Dr Alexander Stevens II (Ngāti Kurī, Ngāi Takoto, Te Pātū, Ngāti Kahu, Te Aupōuri, Te Rarawa), a philosophy professor, bought the plate on TradeMe last year. “It was advertised as a commemorative plate, possible royal princess,” he says.
“The seller had held on to it for many years after buying it from a person who got it from a box of donated pots and pans in Huntly... I was in Rāhui Pōkeka (Huntly) a couple of weeks before purchasing the tāonga and had a kōrero about Te Puea and her wanting Tainui men to lay down their arms.”
Honouring her grandfather
Te Puea Hērangi maintained that her grandfather, King Tāwhiao, had forbidden Waikato from taking up arms again when he made peace with the Crown in 1881. She was determined to uphold his call to Waikato to “lie down” and “not allow blood to flow from this time on”.
Te Puea maintained that Waikato had ‘its own king’ and had no need to ‘fight for the British king’. If the confiscated land was returned, Waikato might reconsider its position.
She stood firm with those men who did not wish to fight a war that was not theirs, on behalf of a government that had dispossessed and scattered their people. But the government was impatient with what it saw as defiance and disloyalty and compounded Tainui’s feelings of injustice by conscripting Māori only from the Waikato–Maniapoto district.
“A priceless artefact”
Stevens has had the tray replated and repaired and says that the tray is evidence of contributions that people like Te Puea have made that are often not talked about.
“I bought it for about $120 and spent about $700 on it to be repaired but to me, it is a priceless artefact... We tend to focus on the history of tāne when it comes to the war, and not so much our wāhine,” he says.
Stevens found out that the tray had been given to Te Puea in acknowledgement of her raising £1000 (NZD 111,184.70, adjusting for inflation) to the Red Cross to balance the Māori contribution to the war instead of Tainui men.
“As a researcher and academic, I’m interested in the contributions that not only the Kingitanga have made but those that whakapapa from there.
“I have had a few people reach out to me to give it to them, and eventually I probably will, but for now I’m going to hold on to it.”