Story: Diverse religions

This 1853 painting depicts the baptism of the leading Te Āti Awa chief Te Puni-kōkupu by the Reverend Octavius Hadfield, an Anglican missionary. The old chief lived beside Wellington Harbour at Petone, where he was baptised in 1852. However, the ceremony is shown here in the more impressive surroundings of Rangiātea, Hadfield's church at Ōtaki. Standing behind the minister are Governor George Grey and his wife Eliza. Grey commissioned this painting, perhaps to record the assimilation of Māori into European settler society.