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Völkner and Mokomoko: ‘Symbols of Reconciliation’ in Aotearoa, New Zealand*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Allan K. Davidson
Allan K. Davidson*
Affiliation:
University of Auckland
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Extract

On 2 March 1865, the Revd Carl Sylvius Völkner, a Church Missionary Society (CMS) missionary, was hanged from a willow tree close to his own church and mission station at Opotiki in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand. John Hobbs, who had arrived as a Methodist missionary in New Zealand in 1823, reported on ‘the very barbarous Murder of one of the best Missionaries in New Zealand’ and noted that Völkner’s death marked ‘a New Era in the history of this country’. Völkner was the first European missionary of any denonomination to be killed in New Zealand since missionary work began in 1814.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 40: Retribution, Repentance, and Reconciliation , 2004 , pp. 317 - 329
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2004

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Footnotes

*

Note on style: most Maori words in this essay, following the current New Zealand convention, are reproduced in ordinary type. In quotations, Völkner’s name appears without an umlaut as per the original source.

References

1 John Hobbs to the Secretaries of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, Auckland, 7 April 1865: Auckland, St John’s College Library, MS MET 003/4/3 3.

2 Two Maori missionaries, Kereopa and Te Manihera, were killed on 12 March 1847. Booth, Ken, ed., For All the Saints: a Resource for the Commemorations of the Calendar (Hastings, 1996), 85–9 Google Scholar.

3 Colenso, William, Fiat Justitia: being a Few Thoughts Respecting the Maori Prisoner Kereopa, now in the Napier Gaol, Awaiting his Trialfor Murder… (repr. Christchurch, 1999), 11 Google Scholar.

4 Stokes, Evelyn, ‘Carl Sylvius Völkner’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography [hereafter DNZB], 5 vols (Wellington and Auckland, 1990–2000), 1: 566–7 Google Scholar.

5 Cited in Stokes, Evelyn, Wiremu Tamihana Rangatira (Wellington, 2002), 389 Google Scholar.

6 See Howe, Earle, Caught in the Crossfire: a Revisionist Approach to Philo-Maori in New Zealand History, 1850–1870 (Auckland, 2000)Google Scholar.

7 Tucker, H. W., Memoir of the Life and Episcopate of George Augustus Selwyn, 2 vols (London, 1879), 2: 206–7 Google Scholar.

8 Church Missionary Record X.9 (September 186 5), 262.

9 Lyndsay Head, Te Ua Haumene’, DNZB 1: 512.

10 Church Missionary Record X.g (September 1865), 261.

11 Elsmore, Brotiwyn, Like Them That Dream: the Maori and the Old Testament (Auckland, 2002), 123–31 Google Scholar; Manafrom Heaven: a Century of Maori Prophets in New Zealand (Auckland, 1999), 168–84.

12 Clark, Paul, ‘Hauhau’: the Pai Marire Search for Maori Identity (Auckland, 1975), 32–3 Google Scholar. See also Belich, James, The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict (Auckland, 1986), 128, 167, 194 Google Scholar.

13 Clark, ‘Hauhau’, 33.

14 Ibid., 36.

15 Vaggioli, Dom Felice, History of New Zealand and its Inhabitants, transl. Crockett, John (Dunedin, 2000), 242–3 Google Scholar.

16 C. S. Völkner to Sir George Grey, Opotiki, 13 January 1864, in Howe, Earle, Bring Me Justice (Auckland, 1991), 44 Google Scholar.

17 Simmons, E. R., In Cruce Salus. A History of the Diocese of Auckland 1848–1980 (Auckland, 1982), 73 Google Scholar.

18 G. S. Völkner to Sir George Grey, Opotiki, 16 February 1864, in Howe, Bring Me Justice, 48.

19 John Whiteley, a Methodist missionary who was killed by Maori in 1869, and John Morgan, a CMS missionary, both corresponded with C. W. Richmond while he was Colonial Treasurer and Minister of Native Affairs giving information about Maori activities. See The Richmond-Atkinson Papers, ed. G. H. Scholefield, 2 vols (Wellington, 1960), 1: 292–4, 372–3. 389–90, 455–7-

20 Völkner’s letters, including the drawing, are reproduced in Howe, Bring Me Justice, 3 5, 43–9.

21 Different accounts talk about such things as Völkner’s headless body being put in a cesspit and attacked by dogs before it was buried outside his church. His eyes were taken out and swallowed by Kereopa, his head placed on the pulpit inside his church and later preserved in accordance with Pai Marire custom. While these reported actions confirmed Pakeha views of Hauhau fanaticism they need to be seen against the background of Maori traditional treatment of enemies and within the context of the rejection of missionary Christianity and Pakeha authority.

