Eugene Bingham, author of The Chief and the Empire. (Photo: Abigail Dougherty)
Te Tai Tokerau rangatira Te Pahi was widely known for his intellect, character and mana. But a wrongful accusation led to his death and tarnished his name and reputation.
His story is now told in a new book out this week, The Chief and the Empire*. Here’s author Eugene Bingham on what led him to Te Pahi.*
In September last year, on whenua jutting out into the sparkling waters of Te Tai Tokerau, a group of people connected by events that had taken place more than 220 years before came together in an embrace.
Ka rere ngā roimata, ka rere hoki ngā kōrero. Tears and talk flowed freely.
It was an emotional moment, a trans-Tasman connection steeped in mamae and mana.
The hui was a culmination of research into the extraordinary life of the tupuna rangatira Te Pahi and his courageous journey to New South Wales in 1805-06, a significant but often overlooked pre-Tiriti contact that continues to reverberate to this day.
Among the manuhiri were the Australian descendants of a man whose life Te Pahi had pleaded for in a Sydney courtroom.
Welcoming them were Ngāti Torehina ki Matakā, kaitiaki of the lands Te Pahi once walked, along with some direct descendants of the rangatira himself.
During the wānanga that followed the pōwhiri, one of Te Pahi’s uri (descendants), Professor Deidre Brown, of Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Kahu, told the Australian visitors that through their shared history, “you are part of our whānau now”.
“I stand here today as your whanaunga (relation),” she told them.
Who were these people? And who was Te Pahi?
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The answers lie in events that began in Pēwhairangi, the Bay of Islands, at the turn of the 19th century, and which are the subject of my new book, The Chief and the Empire. There’s also a documentary, The Rangatira, the King and the Survivors, due to be broadcast on RNZ on May 11.
Te Pahi lived on and around the Pererua Peninsula, the northwest side of the Bay of Islands. His principal pā was on Motuapo, an island just offshore, but he was known far and wide.
He would have been a boy when James Cook visited the bay in 1769. By the time more ships started arriving in the early 1800s, Te Pahi was intensely curious about these tāngata kirimā, these fair-skinned people. He and his people began trading with the ships, supplying water, kai, and other goods, such as harakeke, in exchange for iron.
Te Pahi’s reputation spread throughout the Pacific and reached Philip Gidley King, the governor of New South Wales, the fledgling convict colony. King began sending gifts — pigs and potatoes among them — to Te Pahi.
After talking with his kaumātua and other rangatira of the area, Te Pahi eventually decided to visit King in Sydney.
On his arrival, King invited Te Pahi to stay at Government House and introduced him to influential people in the colony. During his three months in Sydney, he met the Rev Samuel Marsden — an encounter that encouraged Marsden to establish a mission in Aotearoa — John Macarthur, the father of Australia’s wool industry, and members of Sydney’s high society at that time.
But it was his interaction with another group of men that particularly intrigued me, men who were looked down on by the higher echelons.
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In 2023, I was listening to one of my favourite podcasts, Taringa. Hosts Paraone Gloyne and Kahurangi Milne were speaking with Tiriti educator JJ Carberry about pre-Tiriti interactions between Māori and Pākehā when the kōrero turned to Te Pahi.
I’d read about him in history books, including Dame Anne Salmond’s Between Worlds, and in 2014, I’d followed news about the return of a taonga that had been stolen from his kāinga. (We’ll come back to that.)
So Te Pahi himself wasn’t new to me. But something about their conversation that day lodged in my hinengaro (mind). It was as if two worlds I had been walking in — as a journalist, and as someone on a journey of discovery into te reo Māori and whakapapa — had come together.
I’d started learning te reo Māori at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa in 2021. As anyone who has been on that path knows, one of the first things you’re encouraged to do is to stand and answer: “Ko wai koe?” Who are you?
In our whānau, we’d grown up knowing fragments of our whakapapa Māori, and had even been to a reunion at Te Tii Marae. But a typical story of disconnection had left lots of blanks. And so, with other whānau, I’d been searching for answers.
Finding things out had been my job for three decades as a journalist. During that time, I’d always been drawn to stories of injustice. And as I listened to Carberry, I recognised just such a story.
He spoke about how Te Pahi had been curious about the Pākehā justice system and so had gone to a courthouse in Sydney to watch a criminal trial.
A group of men had been charged with stealing pork, and at the conclusion of the trial, they were convicted and sentenced to death. Te Pahi was outraged. Why would you kill someone because they were hungry?
He went to see the men in prison, embraced them, and took a petition on their behalf to the governor, Philip King.
Back in 2023, that was about all we knew. It was unclear what became of Te Pahi’s pleas, and we didn’t even know the names of the condemned men.
Carberry wondered aloud whether the descendants of those men would have any idea about this extraordinary intervention into their whānau history from a rangatira nō Te Tai Tokerau. “The uri would be running around Sydney now . . . probably boy racers or something . . . none the wiser,” he said.
Do those descendants have any idea? I thought. And what actually happened after the trial?
