A Pilot Jack, with Queen Victoria’s head painted on the hoist, has become a symbol of office for successive chiefs of Mangaia. Following annexation by New Zealand the flag also became a symbol of the islanders’ resistance to colonial rule and their determination to retain sovereignty over their lands, writes Rod Dixon.

In 1888, the chiefs of the island of Rarotonga successfully petitioned the British Government to declare a Protectorate over the Cook Islands in response to perceived provocations from the French. A reluctant Mangaia had to be “duly persuaded” and accepted Protectorate status only after assurances that “All laws and customs at present recognised will remain in force, and his (the Ariki’s or Chief’s) administration over the island will not be interfered with.” This included the administration of land, the subject of 42 territorial wars in the island’s thousand-year history.

The Premier of New Zealand, Richard Seddon with King Togia of Niue. 1 June 1900. The painted Queen Victoria head on the flag’s hoist is seen at bottom left. (Photo – Seddon 1900; 223)/24080256

In 1900 the Premier of New Zealand, Hon. Richard Seddon, visited the Cook Islands to meet traditional leaders with a view to the islands’ annexation. A year later the British Governor of New Zealand, Lord Ranfurly, visited Mangaia to seek the chiefs’ agreement to formal annexation to the British Empire. The Mangaian chiefs agreed to “cede to Her Majesty Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and Empress of India, the sovereignty of Mangaia, subject only to the condition that it shall be annexed as part and parcel of the British Empire.” Ranfurly failed to mention that the islands would be administered as a colony of New Zealand.

Te Rangi Hiroa (Sir Peter Buck), the Māori ethnographer and author of Mangaian Society (1934) observed that, “(Mangaians) did not want to be part of New Zealand and called for a secession and reversion to Protectorate status as part of Britain”. [1] 

A focus of their resistance was the jurisdiction of the colonial Land Court, the New Zealand administration’s vehicle for individualising and commercialising land which had traditionally been collectively owned by tribes and administered by their chiefs.  “Mangaia” the chiefs asserted “is under Queen Victoria and part of the British Dominions and therefore the land is still in our hands”. [2] For the entirety of the sixty-years of New Zealand colonial rule,the Land Court was actively prevented from adjudicating on Mangaia and still today all land and succession issues remain under the mana or authority of the islands’ chiefs.

Central to, and symbolic of, Mangaia’s claim to ongoing “British Protectorate status” is the British “Victoria flag” (the reva paratane) – a British Pilot Flag or “Pilot Jack” on which Queen Victoria’s head has been crudely painted.

The Rarotonga flag held at left by Mrs Meremaraea Vilma Tinirau Mary Macquarie, daughter of the late Makea Nui Teremoana Ariki C.B.E. (Photo – Michel Lupant, 2005)/24080257

According to Mangaian tradition, the flag was given to Numangatini ariki of Mangaia by Queen Victoria as part of a gift exchange, formally linking Mangaia to the British Crown. This exchange was, in turn, reciprocated by Mangaian gifts of land to the Queen and Crown. As Mangaian historian Tereevangeria Aratangi explained – “When Queen Victoria visited New Zealand, all the Pacific kings went to meet her and give her gifts. The Mangaian king was Metuakore …. The Mangaian king was second to last, the last was the King of Tonga. The Mangaian king had been told by (the missionaries) to bow and walk away facing the Queen. He was given a walking stick, stamp and flag. The King of Tonga followed the Mangaian king’s example, and also got a flag”.[3]

European history does not record an encounter between the ariki of Mangaia and Queen Victoria, nor a visit by Queen Victoria to New Zealand. The only known meeting between a Mangaia ariki and a (future) King and Queen of England occurred in July 1901 in Auckland when Metuakore Numangatini, the third Ariki of Mangaia, was presented to Prince George, Duke of Cornwall and York, the grandson of Queen Victoria, and the future King George V. The event was marked by presentation of a gold medal to the Mangaian chief.

Another version of the story of the flag allows that the monarch was George V and not Victoria.

Mrs. Puati Ngarua of the Trego Ariki family told me (14 May 1992) – The flag was given to her grandfather, Metuakore John Trego, by King George V. When King George came to New Zealand, some of the arikis of the Cook Islands went to visit him. Metuakore was the second from last person to meet the King and while he was withdrawing, he kept his face to the King. The last man to leave copied Metuakore’s action. This had so impressed the King that when he returned to England, he sent two flags with the Victoria head – one to Metuakore; the other, some said, was sent to the King of Tonga but it was in fact the King of Niue. Mrs. Ngarua had seen photographs of the King of Niue with the flag. Also, a photograph of her grandmother with the flag draped around her shoulders, with Queen Victoria’s head on her back. [4]

The flag is more probably one of three (possibly four) similar flags presented to the King of Niue, the Ariki Makea of Rarotonga and the Ariki of Mangaia (with a fourth possibly gifted to the King of Tonga), during the Pacific voyage of the New Zealand premier Richard Seddon in May 1900.

On the island of Niue, Premier Seddon was photographed sitting beside King Togia, with a Pilot Jack with a painting of Queen Victoria’s head on the hoist, wrapped around their knees.

