McKay family pilgrimage to tupuna
Visit to Irihā peti Te Paea and Old St John’s Church
The first of many pilgrimages to visit their tupuna, Irihāpeti Te Paea, was held on Sunday at Te Awamutu St John’s Anglican Parish. This hui was a Māori/Scottish event.
They hired local bagpiper Bryan Mitchell to dress in the Scottish MacKay tartan and play Scottish music on his bagpipes.
The hui was primarily spoken in te reo, with translations provided to those who speak English, accompanied by waiatas and bible verses filling the old church.
The original unveiling of the portrait was held on Te Pouhere Sunday 2021. This is when the Church celebrates its constitution/te pouhere which establishes the three tikanga — European, Māori and Polynesian — of the Church in the Province of New Zealand and Polynesia.
Old St John’s is the oldest building left standing in the Waikato and possibly New Zealand’s longest continuously operating church. It was opened on Easter Day in 1854, built from locally hand-milled and donated native timbers.
Reverend Robert (Rob) McKay is the self-appointed organiser of this event, acting on behalf of the McKay whā nau.
“We from the McKay whānau missed out on the original event which was covered and reported on in August 2021. Had it not been for your newspaper article entitled, ‘The King’s daughters place their mana on the historical church’, we would never have found out about our tupuna — Irihapeti Te Paea and her connection to Old St John’s Anglican Church in Te Awamutu.”
Rob says as a family they are the only family that carries the McKay name and are the direct descendants, linking to both Irihāpeti and her husband John MacKay. As her descendants, they were originally overlooked and failed to attend last year’s ceremony.
“Luckily, I wrote to Bishop Moxon, who I have known for 20 years, regarding this faux pas and he apologised for missing us out and suggested we come down to Te Awamutu for a welcome to the church and take the opportunity of seeing the portrait of our tupuna that was gifted by the Kingitanga to the Anglican Church.’’
“At the original ceremony, only the Kingitanga was invited, in the hope that one day, other lines would come and the McKays are the first royal bloodline to grace us with their presence.
I think it is a wonderful thing that they have done, to put our tupuna in the sanctuary of the Te Awamutu St John’s Anglican Parish.
We hope to do it whānau by whānau over time and use this particular way to honour your tupuna, in numbers the church can cope with,” says Archbishop Sir David Moxon.
“I have a lot of time for Bishop Moxon, who is a very caring and gifted man,” says Rob.
“I thought the visit was special. She has been hidden from us as a family, for a very long time. A lot of us have known about her but there was nowhere to talk about her, so it’s fantastic that the church has become the guardian of her story and her image and that we can come to visit anytime,” says established author and historian Brad Haami.
“I think it is a wonderful thing that they have done, to put our tupuna in the sanctuary of the Te Awamutu St John’s Anglican Parish. This has been the highlight of my decade because as a family, the McKays got to honour her,” says Rob.
He said he sees this hui as a “pilgrimage”.
Reverend Rob McKay spoke on behalf of the family and acknowledges this service is taking place during a time approximate to the funeral of the late Queen and requested that a mention of the Queen and her life be honoured too.
“Elizabeth, she is another great Irihāpeti,” says Rob.
Irihāpeti’s history from A Pilgrims Guide — The tale of two sisters — compiled by Archbishop Sir David Moxon.
David says, “We are always open to edits and updates and corrections from the whanau and any other historians as we go along as the story is a work in progress.”
Irihāpeti was identified by her descendants as a daughter of the first Māori King, Pōtatau Te Wherowhero. He belonged to the senior chiefly line of Ngāti Mahuta and was descended from the captains of the Tainui and Te Arawa canoes. Irihāpeti’s mother was Hinepau from Ngāti Pukeko, a high-born chieftainess from Whakatā ne.
Irihāpeti’s first name, as an adopted Christian name, is almost certainly inspired by the name Elizabeth from the New Testament. In the gospel of Luke chapter 1, verses 46 to 55, Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist, greets Mary the mother of Jesus when both women are pregnant with the lives that will come to transform the world.
Irihāpeti married John Horton Mackay in 1838 at the age of 18, having met him through an early diplomatic visit to Auckland with her father Pōtatau, then a paramount chief. They had 12 children who were all baptised by Bishop George Augustus Selwyn in the 1840 period of the Anglican missions in the Waikato tribal area. The children attended Anglican Mission schools.
Irihāpeti’s whānau support for the first Anglican mission schools would have had a significant role model effect within a rapidly growing church community. Her photo in the chancel is one of the few known formal portraits of an influential Māori lay Anglican from this time, probably taken in early widowhood after John Mackay’s death by drowning.
She later married Sam Joyce. They had three more children.
Irihā peti helped foster and is representative of the first largely Māori congregations and mission schools of the Waikato, and also the Otawhao, Te Awamutu the birthplace of her father the King.
Her half-brother Tāwhiao, the second Māori King, resided at Whatiwhatihoe at the foot of Mount Pīrongia, for many years.
Irihāpeti’s half-sister, Te Paea Tiaho Pō tatau, was also a well-known daughter of the first Māori King, Pōtatau Te Wherowhero. Te Paea Tiaho, known to the Pakehā community as ‘Princess Sophia’, carried out a number of Kingitanga initiatives for a clear assertion of rangatiratanga, chiefly rule, as well as moderation and peace, during the military tensions of the 1860s colonial era.
One of these, influenced by her sister and others, was the placing of her mana on the church of St John at Te Awamutu in 1864 to protect it as Māori threatened to burn down St John’s in retribution. At the time St John’s had become the constabulary church with the arrival of the troops in Te Awamutu.
The two sisters would have conferred about this; Irihāpeti from the perspective of a high-born bicultural Anglican family, and Tiaho, who wasn’t married with children, from the perspective of the Kingitanga itself.
Irihāpeti Te Paea died in 1900 and was buried on Taupiri Mountain, the Ngāti Mahuta resting place of the Māori monarchs and their relations.
Reverend Robert McKay