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Te Pahi’s visit to Sydney in 1805–06 was commemorated with this medal, presented to him by the New South Wales governor, Philip Gidley King. The medal was stolen during a raid on Te Pahi’s pā. (Photo: Te Papa)
I decided to do some research to see if I could find out more. I also began talking to uri of Te Pahi and others connected to his story, especially Ngāti Torehina ki Matakā kaumatua Hugh Rihari and Deidre Brown.
I remembered the pair from that 2014 coverage of the return of their taonga — a silver medal gifted to Te Pahi by Philip King at the conclusion of Te Pahi’s time in Sydney. A commemoration of the visit, but also a tohu, a state gift from the Crown.
It was stolen in 1810 during a raid on Te Pahi’s pā by Europeans, a consequence of a sequence of horrendous betrayals and fatal misunderstandings. Te Pahi had been wrongly blamed for the deadly attack on a ship, the Boyd, in Whangaroa Harbour the previous year. He and many others were killed in the raid.
It’s a complicated and painful story best told with context and time. It’s also a story that raises serious questions about the Crown’s complicity.
The medal vanished, eventually turning up out of the blue in 2014 when anonymous vendors put it up for sale at a Sydney auction house.
Rallied by Matua Hugh, Deidre, and many other uri, a fight for the medal was launched, and it was returned to Aotearoa after a successful joint bid by Auckland Museum and Te Papa, with the support of Ngāpuhi.
Any celebrations, however, were tempered by the reminder that the story of the medal came with a painful history of theft and murder.
As well, Te Pahi’s name had been defamed and tarnished by Pākehā histories for more than a century, the falsehoods and lies carried by newspapers and books for generations. It had made his descendants wary of speaking about him publicly.
Navigating that mamae, or pain, was an important step in being able to tell his story in 2026.
Matua Hugh eventually agreed that, with the fresh element of more details about Te Pahi’s pleas for the lives of the men convicted of stealing pork, he would support the kaupapa. Sadly, he passed away in June before the documentary team and I could interview him. Ka hinga ia i raro i te kāhui whetū o Matariki. He died beneath the cloak of the Matariki stars.
Just before his death, Matua Hugh had introduced us to his whanaunga and Ngāti Torehina ki Matakā rangatira, Herb Rihari and Te Hurihanga Rihari. Both agreed to be interviewed, as did Deidre. But we also spoke to many others.
Thanks to certain actions by Te Pahi immediately before the attack on his pā, his whakapapa remains strong to this day, and there are many proud uri. He has connections to Ngāti Rua, Te Hikutu, Ngāti Rēhia and other hapū.
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But what about the men from the court case and their descendants? Eventually, by cross-referencing details, I found the judge’s handwritten notes in the NSW State Archives. Sitting with those notes and seeing the men’s names was a powerful moment. I whispered a mihi (greeting) to them.
With the help of historians and genealogists, I was able to trace the fate of the men and their own stories. Three of them were soldiers, and one of them was a convict who’d been transported to New South Wales from Ireland.
In the end, two of the men were saved by Te Pahi’s pleas. King overturned their death sentences, instead sending them to prison. The other two were hanged.
Only one of the four, the Irish convict James Keating, had any known descendants — a son, William, who was 14 months old at the time of his father’s hanging.
William Keating went on to have many descendants, and some of them travelled to Pēwhairangi last year to hear the story of Te Pahi and to meet his uri. They had no idea about Te Pahi, and they were hungry for details. Te Pahi hadn’t been able to save the life of their ancestor, James, but they were impressed by his courage, intellect, and mana.
The Chief and the Empire, written by Eugene Bingham and published by Allen and Unwin Aotearoa New Zealand.
This was never going to be a story with a happy ending. There is too much pain, too much sorrow, too many wrongs.
But there’s much we can learn from the story of Te Pahi: about humanity and compassion, about betrayal and what happens when actions are taken without all the facts being known, and about the true nature of the relationship between the Crown and Māori before the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Te Pahi was a man of foresight — he tangata matakite. He could see what was coming, and he wanted his people to be prepared, initiating conversations that eventually led to He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni in 1835.
But in Sydney, in 1805, when Te Pahi leaned in to hongi Philip King, the two men looked at each other, rangatira to rangatira, in a relationship of trust and respect.
The Chief and the Empire by Eugene Bingham, published by Allen and Unwin Aotearoa NZ (RRP $39.99), is out now. A video documentary and podcast, Te Pahi: The Rangatira, the King and the Survivors*, made* for RNZ with support from Te Māngai Pāho, will be released on rnz.co.nz on May 11.
You can read an extract from the book here.
Eugene Bingham (Pākehā, Ngāpuhi) is a freelance producer and writer. He has been a journalist and storyteller for 35 years, reporting and producing news and current affairs across newspapers, television, digital and podcasts. Eugene has been learning te reo Māori since 2021, mostly at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. He lives in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, with his wife, journalist Suzanne McFadden, their children and mokopuna.
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