Highway to hell
The Great South Road paved the way to a war that would define New Zealand, a war bankrolled by the Bank of New Zealand.
Black bitumen with its stone chip crust slithers into Kı¯ngitanga lands, weaving in and out of ha¯ pu boundary lines, straddling the Waikato River.
The second part of the old Great South Road from Drury, north of Auckland, through to Kihikihi was made for war. In the early 1860s, soldiers cut through thick bush to invade Waikato, take the fertile land and try to stamp out the Kı¯ngitanga movement, established a decade earlier.
The road is a map of the Crown’s war against the people of Waikato, a highway to hell.
Hitting the road, Waikato Tainui kauma¯ tua Taitimu Maipi is nestled into the driver’s seat of his lightcoloured SUV.
He’s a busy man who drives the Great South Road often. This day Stuff is along for the ride, listening to Maipi recount history and its continuing impact.
He’s dedicated most of his life to fighting against injustice perpetrated against his people, from protesting on the streets, in Waitangi Tribunal hearings, and taking an axe to a bronze statue of a colonial captain.
In every battle, his wife, Ramari, has fought alongside him. She’s also been his saviour, negotiating his release from jail during the early protest years.
He grips the steering wheel more tightly as he peers through the windscreen, to the right and left.
On the road created in 1863 to destroy his people, he drives and surveys the remnants of war.
The land of his ancestors in the hands of strangers, those without a spiritual connection to it, he says. It’s a bitter pill to swallow.
Echoes of trees being felled by soldiers, to cut into the land they would eventually confiscate, continue to reverberate across generations. ‘‘They bulldozed their way through our land in the 1860s and the force is still being felt today,’’ Maipi says. ‘‘The Crown’s greed stole our land, our wealth, it destroyed our spirit, and you see what that destruction looks like today at courthouses, on the health waiting lists, and on the poverty line. It’s all connected.’’
The connection to the whenua, to the awa, is all-encompassing for Maipi. It’s an indigenous paradigm, he says: ‘‘The land is part of us, and we are part of the land.’’
Indigenous people globally share an animistic belief in the land, waterways, and all its creatures, a concept colonial settlers grapple with.
At his home in Huntly, Maipi’s walls are a tribute to his tu¯ puna. One of the pictures, in particular, is a painting of Kerei Te Paki and his wife, Ngawaina, who fought at Rangiriri, near Te Kauwhata, in 1863. Other images depict cousins, children and mokopuna, all generational casualties of the historic war, including Maipi.
He never learned the history of the wars as a child. It was never spoken about and was openly discouraged by his old people and the many churches they belonged to.
This hidden history was revealed to him only after he joined the Ma¯ ori rights group Nga¯ Tamatoa in 1969.
While Maipi recounted the history of his wha¯ nau to Stuff, Ramari, who too was part of Nga¯
Tamatoa, and their mokopuna Kidada Maipi-Leaf, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi, Paimarire Maipi, and TiaTaharoa Maipi gather round to listen to their koro recount his history.
Their grandparents wanted them to hear the stories of the Great South Road, the invasion of their lands, and all the players involved.
The mokopuna listen intently as their grandparents talk about their protesting days.
Maipi, at a guess, says he has been arrested 10 times in his bid to equalise the playing field for Ma¯ ori.
The Maipi grandchildren are now living the dream their grandparents, and many others, fought for. But there is still work to be done, their patriarch says.
Maipi comes back to the portrait of Kerei. He says the generational wealth for settler families created by the Waikato land confiscations still irks him.
He points to a founder of one of New Zealand’s biggest and oldest banks, who pushed for war in the Waikato, for personal gain.
Auckland lawyer and warprofiteer Thomas Russell was one of the founders of the Bank of New Zealand, the Crown’s bank. He had a vested interest in the lands of the Waikato, he saw firsthand the thriving Ma¯ ori economy and financial benefits it created.
With the war underway, Russell was appointed minister of defence, a short-lived role during the invasion. The Crown used money secured by the BNZ to fund conflicts during the
Land Wars. The BNZ confirmed funds were given to upkeep soldiers stationed in New Plymouth, Wellington, Napier and Auckland.
But the war was not the successful money-maker many thought it would be. Instead, it plunged the colony into its first recession. And left a number of British soldiers without the means to financially maintain the land. They were forced to sell the 50-acre Waikato land packages given to them by the Crown after the war ended. Russell purchased cheaply hundreds of acres from broke soldiers.
His dubious dealings and banking activities were looked into but ultimately it had no effect on the wealth he acquired through the confiscation process. Prosperity that afforded his family opulence, says Maipi, while the rightful owners of the land suffered from the loss, and in some instances starved to death.
In a statement, a BNZ spokesperson confirmed the Crown was a client of the bank during the Land Wars and understood the government used funds for military upkeep during the wars.
