Would Not Sign the Treaty.

Not only did Te Heuheu decline to sign the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, when an agent brought the sheets to Rotorua but he prevented, by his mana and his arguments, any of the Arawa there from signing. His brother Iwikau te Heuheu had previously been persuaded to sign the document, but the elder brother insisted that he should return the red blankets which had been given to him, as to all the other chiefs who signed, by the Governor's representatives in the North.

G. F. Angas, the Australian artist, who visited the Taupo country in 1844, travelling by canoe and on foot from Auckland, spent some time at Waihi and Tokaanu and painted the picture of Te Heuheu and Iwikau which is one of the treasures in the celebrated portfolio of Maori life scenes and portraits. Angas was not always successful with his Maori faces but he preserved for us in this drawing the air of dignity and majesty which the early days' travellers to Taupo have described as the distinguishing characteristic of Te Heuheu the Great. An official visitor to the home of the Ngati-Tuwharetoa in 1845 was Donald Maclean (afterwards Sir Donald), who while a very young man became a trusted and able Government intermediary in native affairs. He was impressed by Te Heuheu's intellectual powers and his strongly patriotic and nationalist attitude. The old chief stoutly supported Hone Heke, at that time engaged in his little war in the North; and he expressed his fears that the pakeha would soon become dangerously numerous and powerful in the land. His vision was prophetic; but his tribe's position far in the heart of the Island gave them a security which many of the coast dwelling tribes presently lost.