As Jack Tame said, there is a version of the Treaty in English, the final English draft of the Treaty in Maori, and the version of the Treaty in Maori which was constructed from the final English draft. In February 1840, these two document were in perfect sync. You could say they were a mirror image. There were no variations, other than the two variations that I have mentioned in the two previous videos. Everything changed during March and April 1840. On March the 1st, Hobson had a severe stroke and was incapacitated. He eventually died in 1842. The British surgeon general put it down to stress. Things began to unravel for the British in March and April, 1840. Not only did Hobson suffer a stroke, but somehow, and no one knows exactly how, but the original draft of the Treaty in English was lost. In her book in the Treaty, Dr Claudia Orange states clearly: “The original draft in English, on which Henry Williams based this Maori translation, has not been found. His original translation, presented to the Waitangi meeting of 5 February, has also disappeared.” (Martin Doutre, The Littlewood Treaty. The True English Text Of The Treaty Of Waitangi Found. De Danann Publishers, 2005. p28 ).
With Hobson incapacitated, his personal secretary James Freeman played up. As Bruce Moon put it in Twisting the Treaty : “While the cat was away the mouse was playing. James Stuart Freeman, 3rd class clerk in the NSW Government, was palmed off on Hobson by Governor Gipps as his private secretary – incompetent, pretenCous, arrogant. Amongst English signatories to the Treaty he, uniquely, signed himself: ‘Jas. Stuart Freeman Gentleman’.1 What does Bruce mean when he says James Freeman played up? He means that when the final English draO of the Treaty was lost, and while Hobson was desperately ill, Freeman started to write and distribute his own versions of the Treaty in English. Historians call Freeman’s versions of the Treaty ‘flowery’ because they were much more elaborate and wordy than the original final English draO or the Treaty in Maori. Freeman’s versions were based on the discarded notes that the Treaty writers leO around aOer they have finalised the draO Treaty in English.
How do we know that the final English draft of the Treaty must have been lost at this early stage? That is, within only a few months of the Waitangi signing? If it has been available, surely Freeman would have used it as the basis for writing his Treaty versions? Surely, other British officials would have insisted on this? The British, ordinarily, were sticklers for detail and correct process. 1
Bruce Moon. Twisting The Treaty. The Tribal Grab For Wealth And Power. Tross Publishing. 2014. Page 39