Between Māori and Missionary Worlds: The Chiefly Childhoods of Rongo Hariata Hongi and Ripero Hongi in Early Nineteenth Century Bay of Islands, New Zealand

Archaeological and archival data permit insights into the childhood worlds of individuals, permitting the construction of microhistorical narratives. In this case study two Maori children’s documented experiences in a New Zealand mission and missionary school are enhanced with information provided by material remains excavated from missions and the first school. Rongo Hariata Hongi and her brother Hare were the children of the northern Māori chief, Hongi Hika, and his primary wife, Turikatuku. They were born in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands in the first decades of the nineteenth century. The first New Zealand Church Missionary Society missions formed significant influences in the lives of these and other Māori children as they became proficient in the new skills of literacy and adopted aspects of European material culture. Hare travelled to New South Wales, Australia, several times, where he attended Samuel Marsden’s ‘seminary’ or school for young Māori men, while Rongo, living at times in the mission, was taught by missionary wives at Kerikeri. Archaeological evidence relating to the first New Zealand school, opened in 1816, and the missions at Hohi and Kerikeri, will be used alongside archival sources to create a narrative of Rongo and Hare’s childhoods and the ways in which these (sometimes conflicting) influences defined their later lives. Despite living between these worlds, both Rongo and Hare stayed fast to their Māori traditions and identity. This narrative will be contextualized with current broader theories relating to childhood and historical archaeology.