Waikato’s dark day
A day of confusion, gunfire and death more than 150 years ago left a scar on the Waikato that remains to this day. Te Ahua Maitland reports.
Wikitoria Pahi was down at the local puna with the tamariki when the village was attacked.
The story goes that she was helping the kids get washed and ready for church on Sunday morning, February 21, 1864.
The Waikato phase of the New Zealand Wars was at its peak and 1000 colonial troops had invaded the thriving Ma¯ ori settlement of Rangiaowhia just east of Te Awamutu, where women, children and the elderly were living.
They were supposed to be safe in their village, populated as it was by non-combatants. Pahi was able to save the tamariki, using reeds to help them breathe as they ducked under the water to escape the gunfire.
They fled down the Waipa River to Kahotea, Otorohanga, where Pahi resettled and eventually married, and was given the name Te Mamae Pahi Wirihana Whakamau.
Ma¯ ori – including women, children and elderly men – and colonial soldiers were killed and wounded in the attack.
The whare karakia and several other whare were burned down, with reports of people incinerated inside.
Pahi named her children after the attack, so the events would never be forgotten.
Te Wera was the eldest, meaning the burning of the whare karakia; followed by Te Pupuhi, the wind that fanned the fire that burnt the whare karakia; Te Ratapu, Sunday – the day of the attack; Te Keu, ‘‘pull the trigger’’, in reference to the soldiers firing; and Maringi, meaning the tears that Pahi wept.
Her great-grandaughter Hazel Wander has heard these stories, passed down to her mother, a descendant of the iwi who populated the village, Nga¯ ti Apakura. Pahi was born at Ngahuruhuru Pa, near Rangiaowhia.
Wander described it as a day of terrorism. It still affects her whanau today.
‘‘What were they doing there? What right did they have?’’ she said.
‘‘They were armed with all those military weapons and they knew old people and tamariki were there.’’ The recollection of events that unfolded at Rangiaowhia are still discussed by historians and the descendants of Nga¯ ti Apakura today. ‘‘It is still very sensitive, but it’s important to discuss our history,’’ Wander said.
‘‘In 1993, I said I wanted a photo with Mum over there [Rangiaowhia], but she wouldn’t. She said it was a place of massacre.’’
It remains a raw memory in
Ma¯ oridom, when controversy surrounded comments made by Sir William Gallagher on the role of the Treaty of Waitangi, Taitimu Maipi, who protested outside Gallagher’s company headquarters in Hamilton, referenced the attack, claiming children had been burned in a church at Rangiaowhia.
In The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato 1800-2000, author Dr Vincent O’Malley explains how the troops, led by General Duncan Cameron, and the Forest Rangers, led by Colonel
‘‘It is still very sensitive, but it’s important to discuss our history . . . In 1993, I said I wanted a photo with Mum over there [Rangiaowhia], but she wouldn’t. She said it was a place of massacre.’’
Hazel Wander
Marmaduke Nixon, made their way to Rangiaowhia to avoid a strongly fortified pa nearby at Pa¯ terangi.
O’Malley said one controversy was that Rangiaowhia was a peaceful, undefended village. It was not a fighting pa¯ , but a place of refuge for many women, children and elderly men.
The area was one of prosperous farms, growing fruit and vegetables, with acres of maize and wheat. It is said these Ma¯ ori farmers supplied their men at battle and whanau in the area, and that their fresh fruit and produce were sold at the Auckland and Australian markets. It was a key prize for colonial forces.
The village was also the centre of the Waikato Catholic Mission and had a strong Anglican presence, too. Sunday was a sacred day for Ma¯ ori Christians and they did not expect an attack.
Cameron reported that 12 Ma¯ ori were killed and a similar number wounded, with 33 inhabitants, including 21 women and children, captured.
Many of the dead were found in a burned whare karakia, or house of prayer.
Some official British military sources make no reference to the killing of women or children.
The men of Rangiaowhia were at Pa¯ terangi, where they anticipated Cameron’s attack, and when they heard of the raid, they abandoned their position and raced home. This eventuated in an inconclusive battle not far away at Hairini.
One point of contention in recollections of the battle is whether the whare, with people inside, was deliberately lit or the fire was an accident caused by musket fire.
One account of the attack is from a W Drake, a trooper in the Colonial Defence Force, who wrote of the battle in a letter to a friend. The original letter is held in the Te Awamutu Museum collection.
