The invasion of the Waikato became the largest and most important campaign of the 19th-century New Zealand Wars. Hostilities took place in the North Island of New Zealand between the military forces of the colonial government and a federation of Māori tribes known as the Kingitanga Movement. The Waikato is a territorial region with a northern boundary somewhat south of the present-day city of Auckland. The campaign lasted for nine months, from July 1863 to April 1864. The invasion was aimed at crushing Kingite power (which European settlers saw as a threat to colonial authority) and also at driving Waikato Māori from their territory in readiness for occupation and settlement by European colonists. The campaign was fought by a peak of about 14,000 Imperial and colonial troops and about 4,000 Māori warriors drawn from more than half the major North Island tribal groups.
Plans for the invasion were drawn up at the close of the First Taranaki War in 1861 but the Colonial Office and New Zealand General Assembly opposed action, and the incoming Governor Sir George Grey (second term 1861–1868) suspended execution in December of that year. Grey reactivated the invasion plans in June 1863 amid mounting tension between Kingites and the colonial government and fears of a violent raid on Auckland by Kingite Māori. Grey used, as the trigger for the invasion, the Kingite rejection of his ultimatum on 9 July 1863 that all Māori living between Auckland and the Waikato take an oath of allegiance to Queen Victoria or be expelled south of the Waikato River. Government troops crossed into Waikato territory three days later and launched their first attack on 17 July at Koheroa, but were unable to advance for another 14 weeks.
The subsequent war included the Battle of Rangiriri (November 1863)—which cost both sides more men than any other engagement of the New Zealand Wars—and the three-day-long Battle of Ōrākau (March–April 1864), which became arguably the best-known engagement of the New Zealand Wars and which inspired two films called Rewi's Last Stand. The campaign ended with the retreat of the Kingitanga Māori into the rugged interior of the North Island and the colonial government confiscating about 12,000 km2 of Māori land.
The defeat and confiscations left the King Movement tribes with a legacy of poverty and bitterness that was partly assuaged in 1995 when the government conceded that the 1863 invasion and confiscation was wrongful and apologised for its actions. The Waikato–Tainui tribe accepted compensation in the form of cash and some government-controlled lands totalling about $171 million and later that year Queen Elizabeth II personally signed the Waikato Raupatu Claims Settlement Act 1995. (The Governor-General normally gives Royal Assent to legislation by signing on the monarch's behalf.)
Background and origins of the invasion
The First Taranaki War had ended in March 1861 as an uneasy truce between the government and Māori forces, with both sides recognising they had reached a stalemate. The lack of a clear victory by imperial forces led Governor Thomas Gore Browne to turn his attention to the Waikato, the centre of the Kīngitanga movement, where king Tāwhiao was attracting the allegiance of increasing numbers of Māori across the North Island. Browne concluded that members of the Kīngitanga movement would have to be compelled to submit to British rule. After attempting to achieve a peace settlement through "kingmaker" Wiremu Tamihana, in mid-1861 he sent an ultimatum to the movement's leaders, demanding submission to Queen Victoria and the return of plunder taken from Taranaki; when it was rejected he began drawing up plans to invade the Waikato and depose the king—a plan opposed by both the Colonial Office and the New Zealand General Assembly. According to Browne, in response to his belligerence, Kingite leaders formed plans to launch a raid on Auckland on 1 September and burn the town and slaughter most of its residents. This has since been dismissed by such historians as James Belich as being fear-mongering from Browne in order to try and gain military support.
Browne's invasion plan was suspended when he was replaced by Sir George Grey in September that year, and the Kingites in turn abandoned their plan for their uprising. Grey instead instituted a peace policy that included a system of Māori local administration in which they could participate, hoping it would encourage Māori to abandon the Kingite movement and "reduce the number of our enemies". At the same time, however, Grey began planning for war, using troops from the newly formed Commissariat Transport Corps to start construction work on a road from Drury that would run about 18 km south through forest to the Kingite border at the Mangatāwhiri Stream—a tributary of the Waikato River—near Pokeno. The so-called Great South Road would provide quick access to troops in the event of an invasion. Using what historian James Belich describes as a campaign of misinformation, Grey retained the Taranaki army and began appealing to the colonial office for more troops to avert "some great disaster", claiming tensions remained high, with a high likelihood of Māori aggression. In November 1862 he ordered a gunboat steamer from Sydney and purchased another in Lyttelton to supplement the supply system. By early 1863 the imperial government had provided Grey with 3000 men for the expected war.
Events in early 1863 brought tensions to a head. In March Kingites obstructed the construction of a police station at Te Kohekohe, near Meremere. Rewi Maniapoto, accompanied by Wiremu Kīngi Te Rangitāke, led 80 armed Ngāti Maniapoto warriors in a raid on the 80 hectare property at Te Awamutu occupied by magistrate and Commissioner John Gorst to seize the printing press on which he published a newspaper and take it to Kihikihi. The raiders sent a message to Gorst—who was absent at the time—to quit the property or risk death; Grey recalled Gorst to Auckland soon after. On 4 April Grey arranged for a 300-strong Imperial force to evict Māori from the contested Tataraimaka block in Taranaki and reoccupy it. Māori viewed the reoccupation as an act of war and on 4 May a party of about 40 Ngati Ruanui warriors carried out a revenge attack, ambushing a small military party on a coastal road at nearby Ōakura, killing all but one of the 10 soldiers. The ambush, ordered by Rewi, may have been planned as an assassination attempt on Grey, who regularly rode the track between New Plymouth and the Tataraimaka military post.
