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Te Weriweri o te Tonga – The Dread of the South
A name that northern tribes used for the chief Te Rangihaeata
Te Rangihaeata loomed large in Māori and European imaginations in the early 1800s. He was one of Ngati Toa’s most feared warriors, and a staunch defender of its land rights.
This watercolour by Charles Barraud shows Te Rangihaeata later in life, when his appetite for war was waning. Shortly before his death in 1855, he told Governor George Grey that ‘the spirit of the times was for peace, and now men, like women, used their tongues for weapons’.
Barraud, a Wellington pharmacist, was a key figure in the colonial arts scene. Eighteen years after painting this work, he co-founded the Fine Arts Association – the capital’s first organisation dedicated to art.
This extract originally appeared in Te Ata o Tū The Shadow of Tūmatauenga: The New Zealand Wars Collections of Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2024) on pages 56-57.
This extract was authored by Matiu Baker.
Barraud’s 1864 watercolour of Te Rangihaeata, based on an earlier portrait by Richard Oliver, captures him just prior to his premature death from illness in 1855. A rangatira of high birth, Te Rangihaeata received a classical education and was instructed in whakapapa, pūrākau and karakia. He was also a tohunga whakairo. A noted warrior, he was notoriously mercurial by nature, but never reckless. Te Rangihaeata adhered to a more classical and conservative Māori lifestyle. He was known only to wear customary Māori clothing, and maintained his long hair in the customary manner for men, oiled and tied in a topknot and adorned with feathers. Tall, muscular and well tattooed, he was striking in appearance. Barraud’s painting is a depiction of a classical Māori rangatira, everything Te Rangihaeata embodied in life. It was painted during the wars of the 1860s, perhaps to remind viewers of the disturbances of the 1840s at Wairau and the Hutt and Te Tai Tokerau, and the ultimate futility of attempting to resist the unstoppable forces of colonial progress and change.