‘‘We were obliged at last to set fire to the wharrie [whare], which was no easy affair – however, we did it and found eight dead bodies of Ma¯ oris in it and one of our own men.’’
He wrote that Rangiaowhia was a place where ‘‘natives were getting all their supplies from’’.
He wrote that the force reached the village at daylight and saw ‘‘natives in all directions’’, who opened fire on them.
‘‘Bullets were soon flying about like hailstones in a storm – we charged them right and left, sword in one hand and revolver in the other, each doing its work.’’
He said he was close to Nixon, when he was shot and wounded. He later died of his injuries.
O’Malley in his account said the evidence is clear and unambiguous.
‘‘The main issue when it came to Rangiaowhia was that there were multiple eyewitness accounts of what took place,’’ O’Malley explained.
‘‘Some said a whare had caught fire accidentally. Others, from more than one of those who took part in the attack on Rangiaowhia, described troops deliberately setting it alight.’’
In his book, he stated while the soldiers who did not see what took place might have naturally assumed the fire was an accident, there is no reason why others would incriminate their own side by documenting the deliberate torching of the whare, in which at least seven people died.
‘‘As one of the soldiers said, ‘we were obliged at last to set fire’ to the whare.’
‘‘British sources are silent on the victims, but Ma¯ ori accounts from soon after describe women and children as being among the casualties of the attack, which is not surprising, given Rangiaowhia’s status as a place of sanctuary for non-combatants.’’
Waikato University’s Dr Tom Roa is a descendant of Nga¯ ti Apakura through his mother’s greatgrandmother.
He said it’s important for New Zealanders to acknowledge what happened – but not to dwell on it.
‘‘Vincent [O’Malley’s] and other careful research have proven to be a historical fact that this happened right in our backyard.
‘‘My ancestors suffered these atrocities and we feel the same pain – but we can’t carry that forever.
‘‘We can’t blame the past on the present, we can’t continue to hold grudges and blame the descendants of those responsible for these atrocities.’’
Roa heard stories of deliberate fires, killing of elderly, women and children, and rape.
‘‘These are the kinds of things mainstream New Zealand finds uncomfortable. There’s much denial, but these are the stories that our tu¯ puna told us.’’
He said their forebears talked about soldiers shooting people having prayers in the whare karakia, and when they refused to come out, they set the whare alight.
‘‘Our mother talked about a young boy, eight or nine years old, who was shot dead, how women were raped. And an old man who came out wrapped in a blanket, hands held high, and he was shot dead,’’ Roa said.
‘‘How can people justify in any way that attack in the first place, let alone what happened afterwards?’’
He said the village was densely populated, but many had left just before the attack because they knew colonial troops were aiming to take over places like Rangiaowhia, which was rich in land and produce.
His ancestor Kahutoi left with her husband, Thomas Power, and their children, but Power’s first wife, Rahapa Te Hauata, stayed behind.
There were about 200 people in Rangiaowhia when the British arrived.
He believed upwards of 100 people died, including some who died a few days or weeks later. But there is no exact count.
Roa said there was an understanding between his tu¯ puna and Pa¯ keha leadership that noncombatants would be safe.
Rangiaowhia was a place of sanctuary, not a place to fight.
After the attack, the community dispersed. The land surrounding the village was confiscated and allocated to Europeans for settlement.
Nga¯ ti Apakura became known as the ‘‘landless people’’. They were scattered among Waikato Tainui, Maniapoto and Tu¯ wharetoa, often taken in as refugees.
In 1995, Waikato Tainui were the first iwi to reach a historic Treaty of Waitangi settlement with the Crown for injustices that went back to the wars and land confiscations of the 1860s.
This also included a formal apology by Queen Elizabeth.
‘‘The significance of that was mindboggling, for the invasion of the Waikato, and huge, for the claim of the breach of the Crown responsibility under the Treaty of Waitangi for what happened at Rangiaowhia,’’ Roa said.
‘‘For the first time, the head of a colonising power had apologised in person and signed an apology to the people colonised.’’
On the village site now stands St Paul’s Anglican Church, which has been renovated and repaired several times, with its small cemetery.
The Catholic mission’s cemetery is not far away, but the mission itself is long gone.
And there are a few signs, memorials and stone plaques that talk of what happened on that summer morning in 1864.
There are a few houses and newly erected carvings.
The narrow Rangiaowhia road is surrounded by lush farmland, green cornfields and small, rolling hills.
But there is nothing left of the once prosperous village.