13 May 2021

Row brewing over authenticity of Hongi Hika gun up for auction

From First Up, 5:42 am on 13 May 2021

A stoush is brewing over the authenticity of a musket purported to have belonged to the great Ngapuhi chief Hongi Hika ... which is expected to fetch over 100-thousand dollars at an auction on Monday. The auction house, Webb's, insists it is the real deal and says the previous owner did three months of research to prove it. But even if the musket is indeed authentic, a descedent of Hongi Hika has questions about how it was obtained and whether it should be sold. Ella Stewart reports.