The New Zealand Wars - New Zealand's 19th-century wars

The warring forties

The Musket Wars made it easier for Pakeha to acquire land. In 1840 they bought one desirable but depopulated area, Auckland, for a tiny amount. This purchase sowed the seeds for interracial conflict. Nga Puhi, led by Hone Heke, felt betrayed when trade slumped after the new colonial government quit the Bay of Islands for Auckland. In 1845 Heke and Kawiti (an expert at designing modern pa able to resist artillery bombardment) launched a campaign that threatened British control in the north. But other Nga Puhi supported the government, and the conflict fizzled out.

Then the energetic Governor George Grey moved to secure Wellington and Wanganui against allies of Te Rauparaha. Fighting flared briefly but died away when other southern North Island Maori backed the economically valuable Pakeha.

The New Zealand Wars

The 1850s brought uneasy peace. Settlers and sheep spread across the South Island, which had never had many Maori inhabitants. But in the North Island most colonists remained stuck in coastal settlements. In 1860 Maori still held 80% of the island, and many had taken up commercial farming to supply the settlers.

Confronted by a Maori King movement (Kingitanga) that united tribes against selling land, the new governor, Thomas Gore Browne, wanted a showdown. Opportunity knocked when a minor chief offered land at Waitara. Resistance to this sale led to the outbreak of the Taranaki War in 1860. New Plymouth was besieged, but British troops failed to lure Te Atiawa, Ngati Ruanui and their Waikato allies into a decisive battle. An 1861 truce pleased no one.

Grey was brought back in 1861 to sort out the troublesome colony. He promised Maori local autonomy, but he also built a military road from Auckland to the Waikato River, the main artery of the Kingitanga heartland. Grey invaded Waikato in July 1863. Lieutenant-General Duncan Cameron's 12,000 imperial troops faced fewer than 5000 part-time warriors who had to provide much of their own food and supplies.

Cameron's army took seven months to reach the Kingitanga agricultural base around Te Awamutu. On the way they outflanked formidable modern pa at Meremere and Paterangi, and they captured an undermanned pa at Rangiriri. In April 1864 Kingites under Rewi Maniapoto were heavily defeated at Orakau, a pa built on a poorly chosen site. Cameron then tried to crush Kingites holding the Gate Pa at Tauranga but failed disastrously. Two months later the British got their revenge at nearby Te Ranga.

Prophets and colonists

In 1864 the Kingites took refuge in the 'King's Country'. Much of their land was confiscated by the settler government. Another round of fighting was sparked by new Maori religious movements. With neither British nor settlers willing to foot the bills for the imperial army, kupapa (Maori fighting alongside the colonists) and settler militia now filled front line roles.

The first prophet to emerge at this time was Te Ua Haumene, whose peaceful Pai Marire creed was soon distorted to justify guerrilla attacks from Taranaki to the East Coast. These raids terrified many, but they were not co-ordinated and each flare-up was soon doused.

A graver crisis struck in 1868. First, resistance to land confiscation in south Taranaki erupted into warfare. A few hundred warriors under the Ngati Ruanui leader Titokowaru – a Methodist lay preacher who became a Pai Marire prophet – won a series of battles and reached the outskirts of Wanganui. Many townsfolk fled.

The small colonial army, the Armed Constabulary, soon faced war on two fronts. Te Kooti Rikirangi of Rongowhakaata, who had been arrested for allegedly helping a Pai Marire force near Gisborne in 1865, was one of hundreds exiled to the Chatham Islands, 800 km east of the South Island. After adopting Te Kooti's new Ringatu faith, these prisoners overpowered their guards and sailed back to the mainland in July 1868. When the government refused to negotiate, they descended on Poverty Bay in November to attack the many locals – Maori and Pakeha – who had offended Te Kooti over the years.

The turning point

The year 1869 began with the prospect of North Island Pakeha being pushed back into coastal enclaves linked only by sea. This danger disappeared even more quickly than it had arisen. First, Te Kooti fortified an indefensible site in the Poverty Bay interior. When this had to be abandoned, many of his followers were captured and killed. Though he struck without warning across the central North Island for another three years, his dwindling force was pursued doggedly by kupapa.

In February 1869 Titokowaru also ceased to be a threat when his army suddenly abandoned a formidable modern pa, Tauranga-ika. It seems that the prophet's mana evaporated when he was found with a woman who was not his wife.

After the New Zealand Wars ended in 1872, the King Country stayed closed to Pakeha for another decade. South Taranaki also resisted settler incursions until 1881, when the assertive Parihaka community was dispersed by the colonial army. Resistance flared briefly in Hokianga in 1898, and parts of the Urewera remained off-limits to Pakeha until 1916. Weight of numbers and military and economic power had prevailed, though, and the map of New Zealand had been redrawn. By 1900 this was a settler society, with Maori pushed out to its fringes.

Casualties

Several thousand people died in the New Zealand Wars, most of them Maori. The numbers below are those of the historian James Cowan, who counted civilians and sometimes overstated the casualties of Maori who opposed the settlers. The death toll was most balanced in the 1840s and in Titokowaru's War. Pai Marire followers suffered the highest proportionate losses.