Before the Treaty · Part 03 · 28 October 1835
What did He Wakaputanga actually declare?
We now reach the document itself. The correct method is text first: identify what the signed Māori instrument says, compare it cautiously with Busby’s English draft, and separate the words on the page from conclusions imposed later.
Signed constitutional instrumentArchives New ZealandOfficial translation
First: which text are we reading?
Archives New Zealand records that James Busby drafted an English text, missionary Henry Williams translated it into te reo Māori, and Eruera Pare Hongi wrote the final Māori copy. The Māori copy was the version signed by the rangatira.
That does not make Busby’s English draft irrelevant. It is useful evidence of how the British Resident framed the proposal in English. But where the constitutional question turns on Māori terms such as rangatiratanga, kīngitanga, mana, kāwanatanga, huihuinga and rūnanga, the signed wording must remain visible rather than disappearing behind an English label.
Source: Archives New Zealand — original Māori text, translation, draft history and archival images ↗
Article 1 — the political entity
Rangatiratanga, whenua and Te Wakaminenga
Article 1 identifies the assembled Tino Rangatira, locates them in Nu Tireni, and records a declaration concerning the Rangatiratanga of their country. It describes the country as a Wenua Rangatira and gives the collective name Te Wakaminenga o nga Hapu o Nu Tireni.
Whatever later constitutional classification we ultimately choose, this is plainly more than a commercial agreement. The text identifies political actors, a country, authority associated with that country, and a named collective body.
Busby’s English draft renders the same article as a declaration of independence and an independent state under the designation United Tribes of New Zealand. Dr Mānuka Hēnare’s translation published by Archives keeps the Māori conceptual structure more visible and translates the passage in terms of authority, leadership and a chiefly country.
Finding: Article 1 satisfies the first founding-document test: it declares a collective political identity and constitutional character.
Text and translations: Archives New Zealand ↗ · Manatū Taonga / NZHistory ↗
Article 2 — where authority sits
Kīngitanga, mana, law-making and kāwanatanga
Article 2 contains the constitutional core. It uses the words “Ko te Kingitanga ko te mana” and states that this authority in the land of the collective rests with the Tino Rangatira in their huihuinga.
The same article then addresses two separate governmental functions: making law and establishing Kawanatanga. The rangatira state that they will not allow another group to make laws, nor another Kawanatanga to be established in the relevant lands, except through persons appointed by them acting according to laws made in their own collective assembly.
This is not merely a statement of prestige. It identifies a source of public authority and then places a control around the exercise of legislative and governmental functions.
Busby’s English draft expresses the same structure using the language of sovereign power, legislative authority and functions of government. The Waitangi Tribunal later concluded in its Stage 1 Te Paparahi o Te Raki report that the signatory rangatira declared that rangatiratanga, kīngitanga and mana in relation to their territories rested with them on behalf of their hapū, and that no one else could make law or exercise government except under their authority.
Finding: Article 2 satisfies the second founding-document test: it identifies where governing and law-making authority resides and denies an independent source of government within the collective’s lands.
Primary text: Archives New Zealand ↗ · Tribunal finding: Waitangi Tribunal — Stage 1 summary ↗
Article 3 — machinery for collective government
An annual rūnanga at Waitangi
Article 3 moves from authority to institutional machinery. The rangatira agree to meet in rūnanga at Waitangi each year to make laws directed to justice, peace, ending wrongdoing and fair trade.
The article also invites southern groups to end conflict, consider the welfare of the country and join the collective.
That invitation is important. It shows that the instrument itself distinguishes between those then participating and others who were being invited to enter the arrangement. It therefore weighs against an overbroad claim that every hapū in the islands was automatically absorbed into one central government on 28 October 1835.
At the same time, the annual law-making assembly is strong evidence that the document contemplated more than symbolic unity. It describes a recurring collective institution with public purposes.
Finding: Article 3 satisfies the third founding-document test: it describes machinery for collective law-making and government.
Text and translation: Archives New Zealand ↗
Article 4 — Britain is asked to protect the authority already declared
The King, the flag and protection
Article 4 directs that the Declaration be sent to the King of England. The rangatira acknowledge his approval of their flag, refer to the friendship and protection being shown to Pākehā living and trading in the country, and ask the King to act in a protective or parental role so that their Rangatiratanga is not brought to an end.
The sequencing is constitutionally significant.
Articles 1 and 2 first identify the country and locate authority with the rangatira. Article 3 describes their own law-making assembly. Only after that does Article 4 address the British monarch and request protection.
The text therefore does not present King William IV as the source from which the rangatira receive their kīngitanga or mana. The protective relationship is expressed after the internal source of authority has already been declared.
Finding: Article 4 satisfies the external-standing test: the political body addresses another monarch, acknowledges an existing diplomatic symbol and requests protection against threats to its own authority.
Primary text and translation: Archives New Zealand ↗
The codicil — membership could expand
The surviving document also contains a codicil for rangatira who had not attended the original meeting. It records their agreement with He Wakaputanga and their entry into the Wakaminenga.
This matters for two reasons.
First, the collective was not necessarily frozen at the original 34 signatories. The instrument contained a mechanism by which additional rangatira could affiliate themselves with it.
Second, accession still required an act of agreement. That is further reason to distinguish a confederated or consent-based collective from an automatic claim of centralised authority over every hapū whether participating or not.
Archives New Zealand records that another 18 signatures were added by 1839, bringing the total to 52. It specifically identifies Te Hāpuku of Hawke’s Bay and Te Wherowhero of Waikato–Tainui among the later signatories and says their participation considerably extended the reach of He Wakaputanga.
Codicil and later signatures: Archives New Zealand — document ↗ · Archives New Zealand — signatories ↗
The four articles map directly onto the constitutional test
What the signed text establishes
Political identity: Nu Tireni, a Wenua Rangatira, and Te Wakaminenga o ngā Hapū o Nu Tireni are expressly identified.
Source of authority: kīngitanga and mana are located with the Tino Rangatira in their collective assembly.
Law and government: other law-making and kāwanatanga are excluded unless operating under authority derived from the rangatira and their laws.
Institutional machinery: a recurring rūnanga at Waitangi is contemplated for law, justice, peace and trade.
External relation: the British King is addressed as protector, not described as the source of the authority already declared.
What the signed text does not establish by itself
It does not prove that every hapū throughout the islands joined the collective in 1835.
It does not establish a modern unitary state with one fully developed bureaucracy, court hierarchy or standing executive.
It does not by itself answer whether the constitutional authority it records was later transferred, displaced, extinguished or recognised within present New Zealand law.
It does not allow us to treat every English constitutional term as a perfect translation of the Māori words that were signed.
Finding 03
The text now moves the founding-document proposition materially forward.
He Wakaputanga does not merely announce independence in the abstract. It identifies the political community, locates governing authority, regulates who may make law or exercise government, establishes a recurring collective law-making process, defines an external protective relationship, and provides for additional rangatira to join.
Those are constitutional functions.
On its face, He Wakaputanga is not simply evidence that independence existed. It is an instrument organising how existing rangatira authority was to be expressed collectively.
That still leaves the hardest question inside Article 2 unresolved: when the document says kīngitanga and mana sit with the Tino Rangatira in their huihuinga, did the rangatira transfer authority into a new central body — or did they retain authority through their hapū while acting together for defined purposes?
That is Part 04.
Primary and official sources
Archives New Zealand — signatories and later accessions ↗
Manatū Taonga / NZHistory — Māori and English texts ↗
Waitangi Tribunal — Te Paparahi o Te Raki Stage 1 finding on He Wakaputanga ↗