Tahua Wiremu Hopihona (William Hobson) signed the Treaty of Waitangi on 12 February 1840 at Mangungu, Hokianga.
He fought on the side of the government during the Northern War of 1845–46.
In 1853, Wiremu Hopihana and other important Ngāpuhi chiefs wrote to Governor George Grey to farewell him. Three years later he was one of the Hokianga chiefs who wrote to Governor Thomas Gore Browne. They recalled an 1831 letter sent by northern chiefs to King William IV of England requesting his protection, and the Treaty of Waitangi, noting that they were committed to peace.
Hopihona was described as a ‘chief of high rank, and one of the few remaining of the old warriors’. A peacemaker between Māori and Pākehā, he was ‘of generous and noble disposition.’ [1]
Hopihona was believed to be around 70 years of age when he died in 1876.
[1] Thames Advertiser, 14 December 1876, p. 3, http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=THA18761214.2.9