Hongi Hika

Hongi Hika (c. 1772 – 6 March 1828) was a New Zealand Māori rangatira (chief) and war leader of the Ngāpuhi iwi (tribe).

Hongi Hika used European weapons to overrun much of northern New Zealand in the first of the Musket Wars. He also encouraged Pākehā (European) settlement, patronised New Zealand's first missionaries, introduced Māori to Western agriculture and helped put the Māori language into writing. He travelled to England and met King George IV. Hongi Hika's military campaigns, and the other Musket Wars were one of the most important stimuli for the British annexation of New Zealand and subsequent Treaty of Waitangi with Ngāpuhi and many other iwi. He was a pivotal figure in the period when Māori history emerged from myth and oral tradition and Pākehā began to settle rather than just visit.

Hongi Hika was born at Kaikohe into one of the chiefly families of the Ngāpuhi, being a son of rangatira Te Hotete. Hongi Hika once said he was born in the year explorer Marion du Fresne was killed by Māori—in 1772—though other sources place his birth around 1780.

Hongi Hika rose to prominence as a military leader in the Ngāpuhi campaign, led by Pokaia, against the Te Roroa hapu of Ngāti Whātua iwi in 1806–1808. In over 150 years since the Maori first begun sporadic contact with Europeans, firearms had not entered into widespread use. Ngāpuhi fought with small numbers of them in 1808, and Hongi Hika was present later that same year on the first occasion that muskets were used in action by Māori. This was at the battle of Moremonui at which the Ngāpuhi were defeated; the Ngāpuhi were overrun by the opposing Ngāti Whātua while reloading. Those killed included two of Hongi Hika's brothers and Pokaia, and Hongi Hika and other survivors only escaped by hiding in a swamp until Ngāti Whātua called off the pursuit to avoid provoking utu.

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