Living Among the Northland Maori

A French Marist priest, Father Antoine Garin was sent to run the remote Mangakahia mission station on the banks of the Wairoa River. Living Among the Northland Maori is Garin’s diary recording his experiences from 1844 to 1846 as he gets to know the Maori in the region. The diary provides vivid accounts of contempor-ary events, as Garin came dangerously close to the action of the Northern War, and wrote of such prominent figures as Bishop Pompallier and of Hone Heke and Kawiti as they opposed the new colonial authorities. Above all, the diary is an intimate record of life in a Maori community in which Garin describes the close relationships he formed with his new neighbours – from his young followers and local families to the chiefs who offered him protection while he lived among them. This is the first full English translation of Garin’s surviving Mangakahia journals and letters. Frank, open-minded and often humorous, Garin’s diary is a major contribution to the early history of European settlement in Aotearoa and a compelling insight into Maori customs, values and beliefs of the time.

Author Biography

Peter Tremewan is a retired University of Canterbury professor who has written widely about the French in New Zealand and the Pacific in the 19th century. He was awarded the John Dunmore Medal (1991) and J.M. Sherrard Award in New Zealand History (1992) for his research in this area. His publications include ‘French Akaroa’ (CUP, 1990, revised 2010). In 2007 the French government made him a Chevalier de l’ordre des Palmes académiques.

Giselle Larcombe is a historian whose publications have focused on the French in New Zealand, especially the written records in French of the early French missionaries; her doctoral thesis, completed in 2009 under the tutelage of Peter Tremewan, was on Antoine Garin. She was awarded the John Dunmore Medal (2010) for her contribution to the study of the French in the Pacific.