Sophia Hinerangi


Sophia Hinerangi was a New Zealand tourist guide and temperance leader. Of Māori descent, she identified with the Ngāti Ruanui iwi.

Early life

She was born in Russell, Northland, New Zealand to a Māori mother and a Scottish father. She was baptised Mary Sophia Gray in 1839, and it is believed that she left home to be raised by Anglican missionary Charlotte Kemp at the Kerikeri Mission House then sent to school at the Wesleyan Native Institution at Three Kings in Auckland. She married twice, her first was sometime in 1851, to a Māori Chief Te Hākiro Koroneho with whom she had 14 children. She married for the second time in 1870 to Hōri Taiāwhio and moved to Te Wairoa where they had three children together.

Entrepreneurism and tourism

Especially since 1870 with the visit to New Zealand by Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, the popularity of tourists visiting ideal locations such as the Lake Country of the Waikato grew. Local Māori leaders developed tourism industries alongside public accommodations and eventually allowed for surveys by railway companies to increase tourist traffic. For example, a reporter from Rotorua in 1885 proclaimed that while the Cambridge line of coaches was suitable for invalids coming to the hot springs and spas there, a national effort to extend a Rotorua Branch Railway was needed. He went on to explain that the Māori were busy building public accommodation houses at Whakarewarewa "where a more varied and extensive field for bathing opens out."
Hinerangi had become one of the most prominent guides of the Pink and White Terraces near Te Wairoa, New Zealand. She and another bilingual guide, Kate Middlemass, had been selected by the local hapū, the Tūhourangi, to handle the tours there. These most popular guides, traditionally women with much knowledge of local culture and geography, could receive 15 shillings from each tour party. Hinerangi organized the tours and settled accounts.

Christian mission and temperance leader

She was involved with the missionary presence there, which by the time she arrived was growing under the guidance of the Wellesley Street Baptist Church in Auckland. Rev. Alfred Fairbrother, who was sent from England as missionary to Te Wairoa in 1882, was a controversial figure with some local people complaining to the church in Auckland about his brusque manners. Hinerangi was an important leader in the Baptist mission of Rev. Fairbrother since he would lead his church services in her house.
Mary Clement Leavitt, a World Woman Christian Temperance Union missionary, wrote a letter describing her interaction with Hinerangi, and why she agreed to wear the WCTU white ribbon badge along with the New Zealand blue ribbon badge. Leavitt wrote for the WCTU's Union Signal:
This interaction with Leavitt probably cemented Hinerangi's role in championing the temperance mission in this area. In 1896 a report by Annie Jane Schnackenberg, Superintendent of the WCTU-NZ department of Maori Missions, in The White Ribbon lists Hinerangi as president of the Whakarewarewa Union. Hinerangi might have started the branch earlier, since the report mentioned that the Union was growing and in 1896 currently boasted 30 members. Others in the Union chapter listed were Herena Taupopoki, Vice-president; Isabella Thomas, secretary; Annie Walker, treasurer - with superintendents leading the following departments: social purity, Sunday school, Band of Hope, sewing class, and Bible class. Schnackenberg quoted Hinerangi as saying: "I don't know which is the greater work, Sabbath observance or Temperance. Before Mrs. Hewitt came here and told us about your society, we had no Sabbath and everybody drank. Now the Sabbath is a holy day with us, and, with one or two exceptions, all our women are abstainers."
The WCTU Pledge that Hinerangi would have taken and offered to others in Māori read as follows:

Prediction of and eruption of Tarawera, 1886

In late May 1886, while Hinerangi was leading a tour group along Lake Tarawera, the waters receded then rose up again accompanied by a strange sound. She told the local Tohunga that they then saw a waka with ghostly men that vanished as it came toward them - the elder explained that this was a sign that their ancestors were angry for the way the land was being abused by the tourists. On the night of the eruption of Mount Tarawera on 10 June, over 60 people took shelter in Hinerangi's home at Te Wairoa. Because of its high-pitched roof and reinforced timber walls, everyone in her house escaped being killed.
With their homes and gardens buried in volcanic ash, all the displaced Tūhourangi people moved to the nearby village of Whakarewarewa. There she continued to organize and lead the local tours, and she encouraged other women there to become guides. In 1895 Hinerangi toured Australia as part of a theatrical performance about the eruption, and in 1896 was appointed official Caretaker of Whakarewarewa.

Death and legacy

Hinerangi died at Whakarewarewa on 4 December 1911.
Rotorua’s tribute to her is .
Hinerangi was also known under the name Te Paea.