According to the official record: “Mr Seddon presented the King (of Niue) with a large Union Jack, a gift with which the native ruler was evidently much pleased. The New Zealand Premier told them that as long as the British flag floated over them they would be free from foreign invasion or trouble of any kind with their neighbours. The flag was the emblem of their being children of the great Queen and Empress … All then adjourned to the open air where the King and chiefs gave a song of welcome and photographs were taken – one of the King and Mr. Seddon with the British flag…” [5]

“Your King and I,” Seddon told the people of Niue, “have sat together with the British flag around us and with the spirit of our good and gracious Queen Victoria upholding that flag, it will show to the world to what power Niue belongs and the people here will be protected and ever happy. You hold and possess the best flag in the islands.” [6]

Seddon’s next call was at Rarotonga where, it appears, he presented a similar flag to the Ariki Makea of Te Au o Tonga. In Flags in the Cook Islands, Michel R. Lupant records meeting (in 2005) the daughter of the late Makea Nui Teremoana Ariki, who “showed us the huge flag from 1888, more than 2m high … (which was) immediately recognised as the British Pilot flag. A sailor had painted the face of Queen Victoria along the flagpole. That flag was more than a century old and has suffered from damage, specially from clothes moth.” [7]

Makea ariki’s daughter dated the flag to 1888, the year in which the British Protectorate was declared over the Cook Islands. However, the flag as illustrated in Lupant’s paper bears a striking resemblance to both Seddon’s Niue flag of 1900 and the reva paratane of Mangaia.

After visiting Rarotonga, Seddon proceeded to Mangaia where “a British flag” was presented to the joint reigning ariki of Mangaia – Metuakore John Trego Ariki and Nooroa Numangatini Ariki.

The official record of the visit reported – Mr Seddon with Colonel Gudgeon (Resident Commissioner) and Mr Goodwin (interpreter) made a visit to the house of the Ariki who is called by visitors “King John” – his name being in full John Trego ... When the principal persons had assembled and greeted the New Zealand Premier Mr Seddon then presented a Union Jack to the Arikis who thanked him warmly and expressed their pleasure at the visit. [8]

On Mangaia, the “Victoria flag” is considered tapu and mainly displayed on ceremonial occasions. It is rarely photographed. However, in 1956, a photograph of the flag appeared alongside an article in the Auckland Star which noted that “it had been presented to the island by Queen Victoria before New Zealand annexed the Cook Islands ...The flag depicts the elderly Queen in profile and a Union Jack on a white background.”

In 1991, on the death of the seventh Numangatini Ariki Ongoaere Louisa Ngaroiti, members of the Trego Ariki line disputed the succession of Nooroa Numangatini as the eighth ariki of Mangaia. Around this time, the reva paratane, a symbol of ariki office, disappeared and remains unrecovered to this day. A replica of the flag, presented to Ruida Ariki c. 1982 by the then Queen’s Representative Sir Gavin Donne is also missing.

Given the Flag has been missing for over 30 years, Numangatini Ariki Tangi Tereapii has appealed to those who have the original flag to hand it back at Maruata-Nui O Numangatini Palace or contact Numangatini Ariki +682 72789.

In 2015, a replica of the flag was commissioned to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Cook Islands self government and was flown during the Mangaia float parade, under the Maevanui theme, Te Korona o toku Matakeinanga. On the death in 2020 of Nooroa Numangatini, a reproduction of the reva paratane was flown at the investiture of the ninth and current Numangatini Ariki, Tangi Tereapii.

Mangaia also raised a replica standard version of the flag at the island’s recent bicentennial celebration. This replica is also flown when the ariki is in residence at the ‘Are ariki.

During World War II, Matekeiti, the fourth Numangatini Ariki, wrote to the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Mr. Peter Fraser offering the Government a gift of land for a wartime airport. In his letter he referred to the ongoing importance of the Mangaia’s British status as embodied in the “Victoria flag”. Matekeiti Ariki wrote: “From the day Her Majesty the late Queen Victoria’s portrait was hoisted on Mangaia, our soil has been free ever since and that flag from then, now (and) forever will live as a remembrance of Her Majesty for generations to come. It is our wish, therefore, to remain free under the shade of that flag – the British flag.”

- This article first appeared in the journal Flagmaster; Vexillological magazine of the Flag Institute, Vol. 54, No. 1. Issue 168, Summer 2024

Footnotes

[1] Hiroa, Te Rangi (Sir Peter Buck), 1993, Mangaia and the Mission, Institute of Pacific Studies and Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Suva and Honolulu, 58 fn 23

[2] Reilly, Michael, 2009, Ancestral Voices from Mangaia; A History of the Ancient Gods and Chiefs, The Polynesian Society, Auckland, 70

[3] Island Council member Angareu of Veitatei – report of an Island Council meeting, 21 October 1949

[4] Rod Dixon, Field Notes; Interview with Mrs. Puati Ngarua, Rarotonga 14 May 1992.

[5] The Right Hon. R.J. Seddon's (the Premier of New Zealand) visit to Tonga, Fiji, Savage Island, and the Cook Islands: May 1900, J. McKay, Government Printer, Wellington, New Zealand; 142, 153

[6] ibid.; 425

[7] Michel Lupant notes that because of the poor condition of the original Rarotongan flag, a replica had been made. Lupant observes that on the reprlica flag, the Jack has been printed upside down and the head of Victoria more expertly executed. See Lupant, Michel R., 2007, Flags of the Cook Islands, Paper given to the 22nd International Congress of Vexillology, Berlin 2007

[8] The Right Hon. R.J. Seddon's (the Premier of New Zealand) visit to Tonga, Fiji, Savage Island, and the Cook Islands: May 1900, J. McKay, Government Printer, Wellington, New Zealand; 265