Nation History | Aotearoa New Zealand | Treaty of Waitangi — The Grounds Where Competing Texts Were Signed

On the morning of 6 February 1840, beneath a ship-sail marquee on the lawn in front of British Resident James Busby’s house at Waitangi, William Hobson and between 43 and 46 Māori rangatira made the first marks and signatures on the Māori-language text of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

The country was not yet a British colony: Aotearoa was controlled through hapū and rangatira, some of whom had affirmed their collective independence in He Whakaputanga in 1835, while Hobson had arrived as British consul to an independent New Zealand and as lieutenant-governor only over territory that Māori might consent to place under British authority.

Hobson, his secretary James Freeman, and Busby had assembled an English draft, which the missionaries Henry Williams and his son Edward translated into te reo Māori overnight before the proposal was read and debated at Waitangi on 5 February.

Rangatira spoke about the possible effects on their authority, land, and trade, then continued discussion that night at nearby Te Tii, and the next day more than forty—including the Ngāpuhi rangatira Ana Hamu—signed or placed tohu on the Māori text, while agreement among those present was not unanimous.

The two texts did not convey the same political settlement: article one of Te Tiriti granted the Crown kāwanatanga, or governance, where the English text said sovereignty, while article two guaranteed rangatira their tino rangatiratanga over lands, kāinga, and taonga, terms whose relationship has shaped continuing argument over authority in Aotearoa New Zealand.

In its 2014 Te Paparahi o Te Raki inquiry, the Waitangi Tribunal concluded that the rangatira who signed in February 1840 did not make an informed cession of sovereignty, but agreed that the Crown could govern British subjects and that authority would be shared in different spheres, a finding about the agreement reached then rather than a ruling on when the Crown later acquired the sovereignty it exercises today.

Copies travelled to dozens of later meetings, and more than 500 rangatira ultimately signed, nearly all on Māori-language sheets, before Hobson proclaimed British sovereignty in May 1840; those later acts must be distinguished from what occurred on this lawn on 6 February.

Busby’s house, now Whare Tiriti or the Treaty House, survives within the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, and the tall flagstaff nearby marks the approximate site of the marquee and first signing, although the marker was erected in 1934 and later replaced after its mast was found to be rotting.

The paired 1970 archive photographs used here show the restored house and that later marker, not the 1840 gathering, and the grounds remain a managed heritage and commemorative site whose buildings and access arrangements can change during Waitangi Day events.

Photo: National Publicity Studios / Archives New Zealand, 1970, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.