22 ‘Mr Grace’s Imprisonment at Opotiki’, Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (186$), A-s, 24 [hereafter AJHR].

23 The Committee of Ngatiawa, Whakatohea, Urewera, Taranaki to the Government, Auckland, Opotiki, Place of Canaan, 6 March 1865: AJHR (1865), E-$, 9.

24 Ibid., 10.

25 New Zealand Herald, 20 and 23 March 1865 [hereafter NZH].

26 Daily Southern Cross, 22 and 23 March 1865; ‘Mr Grace’s Imprisonment at Opotiki’, AJHR (1865), A-5, 24–31.

27 NZH, 22 March 1865.

28 NZH, 23 March 1865.

29 T. S. Grace to Henry Venn, Auckland, 31 March 1865: CMS Papers, Australian Joint Copying Project Microfilm 223.

30 ‘Proclamation of Peace’, AJHR (1866), A-o, 3.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid., ‘Return of Maoris killed or wounded at Opotiki’; Lyall, A. C., Whakatohea of Opotiki (Auckland, 1979), 161–3 Google Scholar.

33 Lyall, Whakatohea, 173.

34 ‘Royal Commission to Inquire into Confiscation of Native Lands…’, AJHR (1928), G-7, 21, 22.

35 Tribunal, Waitangi, The Ngati Awa Raupatu Report (Wellington 1999), 63–8 Google Scholar.

36 Tairongo Amoamo, ‘Mokomoko’, DNZB 1: 292.

37 Waitangi Tribunal, Ngati Awa Report, 71.

38 NZH, 28 March 1866.

39 ‘Mr Grace’s imprisonment’, AJHR (1865), A-5, 25.

40 NZH, 28 March 1866.

41 Daily Southern Cross, 18 May 1866.

42 NZH, 30 March 1866.

43 Ibid.

44 Daily Southern Cross, 18 May 1866.

45 T. S. Grace to Henry Venn, Auckland, 15 June 1866, CMS Papers, Australian Joint Copying Project Microfilm 223.

46 Steven Oliver, ‘Kereopa Te Rau’, DNZB 1: 503.

47 Colenso, Fiat Justitia, 25–7.

48 Hilliard, David, ‘The Making of an Anglican Martyr: Bishop John Coleridge Patteson of Melanesia’, in Wood, Diana, ed., Martyrs and Martyrologies (Oxford, 1993), 333–45 Google Scholar.

49 Anon., St Stephen the Martyr. Opotiki. N.Z. (Opotiki, 1936).

50 A New Zealand Prayer Book – He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa (Auckland, 1989), 16.

51 Ewan Johnston, Wai 203 and Wai 339 Research Report, A Report Commissioned by the Waitangi Tribunal, June 2002, 7, appendix 2.

52 NZH, 11 November 1989.

53 Booth, For All theSaints, 75–6.

54 NZH, 13 March 1991.

55 Howe, Bring Me Justice, 42.

56 Proceedings of the Fiftieth General Synod – Te Hinota Whanui (Auckland, 1992), 107.

57 Maramena Roderick, ‘“Farewell, you Pakeha! I die without a crime”‘, Mana 1 (January/February 1993), 87.

58 ‘Brief History of Hiona St Stephens Church’, http://www.waiapu.anglican.org.nz/bop/Opotiki/welcome.htm, accessed 17 June 2003.

59 ‘Whakatohea Deed Terminated’, Rural Bulletin 1998, Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. See: http://www.maf.govt.nz/mafnet/publications/archive/rural-bulletin/1998/index.htm, accessed 17 June 2003.

60 Ward, Alan, An Unsettled History: Treaty Claims in New Zealand Today (Wellington, 1999)Google Scholar. Ngati Awa, a neighbouring tribal group of Whakatohea, who also were affected by the deaths of Völkner and Fulloon and subsequent land confiscation, have ‘accepted a treaty settlement from the Government, including an apology and about $42 million in cash and land’, as reported in NZH, 3 February 2003.

61 Heretaunga Pat Baker, The Strongest God (Whatamongo Bay, 1990), 233.

62 AD News, May 1991.

63 Booth, For All the Saints, 77.