Russell, also known as , is a town in the Bay of Islands, in New Zealand's far north. It was the first permanent European settlement and seaport in New Zealand. History and culture Māori settlement Before the arrival of the Europeans, Russell was inhabited by Māori because of its salubrious climate and the abundance of food, fish and fertile soil. Russell was then known as Kororāreka, and was a small settlement on the coast. This name translates to 'sweet kororā' ( meaning blue penguin and meaning sweet), after an ailing chief who had eaten a penguin broth remarked ka reka te kororā or 'the kororā is sweet'. Early European explorers James Cook and Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne remarked that the area was quite prosperous. European settlement When European and American ships began visiting New Zealand in the early 1800s, the indigenous Māori quickly recognised there were great advantages in trading with these strangers, whom they called . The Bay of Islands offered a safe anchorage and had a large Māori population. To attract ships, Māori began to supply food, timber, and prostitution. What the Māori population wanted was respect, firearms, alcohol, and other goods of European manufacture. Kororāreka developed as a result of this trade but soon earned a very bad reputation as a community without laws and full of prostitution. It became known as the "Hell Hole of the Pacific"; European law had no influence and Māori law was seldom enforced within the town's area. Fighting on the beach at Kororāreka in March 1830, between northern and southern hapū within the Ngāpuhi iwi, became known as the Girls' War. On 30 January 1840 at the Christ Church, Governor William Hobson read his proclamations (which were the beginnings of the Treaty of Waitangi) in the presence of a number of settlers and the Māori chief Moka Te Kainga-mataa. A document confirming what had happened was signed at this time by around forty witnesses, including Moka, the only Māori signatory. The following week, the treaty proceedings would then move across to the western side of the bay to Waitangi. By this time, Kororāreka was an important mercantile centre and served as a vital resupply port for whaling and sealing operations. When the Colony of New Zealand was founded in that year, Hobson was reluctant to choose Kororāreka as his capital, due to its bad reputation. Instead he purchased land at Okiato,