Takarangi signed the Cook Strait (Henry Williams) sheet of the Treaty of Waitangi at Whanganui on 31 May 1840, on Henry Williams’ second visit to the area. He was a rangatira (chief) of the Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi iwi (tribe).
In 1848 Takarangi, as ‘Takarangi of Tunuhaere’, was a signatory to the sale of the Whanganui Block. [1] Tunuhaere was a pā (fortified village) on the right bank of the Whanganui River that was occupied by the Ngāti Rongomai Tawhiri hapū (subtribe).
Kīngi Takarangi may have been his son. He signed the Rangitīkei-Manawatū sale document in 1866, and made a speech to Native Minister James Carroll in 1906.
[1] ‘Whanganui block, Whanganui district’, Maori deeds of land purchases in the North Island of New Zealand: Volume two, H. Hanson Turton, George Didsbury, 1878, pp. 238–42