The Second Taranaki War is a term used by some historians for the period of hostilities between Māori and the New Zealand Government in the Taranaki district of New Zealand between 1863 and 1866. The term is avoided by some historians, who either describe the conflicts as merely a series of West Coast campaigns that took place between the Taranaki War (1860–1861) and Titokowaru's War (1868–69), or an extension of the First Taranaki War.
The conflict, which overlapped the wars in Waikato and Tauranga, was fuelled by a combination of factors: lingering Māori resentment over the sale of land at Waitara in 1860 and government delays in resolving the issue; a large-scale land confiscation policy launched by the government in late 1863; and the rise of the so-called Hauhau movement, an extremist part of the Pai Marire syncretic religion, which was strongly opposed to the alienation of Māori land and eager to strengthen Māori identity. The Hauhau movement became a unifying factor for Taranaki Māori in the absence of individual Māori commanders.
The style of warfare after 1863 differed markedly from that of the 1860-61 conflict, in which Māori had taken set positions and challenged the army to an open contest. From 1863 the army, working with greater numbers of troops and heavy artillery, systematically took possession of Māori land by driving off the inhabitants, adopting a "scorched earth" strategy of laying waste to Māori villages and cultivations, with attacks on villages, whether warlike or otherwise. As the troops advanced, the Government built an expanding line of redoubts, behind which settlers built homes and developed farms. The effect was a creeping confiscation of almost a million acres (4,000 km2) of land, with little distinction between the land of loyal or rebel Māori owners.
The Government's war policy was opposed by the British commander, General Duncan Cameron, who clashed with Governor Sir George Grey and offered his resignation in February 1865. He left New Zealand six months later. Cameron, who viewed the war as a form of land plunder, had urged the Colonial Office to withdraw British troops from New Zealand and from the end of 1865 the Imperial forces began to leave, replaced by an expanding New Zealand military force. Among the new colonial forces were specialist Forest Ranger units, which embarked on lengthy search-and-destroy missions deep into the bush.
The Waitangi Tribunal has argued that apart from the attack on Sentry Hill in April 1864, there was an absence of Māori aggression throughout the entire Second War, and that therefore Māori were never actually at war. It concluded: "In so far as Māori fought at all – and few did – they were merely defending their kainga, crops and land against military advance and occupation."
Background and causes of the war
The conflict in Taranaki had its roots in the First Taranaki War, which had ended in March 1861 with an uneasy truce. Neither side fulfilled the terms of the truce, leaving many of the issues unresolved. Chief among those issues was (1) the legality of the sale of a 600 acres (2.4 km2) block of land at Waitara, which had sparked the first war, but Māori unrest was exacerbated by (2) a new land confiscation strategy launched by the Government and (3) the emergence of a fiery nationalist religious movement.
Disputed Waitara land
In 1861 Governor Thomas Gore Browne had promised to investigate the legitimacy of the sale of the Waitara land, but as delays continued, Taranaki and Ngāti Ruanui Māori became increasingly impatient. During the earlier war they had driven settlers off farmland at Omata and Tataraimaka, 20 km south of New Plymouth, and occupied it, claiming it by right of conquest and vowing to hold it until the Waitara land was returned to them. On 12 March 1863, 300 men from the 57th Regiment, led by Colonel Sir Henry James Warre, marched out to Omata to retake the land and a month later, on 4 April, Browne's successor, Governor Sir George Grey, marched to Tataraimaka with troops and built a redoubt and re-occupied the land in what the Waitangi Tribunal described as a hostile act. The five tribes encamped in the area – Atiawa, Taranaki, Ngatiruanui, Nga Rauru and Whanganui – promptly requested assistance from Ngāti Maniapoto and Waikato Māori to respond to what they regarded as an act of war.
In a despatch to London Grey wrote that he had failed to shake the "dogged determination" of Māori on the Waitara question. "A great part of the native race," he wrote, "may be stated to be at the present moment in arms, in a state of chronic discontent ... Large numbers of them have renounced the Queen's authority, and many of them declare openly that they have been so wronged that they will never return under it ... the great majority of them declare that if war arises from this cause, they will rise and make a simultaneous attack upon the several European settlements in the Northern Island. The reasons they urge for such proceedings are ... that the people of the Waitara, without having been guilty of any crime, were driven at the point of the sword from villages, houses, and homes which they had occupied for years. That a great crime had been committed against them. That through all future generations it will be told that their lands have been forcibly and unlawfully taken from them by officers appointed by the Queen of the United Kingdom. They argue that they have no hope of obtaining justice, that their eventual extermination is determined on; but that all that is left to them is to die like men, after a long and desperate struggle; and that the sooner they can bring that on before our preparations are further matured, and our numbers increased, the greater is their chance of success."
