Henry Williams with his wife and children settled on the Bay of Islands, in the North East of New Zealand, at Paihai, a great resort of whalers. It was in this district that most of the early missions were established, Wesleyan and Roman Catholic as well as Anglican. Henry Williams was soon after joined by his brother William, and together, with wives and families they lived for nine years at Paihai. William showed at once an extraordinary aptitude for learning the language. His brother said of him he “appears not to learn it but it seems to flow naturally from him.” His presence at Paihai enabled Henry to travel and visit distant parts of the island with the view of extending the mission. The experiences of these two brothers and their families belong to the romance of missions. They gained a remarkable knowledge of the Maoris and their customs, and won a great influence over them. Absolutely fearless in the way in which they exposed themselves to danger, they were often able to make peace between the tribes in the fierce conflicts which were constantly breaking out. The wrongdoing of an individual was punished by the most bloody vengeance on his whole tribe, and defeated enemies were killed and eaten. Unfortunately fire-arms had been introduced among the Maoris by the traders, and this made their warfare much more deadly. They hoped at first that the missionaries also would provide them with fire-arms, and by refusing to do so, the Williams were at the beginning reduced to great privations for want of food. They not only refused to give fire-arms in exchange for the necessaries of life, but never carried them themselves. The Maoris soon recognized the difference between them and the traders, but the beginnings of the mission were full of dangers and difficulties.
The savage attacks of the Maoris threatened several times to destroy the mission, but amidst all dangers, not only to himself but to his wife and children, Williams remained calm and unafraid. He gained an amazing personal ascendency over the Maoris, and exposed himself fearlessly again and again in order to stop their feuds and bring an end to their repeated and cruel wars. It was not only the Maoris he had to fear, he met with much opposition from the settlers also, who objected to the efforts of the missionaries to secure fair treatment for the natives, and threatened to turn them out of the country. Williams was in no hurry to make converts. He would have no hasty baptisms. For each there must be a long period of probation; but when, after due preparation and testing, the first had been baptized, the number of Christians increased rapidly. Williams gave himself with great energy to language study. He found the Maori dialects very corrupt and difficult to reduce to order. In this work he was greatly helped by his brother William, who was an Oxford scholar, and who helped to fix the language and give it its grammar. Portions of the Bible were translated and the Maoris, old chiefs as well as young boys, after being taught in the schools set up by the missionaries, became eager readers.
It was the constant recurrence of native wars that weighed most heavily upon Williams’ mind. In 1832, he wrote of himself as “in much distress of mind at the present state of things in this land. All is dark, dreary and in dire confusion.” But he was not often cast down. The chief mission station, Paihai in the Waimate, where he lived, was a centre of education and industry. Charles Darwin, visiting it during his voyage in the Beagle in 1835, wrote of it: “The lesson of the missionary is the enchanter’s wand. I thought the whole scene admirable and to think that this was the centre of cannibalism, murder and all atrocious crimes.”
In time some of the most bloodthirsty old chiefs died and the young ones were more ready to listen to the new teaching. They became eager readers of the Bible, they attended the schools, were ready to learn simple handicrafts and after their baptism gave up their desire to fight and seek revenge for every provocation.
After a time the missionaries who now had amongst their converts some who were eager to help in the work of teaching, were able to start other missions further south than the Bay of Islands, in the neighbourhood of the Waikato and the Thames rivers. Richard Taylor, one of the early missionaries, writes:
“The Gospel could not have made the progress it did or have obtained such a permanent hold upon the native mind, had it not been for the agency of the native teachers. In many places they were the first bearers of the Gospel, and some laid down their lives.”
In 1838 Bishop Broughton came from Australia to confirm the candidates taught and prepared by the missionaries. He reported to the C.M.S. committee at home on the flourishing condition of the Mission. The Christians were said to number thirty thousand, and Bishop Broughton urged the desirability of sending out a Bishop to superintend the work of the Church in New Zealand. The special conditions of the country demanded that the influence of the Church should be felt in all the new circumstances that were arising. Settlers were pouring in, many of them convicts from Australia, unprincipled men with no desire for anything but their own gain. Contact with them was teaching the Maoris their evil ways, and leading to much corruption and drunkenness. To the settlers the natives with their old established customs of land tenure, their great attachment to their lands, and their constant tendency to fight for their rights, were hindrances in their way. They desired only to exterminate them. The home government realized that this was not a state of affairs that could be left to settle itself. In the interests of peace, they determined that New Zealand must be made into a British Colony. This was strongly opposed by the C.M.S. who encouraged by the progress that Christianity had made amongst the Maoris, believed that before long the whole people would become Christian and believed that the arrival of colonists would only disturb the peaceful development of the natives. It was, however, impossible to imagine that a country as full of resources as New Zealand could be left to its scanty native population. Settlers were sure to come, and it was better for all that a good and stable government should be set up in the land. An English officer, Captain Hobson, was therefore sent out to enter into peaceful negotiations with the chiefs, in order to establish the sovereignty of the Queen in New Zealand. This was not an easy matter, for the chiefs feared that to agree to this would mean that they would have to give up to the Queen of England the ownership of their lands. They had heard of what had happened in other countries and how the people had been reduced to the position of slaves by the coming of the white settlers. A great gathering of the chiefs was held at Waitangi early in 1840, when Captain Hobson explained to them what was proposed, and told them that “the shadow would go to the Queen and the substance would remain, and that they might rely implicitly on the good faith of Her Majesty’s Government.” The question was long discussed. The missionaries urged the chiefs to trust in the words of Captain Hobson. At last one of the chiefs said to him, “You must be our father, you must not allow us to become slaves; you must preserve our customs, and never permit our land to be wrested from us,” and the majority of the chiefs ended by signing the treaty of Waitangi. Captain Hobson fixed the seat of government for the new colony at Auckland in the northern island, where the Maori population was densest, and which possessed splendid water communications in every direction.
The implications of the Treaty of Waitangi were by no means recognised by the settlers who were arriving in New Zealand in ever increasing numbers. They were attracted by the promises of the New Zealand Land Company. The Company had little understanding of the Maori customs of land tenure. It ignored the fact that in the opinion of the Maoris the whole land already had owners, with boundaries well known to the different chiefs, and it sold lands to intending settlers before it had duly acquired their ownership. In consequence, there were abundant possibilities for discontent on the part of emigrants when they arrived to take possession of lands which they believed were theirs by purchase, and for hostility on the part of the natives who felt that they had been betrayed. In this way the seeds of many future wars were sown.
In those early days of the life of the colony, natives and settlers alike needed Christian teaching and education to show them how to live in peace and develop the country. The newly set up government needed help from those who had lived and worked amongst the natives, in their important task of establishing order and justice. New Zealand with its beautiful climate and its rich resources was bound to become a great and prosperous country. It was necessary that the foundations of its future greatness should be laid in principles of righteousness and justice. The labours of Marsden, the two Williams and others had established Christianity throughout New Zealand, what was needed now was organization to make their work permanent. Selwyn as he viewed the task before him felt the full joy of a born organizer and administrator. He wrote, “I find myself placed in a position such as was never granted to any English Bishop before, with a power to mould the institutions of the Church from the beginning according to true principles.” The ground was well prepared for his work. The year before his arrival Henry Williams could write, “The whole fabric of native superstition is gone—their weapons of warfare are laid by—their petty quarrels are settled by arbitration.” It was a too sanguine view as later events showed, but that it could be held at all was a sign of how much had been done.