The Great Māori Feast at Remuera

In May 1844, an exceptionally large gathering of Māori took place at Remuera for a great feast, known as a hākari. In attendance were manuhiri (guests) from Tāmaki-Makaurau, the Waikato, and Bay of Plenty, along with the Governor of New Zealand and his officials. In the 19th century, there were many spectacular feasts or hākari, which drew the attention of colonial observers, commentators, and artists.

Joseph Jenner Merrett

Merrett was born in Tewkesbury, Gloucester, England, 18 December 1815, to William, a grocer, and Elizabeth Merrett. He was resident in Australia, and then Auckland by 1841. In 1841 he travelled in the central North Island with Captain William Symonds, Chief Magistrate and Assistant Surveyor General, the German naturalist Ernst Dieffenbach and Ensign Abel Dottin Best, to make sketches of places visited, people and things encountered and notable events and experiences, both for personal record and for possible use in publications.

His best-known work is the painting called “Native Feast held at Remuera, Auckland. New Zealand. May 11th 1844.” He was present on the historic occasion of the hākari feast and resided at Auckland until l847. He documented not just the scale of the event but also its political importance between Māori and pākeha.

The lithograph also has a lake or lagoon on the left forefront and a cottage in the foreground. There is recorded a spring being near Little Rangitoto. It is interesting to note that Bruce Hayward’s contention that the site of the great feast was near the current Dilworth College grounds. He mentions a wetland nearby where an old ice cream factory was located.

Both the 1845 Day & Haghe lithograph and a later Star Steam lithograph from 1890 had a description of the feast and a numbered legend at the bottom.

The Lithograph Legend

It is from the LEGEND that we can identify some of the key structures, personalities and features of the camp layout for the Great Feast.

This crop from the litho shows the blanket tents that were given as presents to the attending guests (item 12) in the background. In front of them hanging on a wooden structure are the dried sharks (item 13).

This is the welcoming party of Ngati Whatua (item 15)

These are the Waikato flag poles and flags set up where Te Wherowhero was positioned (item 10)

The Great Feast

The Event: What was its purpose and what brought it about?

Food was very important – it was an object of respect and its purpose was the desire to gain reputation and influence for the possessor. At hākari a chief would divide up the food. Piles would be set up and a chief would go along and note that a particular pile was for a particular iwi or hapū.

The Hosts and the Guests

The three Ngāti Whātua chiefs, Apihai Te Kawau, Te Tinana and Te Rēweti, hosted the festivities on the land between Ōhinerau Mt Hobson and Te Kōpuke Mt St John. Earlier acres of Remuera land on the side of Ōhinerau Mt Hobson had been cleared and planted with potatoes. Weeks before the guests arrived, a wall of 11,000 flax baskets over a quarter of mile long was built, which then contained hundreds of tons of potatoes. Each basket of potatoes was about seven feet wide and four feet high. Suspended above the wall were 9,000 dried sharks, pigs and large amounts of tea, tobacco, rice, flour and sugar. The dogfish sharks were about three feet long with dividers of larger sharks of 4-5 feet long. Opposite the wall was a 400 yard long shed covered with 1,000 blankets intended as presents for the guests.

But in the Lithograph the welcoming group is not so easily discernable and the women are not in clear evidence.

The feast was not primarily intended as entertainment but as a display of power and seriousness of intent by Ngāti Whātua and Waikato. It was intended as a warning to pākeha to take the idea of partnership seriously. On the day after the feast, Governor Fitzroy received about 200 of the principal chiefs in a formal setting at Government House. The importance of the Paremata or parliament at Government House cannot be underestimated. Fitzroy listened to specific concerns and grievances concerning land and reiterated the reasons for the Treaty of Waitangi and what the British had promised: “…may we mutually assist one another by every means in our power; we are able to to assist you in a most important manner, you are also able to assist us”. This was a highly significant political summit.