A month later Grey began planning to return Waitara to the Māori, and on 11 May issued a proclamation renouncing all government claims to the land. But he did nothing to signal his intention and on 4 May, a week before he acted, Māori began killing British troops traversing their land. The Government declared those killings to be the outbreak of a new Taranaki war and Grey immediately wrote to the Colonial Office in London, requesting three additional regiments be sent to New Zealand. He also ordered the return to New Plymouth of troops that had been moved to Auckland at the close of the earlier Taranaki hostilities, where they had been building a road southward in preparation for the invasion of the Waikato.
Land confiscations
In December 1863 the Parliament passed the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863, a piece of punitive legislation allowing unlimited confiscation of Māori land by the government, ostensibly as a means of suppressing "rebellion". Under the Act, Māori who had been "in rebellion" could be stripped of their land, which would be surveyed, divided and either given as 20 hectare farms to military settlers as a means of establishing and maintaining peace, or sold to recover the costs of fighting Māori. Volunteers were enlisted from among gold miners in Otago and Melbourne for military service and a total of 479,848 hectares were confiscated in Taranaki by means of proclamations in January and September 1865. Little distinction was made between the land of "rebels" and Māori loyal to the government.
According to the Waitangi Tribunal, Māori recognised that the British intention was to seize the greater part of their land for European settlement through a policy of confiscation and saw that their best hope of keeping their homes, lands and status lay in taking up arms. The 1927 Royal Commission on Confiscated Land, chaired by senior Supreme Court judge Sir William Sim, concluded: "The Natives were treated as rebels and war declared against them before they had engaged in rebellion of any kind ... In their eyes the fight was not against the Queen's sovereignty, but a struggle for house and home."
The rise of Hauhauism
In 1862 the so-called Hauhau Movement emerged among Taranaki Māori. The movement was an extremist part of the Pai Mārire religion that was both violent and vehemently anti-Pākehā. Adherence to the Hauhau movement, which included incantations, a sacred pole, belief in supernatural protection from bullets, and occasionally beheadings, the removal of the hearts of enemy and cannibalism, spread rapidly through the North Island from 1864, welding tribes in a bond of passionate hatred against the Pākehā.
Hostilities resume
Two hui were held by Taranaki, Ngāti Ruanui, Ngā Rauru and Whanganui iwi. The first, held on 3 July 1861 at Wiriwiri near Manaia, Taranaki, resulted in most of the 1,000 people present pledging support for the Kīngitanga Movement. The second, held at Kapoaiaia near Cape Egmont in July 1862 involving 600 members, involved the decision that Tataraimaka, Kaipopo, Waiwakaiho, Waitaha and Waitara were Māori lands, and that any attempt to create a road south of Waireka near Omata by European settlers would be considered an act of war. By December 1862, work on the road had extended west past Waireka to Okurukuru, and by early 1863, Tamati Hone Oraukawa led a Ngāti Ruanui party north to support Taranaki iwi, if British troops re-occupied Tataraimaka. Grey, while visiting the Waikato in January 1863, indicated that he intended to send troops to retake Tataraimaka.
On 4 March 1863, Grey arrived at New Plymouth alongside General Duncan Cameron, Dillon Bell and Colonial Secretary Alfred Domett. Between this time and early April, British troops established redoubts south and west of Omata, reaching Tataraimaka. In March 1863 a group of Māori encamped on land they had seized at Tataraimaka were ousted with force by British troops in what they regarded as an act of war. The Waitangi Tribunal, in its 1996 report, also claimed the military reoccupation of Tataraimaka was a hostile act that implied war had been unilaterally resumed.
