Born into the Ngāi Te Ūpokoiri iwi, Rēnata Tama-ki-Hikurangi Kawepō’s chiefly mother was Te Pakapaka; through his father, Tūmanokia, Kawepō also belonged to Ngāti Hinemanu, and had connections to Ngāti Whiti and Ngāti Tama of Pātea, Ngāti Honomōkai and Ngāti Mahuika.

Kawepō’s name Rēnata (Leonard) was given to him when he was baptised in Waimate North in 1837. He married Māora and they had a son who died at six years of age.

Kawepō was a generous leader who held great mana over the expansive rohe of Heretaunga Hastings.

In his youth, Kawepō was involved in the intertribal battles that drove his people inland. Later, Ngāti Te Ūpokoiri were again defeated and Kawepō was taken prisoner and set over a fire. His cousin Tiakitai, a rangatira from Waimārama intervened, Kawepō’s life was spared, but he was consequently held captive by Ngāpuhi, with whom he remained for more than a decade.¹

During the 1840s, Kawepō was closely linked to the Church Missionary Society (CMS) and became one of its Māori teachers, with responsibility for a vast swathe of the North Island. After that relationship foundered, in 1850, Kawepō continued in his role as tribal leader, including leading his people into battle, notably during the pursuit of the Ringatū prophet Te Kooti from 1868 to 1870.

He was also famous for wearing an eyepatch, having lost his eye in a skirmish at Te Pōrere, in the heartland of Tongariro. In 1865, at the taking of Te Pōrere, Kawepō was clubbed from behind by a young woman from Taupō, the widow of Paurini, a chief who had been killed during the attack on the pā. In revenge for her husband’s death, she gouged out Kawepō’s right eye. Kawepō held on to her until help arrived and would not allow his people to harm her; he considered that she had acted correctly, and later married her.² In an earlier portrait commissioned by Kawepō himself from Lindauer in 1877, he had the artist ‘back date’ the portrait to include both his eyes, but the Partridge version shows him as he appeared in old age.³

The source of Lindauer’s portrayal of Kawepō is a photograph by Samuel Carnell, based in Ahuriri Napier, which presented the subject in European dress. The painting, with its dramatic rendering of light, focuses the viewer’s attention on the intricate mataora. From Kawepō’s ear, suspended by a broad black ribbon that rests on his lapel, hangs a pounamu kapeu, which, like his mataora, speaks of the mana of this distinguished rangatira.