Dog Tax War narrowly averted

Inter-racial war loomed in Hokianga as Lieutenant-Colonel Stuart Newall – a veteran of the campaigns against Tītokowaru and Te Kooti, and the leader of the arresting party at Parihaka in 1881 – led more than 60 soldiers and police out of the normally sleepy port town of Rāwene. They were headed for Waimā, 25 km to the south-east, where armed Māori ‘rebels’ had assembled.

The dramatic events of this day were the climax of widespread Māori opposition to the colony-wide introduction of dog registration from 1881. Most Māori had little involvement with the cash economy and owned many dogs, especially for hunting. For them an annual ‘dog tax’ of 2s 6d per dog was not just a burden – it was outright discrimination. The rates levied by local authorities and restrictions on hunting native birds were seen in a similar light.

As the historian Richard Hill observes, ‘the campaign against the dog tax became the symbolic rallying point of a number of Maori resistance struggles’. After Te Whiti told his followers in 1892 not to pay the dog tax, Parihaka was raided by police and defaulters were arrested. Loyalist Arawa chiefs were humiliated by being forced to do public works for the same offence.

The Hokianga was not just a ‘hotbed of Te Whiti-ism’; it was the home of Hōne Tōia of the Te Mahurehure hapū of Ngāpuhi, who had recently revived the Nākahi cult begun by Papahurihia, the first of a number of 19th-century prophets to preach that Māori were God’s chosen people and would therefore be delivered from subjection to Europeans.

In late April 1898 a relative of Hōne Tōia told local officials that his people would not pay land, dog or other taxes, and would continue to shoot pigeons out of season. After an armed party stripped for war visited Rāwene on 1 May to underline the seriousness of their intent, the Seddon government rushed troops and a visiting British gunboat from Auckland.

On the 5th, as Newall’s force slogged towards Waimā, slowed by machine guns and ambulance drays, Hōne Heke Ngapua MP tried to persuade Hōne Tōia to surrender. In the nick of time, a messenger was despatched to call off a planned ambush at a saddle where, in the opinion of the Native Constable accompanying the troops, ‘they would have slaughtered our men without being seen’. The outbreak of a second Northern War had been narrowly averted.

There was more drama when another messenger from Tōia was almost shot by an army officer as he galloped up to the advancing troops at Omanaia. A sharp-eyed constable spotted a piece of paper clenched between his teeth and deduced correctly that he came with a message of peace.

Next day the Waimā community’s leaders laid down their arms in front of Newall. Sixteen men, including Tōia, were eventually arrested and pleaded guilty to illegal assembly; the ‘ringleaders’ were gaoled for 18 months. The fines that were also imposed – and the disputed taxes – were subsequently paid. By now the Waimā people had entered the cash economy, thanks to the judicious awarding by the government of a contract to produce railway sleepers.