Two months later, on 4 May 1863, a party of about 40 Māori ambushed a small military party of the 57th Regiment on a coastal road west of Ōakura, killing all but one of the 10 soldiers as an act of revenge. The ambush may have been planned as an assassination attempt on Grey, who regularly rode the track between New Plymouth and the Tataraimaka military post. Three weeks later Māori laid another ambush near the Poutoko Redoubt, 13 km (8.1 mi) from New Plymouth, injuring a mounted officer of the 57th Regiment.
The Militia and Taranaki Rifle Volunteers were called up for guard and patrol duty around New Plymouth and in June a 50-man corps of forest rangers was formed within the Taranaki Rifles by Captain Harry Atkinson to follow Māori into the bush and clear the country surrounding New Plymouth of hostile bands. The force was later expanded to two companies and named the Taranaki Bush Rangers.
On 4 June the new British commander, General Cameron, led 870 members of the 57th Regiment and 70th Regiment to attack and defeat a party of about 50 Māori still occupying the Tataraimaka block beside the Katikara River. 29 Māori and one soldier from the 57th Regiment were killed in the engagement. The Māori were also shelled by HMS Eclipse from about 1.5 km (0.93 mi) offshore.
On 2 October a large force of the 57th Regiment, Volunteers and militia engaged Māori near Poutoko Redoubt, Omata, 9 km south of New Plymouth. Victoria Crosses were awarded to two members of the 57th, Ensign John Thornton Down and Drummer Dudley Stagpoole, for bravery during the battle.
The Hauhau movement intervenes
In late 1863 Taranaki Māori built a strongly entrenched position at Kaitake, high on a steep ridge overlooking Ōakura. The pā was shelled in December by the 57th Regiment and through the week of 20 to 25 March 1864, the pā and nearby fortifications at Te Tutu and Ahuahu were stormed and taken by a force of 420 of the 57th, 70th and Volunteers and Militia commanded by Colonel Sir Henry James Warre, with four Armstrong guns. Cultivations of more than 2.5ha of maize, potatoes, tobacco and other crops were also found in bush clearings and destroyed. Kaitake was occupied by a company of the 57th Regiment and a company of the Otago Volunteers.
Almost a fortnight later, on 6 April, a combined force of 57th Regiment and the newly formed Taranaki Military Settlers, a total of 101 men, set off from Kaitake to destroy native crops near the Ahuahu village, set amid dense bush south of Ōakura. A detachment suffered 19 casualties – 7 killed and 12 wounded – after being surprised by a Māori attack as they rested without their weapons at the order of their commander, Captain P.W.J. Lloyd. Māori casualties were slight. The naked bodies of the seven dead, including Lloyd, were later recovered; all had been decapitated as part of a Hauhau rite. The mutilations were the first of a series inflicted on British and New Zealand soldiers carried out by Hauhau devotees between 1864 and 1873. Lloyd had only recently arrived in New Zealand from England and his lack of caution was blamed on his unfamiliarity with Māori war tactics. The easy victory of the Māori over the numerically stronger British-led force gave a powerful impetus to the Hauhau movement. The heads of the slain soldiers were later discovered to have been taken to the east coast as part of a Pai Marire recruitment drive.
Attack on Sentry Hill
Three weeks later, on 30 April 1864, the measure of devotion to the Hauhau movement displayed itself in the reckless march by 200 warriors on the Sentry Hill redoubt, 9 km north-east of New Plymouth, in a one-sided battle that cost the lives of possibly a fifth of the Māori force. The redoubt had been built in late 1863 by Captain W. B. Messenger and 120 men of the Military Settlers on the crown of a hill that was the site of an ancient pā, and garrisoned by a detachment of 75 men from the 57th Regiment under Captain Shortt, with two Coehorn mortars. The construction of the outpost was regarded by the Atiawa as a challenge, being built close to the Māori position at Manutahi and on their land. In April 1864 a war party was formed of the best fighting men from the west coast iwi that had joined the rapidly spreading Hauhau movement. In a 1920 interview with historian James Cowan, Te Kahu-Pukoro, a fighter who took part in the attack, explained: "The Pai-marire religion was then new, and we were all completely under its influence and firmly believed in the teaching of Te Ua and his apostles. Hepanaia Kapewhiti was at the head of the war-party. He was our prophet. He taught us the Pai-marire karakia (chant), and told us that if we repeated it as we went into battle the Pākehā bullets would not strike us. This we all believed."