Establishment of the English Missionaries at Kerikeri

Original title: ‘Établissement des missionnaires anglais a Kidikidi, (Nouvelle-Zélande)’. Engraved by Ambroise Tardieu. Plate No. 43 from Louis Isidore Duperrey, Voyage autour du monde, exécuté par ordre du roi, sur la corvette de Sa Majesté, la Coquille, pendant les années 1822, 1823, 1824, et 1825 (Paris: Arthus Bertrand, 1826). Other lithographs from the series can be viewed here.

The following text comes from the catalogue for the exhibition Tirohanga Whānui.

The French party stayed at Kerikeri on the night of 9 April 1824 after their visit to Rangihoua earlier in the day.

At the centre of the picture is the Mission House built only two years earlier on land granted to Rev. Samuel Marsden by Hongi. Here, using logs transported by raft to Kerikeri from Kawakawa and Waikare, then made into planks by Māori sawyers, missionaries worked with Māori carpenters. The house was first occupied in 1821 having taken two years to build. In this careful composition there is no longer any sign of the temporary buildings which had earlier been supplied to the missionaries by Hongi.

Jules de Blosseville described the scene in a manner that conforms well with Lejeune’s drawing:

‘The six houses are wooden and white washed. The one where the minister and several others live is very elegantly built. They are all surrounded by an eight foot wall. A solid gate, always kept closed by a big lock, prevents the natives from getting in to steal the plants growing nearby. The houses are also enclosed and palisaded, but the fields are unprotected by any palisade.’

Having so recently been treated to Hongi’s frightening hospitality just across the river it is perhaps little wonder that security was uppermost in his mind as de Blosseville described the Church Missionary Society’s Kerikeri headquarters.