Imperial troops were moved back to Taranaki as hostilities resumed and on 4 June the new British commander, Lieutenant-General Duncan Cameron, led 870 troops to attack a party of about 50 Māori on the Tataraimaka block, killing 24. Concerned by the renewed aggression, some Kingites began resurrecting their plan to raid Auckland and its frontier settlements. The colonial ministry remained unconvinced Auckland or Wellington were in any danger and had refused to call out the Auckland militia following the Ōakura ambush, and missionaries and even Gorst dismissed the likelihood of an attack. But in correspondence to London Grey cited that incident as further proof of the imminent danger to New Zealand settlers.
On 9 July 1863 Grey issued a new ultimatum, ordering that all Māori living between Auckland and the Waikato take an oath of allegiance to Queen Victoria or be expelled south of the river. As many young men retreated into the bush with their weapons, officials began seizing others—including the ill and aged—who declined to swear the oath, imprisoning them without charge. Two days later Grey issued a proclamation directed to the "Chiefs of Waikato", which read:
Europeans living quietly on their own lands in Waikato have been driven away; their property has been plundered; their wives and children have been taken from them. By the instigation of some of you, officers and soldiers were murdered at Taranaki. Others of you have since expressed approval of these murders ... You are now assembling in armed bands; you are constantly threatening to come down the river to ravage the Settlement of Auckland and to murder peaceable settlers. Some of you offered a safe passage through your territories to armed parties contemplating such outrages ... Those who remain peaceably at their own villages in Waikato, or move into such districts as may be pointed out by the Government, will be protected in their persons, property, and land. Those who wage war against Her Majesty, or remain in arms, threatening the lives of Her peaceable subjects, must take the consequences of their acts, and they must understand that they will forfeit the right to the possession of their lands guaranteed to them by the Treaty of Waitangi.
Within a day—before the proclamation had even reached the Waikato—Grey ordered the invasion of the Kingite territory, claiming he was making a punitive expedition against Rewi over the Ōakura ambush and a pre-emptive strike to thwart a "determined and bloodthirsty" plot to attack Auckland. Though Grey claimed it was a defensive action, historian B. J. Dalton claimed his reports to London had been "a deliberate and transparent falsehood" and that the invasion was an act of "calculated aggression". On 12 July Duncan Cameron and the first echelon of the invading army crossed the Mangatāwhiri Stream.
First engagements
Cameron, a Crimean War veteran who had replaced Major-General Thomas Pratt as commander-in-chief of the British troops, began the invasion with fewer than 4000 effective troops in Auckland at his disposal. But the continuous arrival of regiments from overseas rapidly swelled the force. (Total troop numbers reached 10,000 in January 1864 before peaking at about 14,000 in March 1864—9000 imperial troops, more than 4000 colonial and a few hundred kūpapa, or pro-British Māori.)
Cameron's initial invasion force set up camp on the site of an old pā on a hill above the stream. Reinforcements continued to arrive and within days he had 500 troops. On the morning of 17 July Cameron led 553 men on a raid on a new and unfinished entrenchment at Koheroa, near Mercer. Cameron ran ahead of his force after they took early fire from Māori outposts and the Māori fighters fled. According to Belich, the Māori force numbered between 100 and 150 and about 15 were killed, some of them by bayonet. Among the dead was their leader Te Huirama, a relative of King Tāwhiao. British casualties totalled one dead and 12 wounded. But the same day a Māori war party ambushed a convoy of six carts and its 50-man escort well behind British lines, at Martin's Farm near Ramarama on the Great South Road. A third of the British force were cut down—five soldiers killed and 11 wounded—while Māori losses were limited to two. The attack prompted the establishment of five new redoubts on the route, taking 510 of Cameron's men.
The bush raid was the beginning of a new Māori strategy that would drain Cameron's resources and halt his advance for another 14 weeks. On 22 July a group of about 40 Māori fatally shot a settler cutting timber at Pukekiwiriki near Papakura and were pursued into the forest by the Auckland militia. Seven Māori were killed. When two more settlers were killed at isolated farms near Drury on 24 July, the government formed a special corps of bush fighters named the "Forest Rangers", who began a series of bush reconnaissance missions and pursuits of armed Māori bands. Cameron wrote: "The bush is now so infested with these natives that I have been obliged to establish strong posts along our line of communication, which absorbs so large a portion of the force that until I receive reinforcements it is impossible for me to advance further up the Waikato."
By the end of August Cameron's forces had grown to 6000 effectives. He had the armoured 40-ton paddle-steamer Avon—20m long, drawing one metre of water and armed with a 12-pounder Armstrong in the bows—as well as boats, barges and canoes. But Māori defences had also grown: the so-called Meremere Line—a 22 km-long line of fortifications that spread from Pukekawa to Meremere and Paparata—had been built, commanding about 2000 square kilometres of bush and manned by a force of up to 1500. The Meremere Line allowed bands of between 20 and 200 Māori warriors to freely cross the Waikato River and harass troops and kill settlers towards Auckland. On 25 August a party of Māori snatched up the rifles and ammunition from a group of 25 soldiers who were timber-felling beside the Great South Road—part of an effort to destroy cover for Māori raiders intent on mounting further ambushes—and killed two soldiers. On 2 September a British party of 62 men was fired on from the rear during a march on the village of Pokeno, but managed to pursue their attackers and inflict some casualties.
In mid-August the British established an alternative supply line to the Great South Road, using a combination of steamers from Onehunga to the Waikato Heads and canoes paddled up the Waikato by friendly Māori to Queen's Redoubt at Pokeno. But on 7 September a Ngāti Maniapoto war party launched an attack on that supply line, killing resident magistrate James Armitage—who was supervising a shipment of stores—and burning a stores depot with 40 tons of supplies at Camerontown on the north bank of the Waikato River near Tuakau. The Ngāti Maniapoto then attacked a British redoubt overlooking Pokeno, from which they were driven off. The attack on the supply line, said Belich, "was easily the most important single action of the first phase of the war".