Abstract:
The post-contact historic period in New Zealand saw drastic social and economic change for Maori, where various missionary groups played a crucial role in Maori social and economic development. Purakau is a former Catholic Mission site, located centrally on the north side of the Hokianga Harbour, Northland Region. The first French Catholic missionaries arrived in New Zealand in January 1838, and in 1839, Bishop Pompallier purchased the Purakau block, which became the first successful Catholic Mission station in the country. After a decade of hard work in the region, the Purakau Tidal Mill was built in 1849 by Father Maxime Petit, a Marist, in an attempt to draw Maori to the station and mill their wheat. The mill was built during a particularly troublesome period for the Mission, where Pompallier faced various financial problems as well as internal conflict with the Marist missionaries. After just two years, the mill was shut down with the departure of Petit in 1851, signalling the beginning of a period of abandonment in the Hokianga. This research aims to analyse the remains of the mill excavated by the University of Auckland’s 2001 field school, in order to answer various questions regarding the construction, function and demise of the mill, and to see what we might learn about the missionaries and Maori involved at Purakau. This thesis aims to contribute to this growing field of historical archaeology and to shed some light on an important period of New Zealand history in the North. The thesis concludes that the failure of the mill and ultimately the Mission was linked to a struggling local economy, a lack of wheat farming in the Hokianga and to internal dissension amongst the Catholic missionaries.
