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Updated: June 6, 2025
Tamihana would not allow himself to be put forward as king: he proposed for that honour the aged Waikato chief, Te Wherowhero or Potatau; but he, as king-maker, was the life and soul of the movement. As Marsden had tried to found a Christian community at Rangihoua, Selwyn at St. John's, and Godley in Canterbury, so Tamihana attempted to set up a Christian State in the interior of the North Island.
There he had met with Rauparaha's son, Tamihana, a young man who was sick at heart of his father's violent ways. Fascinated by the slave's story of the peaceful life of the missionaries at the Bay of Islands, he had compelled him to teach his friends and himself to read. But he remembered that a few more books had been brought from Rotorua by the party with whom he travelled.
From one raid on Rotorua his men came back with the bodies of sixty enemies cut off in an ambush. Not once did Waharoa meet defeat; and when, in 1839, he died, he was as full of fame as of years. Long afterwards his mana was still a halo round the head of his son Wiremu Tamihana, whom we shall meet in due time as William Thompson the king-maker, best of his race.
These he procured, and among them there was a much-damaged copy of the Gospel of St. Luke. This bore the name of Ngakuku, and was in fact the very copy upon which little Tarore was sleeping when she was murdered in the night! In order to study in quiet, Tamihana and his cousin Te Whiwhi took Ripahau to the island and made him teach them there.
It can hardly be a mere coincidence that Maunsell's translation was finished and published in 1856, shortly before the troubles began. Tamihana, it is true, is said to have read his Bible in English, but his followers must have been for the most part dependent on the Maori version.
But it had Tamihana Waharoa with his model pa, and its graveyard contained the grave of Tarore, "who, being dead, yet spake." Her father, Ngakuku, did not indulge in useless grief, but in 1839 accompanied Wilson from Tauranga along the Bay of Plenty to Opotiki near its eastern end, and there they founded a station amid a people more savage than any yet encountered.
Rauparaha himself was an "enquirer" into the Christian verities; Rauparaha's son had evangelised along the line which he himself was about to travel, and, moreover, was willing to proceed thither again with the bishop as his guide and companion. With the same Tamihana, then, and nine other Maoris, the bishop left Wellington on January 6th, 1844, in a miserable coasting schooner.
There would have been no hostility at all if just and considerate treatment had been the rule throughout. In justification of this statement we have only to follow the action of the king-maker, Tamihana, of the old "king," Potatau, and even of his successor, Tawhiao. As long as he lived, old Potatau said Amen at the end of the prayer for the Queen.
This leader, Wiremu Tamihana, usually known as William Thompson, was an educated Christian and a brown-skinned gentleman, far in advance of his race in breadth of view, logical understanding, and persistence.
His own flag at Ngaruawahia became the rallying point for the disaffection which was now spreading through the land. Deputations from distant tribes were received in state by the Maori King; allegiance was tendered by many of those who had hitherto held aloof; lands were presented, and tribute pledged. Amid the growing excitement, Tamihana restrained the natural feelings of his heart.
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