The BNZ could not confirm whether part of the funding was used in the creation of the Great South Road.
In his book The Great War for New Zealand, historian Vincent O’Malley comprehensively details the invasion of Waikato, including Russell’s antics and the road’s importance to the Crown.
O’Malley says there are two elements to the road.
The section from central Auckland to Drury was created as part of the settlement and was a busy trade route.
The stretch from Drury into the Waikato was established for war.
It was Governor George Grey who recognised a road was needed to deploy the necessary forces. Grey also coveted possession of the rich, fertile lands in the hands of Waikato tribes.
Troops created a base at Po¯ keno called Queen’s Redoubt, where supplies for the road were shipped via the Waikato River.
‘‘The road is built by the military for military purposes and it’s completed by March 1863 and within four months of that, you get the invasion of the Waikato, which wouldn’t have been possible without the road,’’ O’Malley says.
‘‘Without the road, it’s difficult to envision a successful invasion of the Waikato and so that was a critical piece of infrastructure in that, and Ma¯ ori, at the time, were well aware of the purpose of the road and the threat that it posed as well.’’
O’Malley described the invasion of Waikato as the defining conflict of New Zealand and says that in many ways it is more important than World War I and World War II.
‘‘In terms of the consequences it had that we still live with today, whether that’s the confiscation of millions of acres of land or really the fact that. after the mid-1860s, any pretence of observing the terms of the Treaty are thrown out of the window for the next century or more,’’ he says.
‘‘The Ma¯ ori aspirations for a partnership for both peoples to work together for the benefit of all are ignored as a result.’’
Tainui kauma¯ tua and Associate Professor Tom Roa, of Waikato University, knows well the legacy left with his people to carry. His ancestors fought in battles across Waikato, including Rangiriri.
Roa recalls hearing about the brutal deaths of the young and old at Rangiaowhia, as a child, playing
near the feet of his kuia. It’s a contrast to the experience of his whanaunga (relative) Taitimu Maipi, who did not hear the stories until he was an adult.
Roa says the stories he heard from his kauma¯ tua did not match New Zealand’s official documents.
A record that he says, in some cases, that has been altered to expunge the killing of women and children.
Roa says the official report for Rangiaowhia showed only 12 deaths, despite different accounts in Ma¯ ori oral history and newspaper clippings from Australia.
Rangiaowhia, near Te Awamutu, was razed in an early morning attack on February 21, 1864. It was home to women, children, the elderly and disabled, Roa says. The Crown assured Ma¯ ori the settlement would not be touched.
A war correspondent from the Sydney Morning Herald reported seeing 112 bodies; this figure didn’t include those trapped in houses and the church that soldiers set alight.
Roa says the figure, according to Ma¯ ori oral history, is just over 300.
And it’s not the only official account that has been questioned. New information has come to light regarding the slaughter of women and children during the conflict at Rangiriri. ‘‘The map of Lake Waikare in the War Office in England shows two dots that are not on the official New Zealand record, and they both date from that period,’’ Roa said.
‘‘So on the map found in the War Office the written description reads ‘waka shelled, woman and children killed’. The description by the other dot near the shoreline of the lake said: ‘women and children killed’.
‘‘These have been expunged from the official New Zealand record.
‘‘This kind of thing makes me very sad and I think that it’s important that we share this information with more and more people so that people can decide for themselves.
‘‘We have held in high esteem the official record, but what we have seen in terms of our own history is that our (Ma¯ ori) stories, our traditions, our waiata, our ko¯ rero tuku iho, other oral evidence and whakataukı¯ which talk about women and children being killed at Lake Waikare, are correct. The official record doesn’t say that.’’
And the correct record will be the one put before schoolchildren as New Zealand history becomes mandatory next year, he says.
Roa believes the intricate history of the Great South Road can now be used to pave a better future.
He reflects on an important proverb from the first Ma¯ ori King, Po¯ tatau Te Wherowhero: Ko¯ tahi te ko¯ hao o te ngira e kuhuna ai te miro ma¯ , te miro pango, te miro whero.
It means there is but one eye of the needle which must pass the black thread, the red thread, and the white thread. The black thread represents ordinary people, the red thread are the chiefs, and the white thread is Pa¯ keha¯ .
‘‘That needle could have sewn a very prosperous, very wealthy society,’’ says Roa.
‘‘But unfortunately, greed overtook that and the Great South Road was the dagger through the heart of all of that and I think we see the consequences today.
‘‘I actually feel for the people who live on that road and I’d say the vast majority of them don’t know what they are living on.
‘‘I think it’s important for us to know the history of where we are, and how we might use that history to carve a new space so that we use the needle with all of those threads passing through it to weave a new beginning for the future of Aotearoa
New Zealand.’’