Te Kanae signed the Herald (Bunbury) sheet of the Treaty of Waitangi on 17 June 1840, on board HMS Herald when it was anchored in Cloudy Bay, Marlborough. He was a Ngāti Toa rangatira (chief). [1]
Te Kanae’s father was Te Matoe, who was killed in 1819 while Ngāti Toa were helping Ngāti Tama in a battle called Tihi-manuka. Te Kanae had a brother, Rawiri Puaha. [2] Wiremu Neera te Kanae of Ngāti Toa, who was born in 1846, may have been Te Kanae’s son. [3]
In 1847, Te Kanae was listed as a joint owner of the Wairau District. [4] In 1854, Rawiri Puaha said that they had never sold their land reserve at Wairau and planned to settle there soon. His brother, Te Kanae, was currently on the other side of Cook Strait but would return. [5]
Donald McLean, the Native Secretary, wrote in 1854 that he had been discussing the sale of the South Island, including Te Hoiere (Maud Island), with Wiremu te Kanae. [6] In 1859 he sold the Wainui Block at Waikanae and the Papakowhai Block at Porirua. In 1865, Mana Island, off Porirua, was sold. Te Kanae was also one of the sellers of the Rangitīkei-Manawatū Block in 1866. [7]
[1] University of Waikato, Index of Māori names, http://www.waikato.ac.nz/library/maori-names-index/K2.shtml
[2] ‘Para-Rewa. — ? September, 1821’, History and traditions of the Maoris of the West Coast, North Island of New Zealand, prior to 1840, S. Percy Smith, Polynesian Society, New Plymouth, 1910, p. 352
[3] ‘Deaths’, Evening Post, 26 August 1905, p. 1
[4] ‘No. 2. — Report from Mr. C. W. Ligar, Surveyor-General, to His Excellency the Lieutenant-governor’, A compendium of official documents relative to native affairs in the South Island, Volume One, Alexander Mackay, p. 203
[5] ‘No. 4. — Interpreter’s Report of Information obtained during a Visit to Kaiaua, Pelorus, Kaituna, Wairau, and Queen Charlotte Sound, &c., 1854-55’, A compendium of official documents relative to native affairs in the South Island, Volume One, Alexander Mackay, p. 298
[6] ‘Mr. Commissioner McLean to the Commissioner of Crown Lands’, A compendium of official documents relative to native affairs in the South Island, Volume One, Alexander Mackay, p. 304
[7] Maori Deeds of Land Purchases in the North Island of New Zealand: Volume Two, H. Hanson Turton, George Didsbury, 1878