A Question of Site

The Te Aroha News, 28 December 1889 provides some ideas as to the broad location with its reference to two localities where Māori cultivated potatoes for the feast. But that is not definitive enough as Māori could have transported the provisions long distances. Early newspapers and magazines provided text and cartoons but in the main there was very little mapping included.

This photograph taken between 1880 and 1890 shows the position of Wren’s Mt Hobson Nursery. Mt Hobson is unseen to the left of the photo with the land falling away quite steeply in several directions from the northern side of the mountain. So as a possible site it is unlikely that the feast took place on this land. But it was important to the event as it provided large quantities of potatoes for the feast.

A short article in the Wairarapa Daily Times 27 June 1936 gives what appears to be an accurate locality. But this was written almost 100 years after the event and could be based on hearsay handed down. There is no source for the statement made about the site. But it does give us some clues which support the opinions of some of the researchers.

An important earlier reference comes from the New Zealander, 1845. It refers to ‘a fertile plain…bounded by woody volcanic hills’ and ‘this natural ampitheatre’. This sets us off on a trail looking for a geographic landscape similar to the 3D view below.

So where does that leave us? Still grasping for more current or at least modern interpretations from researchers. Peruse what follows and perhaps at the end of this you will have formed your own opinion.

It’s Time for Some Geospatial Forensics

This painting drawn from where Kepa Rd is today and looking towards Ōhinerau Mt Hobson could be the only one that shows Little Rangitoto Maunga-Rāhiri on land rising from Hobson Bay before quarrying began. If Merrett began his artwork from the top of this mountain then it is quite conceiveable that a line through Ōhinerau Mt Hobson as indicated in the lithograph would show Maungawhau Mt Eden in the background and not what we can presume to be Ōhinerau Mt Hobson.

This is Thomas Cheeseman and his granddaughter outside of his house at 20 Benson Road, just down from Little Rangitoto MaungaRahiri.

The house is reminiscent of the one in the pencil drawing and its location would be in keeping with what the artist depicted.

2 Mainston Road, Remuera

Also when you look at the terrain the environs of the old house does not provide the large plain described in newspaper clippings. The area of land, now part of Ellerslie Racecourse, is large and flattish but where are the hills mentioned. Mainston is bordered by a series of ridges from which emanate reasonably steep-sloped valleys.

Which brings us back to the point about artistic licence. We could leave it all here but there is another question which raises another possibility and it ties in with those reports in both the Auckland Star 1924 and the Wairarapa Daily Times 1936.

Mistaken Maunga?

3 Remuera-Epsom

From works on the history of Epsom ( eg The History of Epsom ed Graham Bush, 2006), it appears that a Scott’s farm was located somewhere in this proximity. The lithograph shows the farm referenced to the south west of a mountain and it would add logic to it being Te Kōpuke Mt St John when you see its location in relation to the volcanic cone. Just was it Captain Scott who owned it? More research…..

Dr Bruce Hayward, geologist and marine ecologist, believes the main mountain / maunga to be Te Kōpuke Mt St John. He says the feast was located close to Dilworth School grounds on Mt St John Road. And that the artworks are clearly painted from close to the intersection of Market Rd and Great South Rd or maybe a little up the hill nearer the Patey St intersection. He believes the site was closer to Market Rd to get the Three Kings peaks correct and the pool on the left was the wetland which existed just south of Market Road down towards the old ice cream factory. [5]

An interesting addition in the lithograph that is not in the Merrett original is the swamp in the bottom left. Ferdinand Von Hochstetter in his work Geology of New Zealand circa 1850 writes of “Mt St John, a small but very regular scoria cone….. At its foot, to the south-east, lie a small swamp, which fills the bed of a crater of a low tuff cone” (p196-197)

There is no conclusive answer but Bruce Hayward’s suggestion does have a good deal of merit. The name Remuera was given to the southern slopes of Ohinerau Mt Hobson, while the northern slopes of Ohinerau Mt Hobson were called Orakei. The amphitheatre was on the Dilworth estate which was divided by the railway line going through in 1873 and the southern motorway in the 1960s.

But maybe the question as to where the feast took place still challenges us.

Footnote