed at Rangihoua Pa, in the northern Bay of Islands, to establish the first mission at Hohi, under the protection of Hongi Hika, the local Ngapuhi chief.
They had met Maori in Paramata and were familiar with Maori language, Dr Middleton says.
The Europeans were John King, a ropemaker and shoemaker; William Hall, a carpenter; Thomas Kendall, a schoolteacher and JP; and their families, as well as some ticket-of-leave convicts.
None of them were ordained ministers.
However, they were expected to instruct the Maori about Christianity, live exemplary Christian lives and keep up standards of dress and appearance.
Even from the beginning, clothing was ironed!
''Marsden's ideas were that you had to civilise before you could Christianise, and he thought you civilised by having a trading relationship and by teaching the arts of civilisation, which were shoemaking, ropemaking, carpentry and education,'' Dr Middleton said.
It was not until Henry Williams arrived a decade later that the idea was reversed: Christianise first and do the civilising afterwards.
''That explains why there were no baptisms until after Henry Williams arrived in 1823.
"The first baptism was in 1824 but it wasn't particularly successful because the person was already dying when he was baptised.
"The first successful baptism wasn't until Rawene Taiwhanga and his family were baptised in 1830.''
• Life was not easy for the first missionaries.
Until their individual houses were completed in 1816, they lived in a raupo whare just up from the beach.
It had no floor and housed the three missionary families and the others, as well as Kendall's school for Maori children.
''John King describes when his wife, Hannah King, was about to give birth to their second child, how the rain came in and the water came over his shoes,'' Dr Middleton says.
''Marsden expected the missionary families to be self-sufficient in producing all their food but they were living in a narrow little valley and there wasn't enough land to produce wheat. Their wheat crops failed dismally.''
It was hard for the women.
One of them wrote something about ''housekeeping in the savage land'', but only one diary and the occasional letter have survived.
However, most of the missionary women had Maori women who acted as domestics in the house, so they did not have to do all the housework themselves.
Besides being paid, the Maori women would also have learned to read and write and needlework skills.
The King family also raised some Maori children as part of their family, although they still kept connections with their natural families in the pa, Dr Middleton says.
''The Europeans thought they were superior to Maori because they had civilisation and Christianity, but Maori had mana and land, and as far as those missionary families were concerned, Maori had the food.
"They produced pork and potatoes and those three families were very dependent on Maori.''
The Maori, in turn, considered themselves superior but, from their point of view, the missionaries had technology and things they wanted to trade, such as iron tools and muskets.
Chiefs also acquired mana by having their own Pakeha, she said.
''From the Maori point of view, the influence of the missionaries - literacy was a big thing and if you ask someone from Ngapuhi who is a Christian or Anglican, Christianity was of huge importance.''
However, from an anthropological perspective, the missionaries' practice and beliefs were as superstitious as the Maori's, Dr Middleton says.
''[James Shepherd] told Maori that God was preserving their lives, not the food they consumed as Maori thought; he also insisted it was God who caused the rain to fall, not the wind that brought the clouds with them as Maori considered,'' she writes.
He said the missionaries were here to ''rescue [Maori] from the fires of hell'' and was upset when told such a place as hell did not exist.
''The missionaries espoused the theory of giving thanks for God's providential actions, whereas from an anthropological point of view, it's as superstitious as Maori beliefs in tapu and noa,'' she says.
While some of the missionaries, such as Henry Williams, understood aspects of Maori culture, it was Pakeha outside the missionary community who became intimately involved with Maori, marrying Maori wives and even becoming ''Pakeha Maori''.
In the decades between 1814 and 1840, the Church Missionary Society established several missions in the North Island, as did other Christian denominations such as the Wesleyans and Roman Catholics.
As in other parts of the world, except for Australia with its convict settlement, missionaries heralded, possibly unwittingly, the beginnings of colonisation, Dr Middleton says.
''It's a process that would have happened anyway but they were like an advance guard.
"Here they were inextricably interwoven with the process of colonisation, particularly in the late 1830s, when there were increasingly more Europeans coming from New South Wales and there were land sharks investing in land in the Bay [of Islands] and things were starting to get out of control.''
British annexation took place partly because of that increasingly uncontrolled activity and the New Zealand Company's plans to set up a settlement.
''Henry Williams was inextricably involved in the Treaty of Waitangi because he translated the English version into Maori and it was the Maori version that was signed, and the debate's gone on ever since. He created various neologisms because of words that didn't exist in Maori.''
Pewhairangi is only about the Church Missionary Society missionaries and it is a partial story of the Bay of Islands history, partial because it is hers and also because there are other stories to be told as well, Dr Middleton says.
The book
Pewhairangi: Bay of Islands Missions and Maori 1814-1845 is published by Otago University Press.
The exhibition
''Whakapono: faith and foundations'', celebrating the Marsden Bicentennial 1814-2014, is at Hocken Collections, Anzac Ave until February 7.
