Māori in the Bay of Islands and surrounding districts had no doubts about the meaning of the word pākehā in the 19th century.
However, The Concise Māori Dictionary (Kāretu, 1990) defines the word pākehā as "foreign, foreigner (usually applied to white person)", while the English-Māori, Māori-English Dictionary (Biggs, 1990) defines Pākehā as "white (person)".