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Mātakitaki Pā

Mātakitaki pā (1822)

Our bloodiest killing field?

The musket entered intertribal warfare in 1807 as Ngāpuhi traded food, timber and sex for guns. Many early guns were notoriously inaccurate but their surprise value demoralised opponents unfamiliar with them. Sustained by another European import, the potato, war parties of 1200-3000 spread south in a domino effect, led by men such as Bay of Islands chief Hongi Hika. Hongi needed few reasons for manufacturing grievances, but Waikato had angered him by sheltering Ngāti Whātua and Ngāti Pāoa refugees from Tāmaki. In February 1822 3000 Ngāpuhi paddled from Kerikeri to Tāmaki, portaged to the Manukau, paddled across to Waiuku, portaged a second time and launched their canoes into the Awaroa, a tributary of the lower Waikato. Fleeing Waikato blocked the Awaroa with trees to buy time while the rest prepared to make a stand at Mātakitaki.

Mātakitaki pā was built on a narrow strip of land at the junction of the Waipā River and the Mangapiko Stream. The name Mātakitaki covers three sections, Mātakitaki to the north-west, Taura-Kohia, and Puketutu to the east. The waterways and riverbanks provided the main defences, which Waikato supplemented with the usual ditches and palisades. Perhaps 5000 to 10,000 took refuge here – Musket Wars numbers are notoriously debatable, though the smaller figure, probably the more likely, was still a very big number for a country of then only about 100,000 people.

First blood went to the defenders when Te Wherowhero and a small detachment surprised some Ngāpuhi, killing perhaps 150 and capturing 90 muskets. Illustrating the cliché that pride comes before a fall, jubilant Waikato leaped up onto the parapets to shout defiance and insults, only to tumble back, felled by Ngāpuhi musketry. Panic deepened when Te Wherowhero’s men fired their captured guns, spooking their own men into thinking that Ngāpuhi had breached the defences. Hundreds of terrified Waikato were smothered in the ditch while trying to flee. Te Wherowhero and his men resisted for as long as they could, but had to retreat to Manguika, 8 km away. Next day they rolled Ngāpuhi back to Mātakitaki before withdrawing. It was an expensive lesson for Waikato. They lost perhaps 1500 and hundreds more were taken prisoner.

Further information

This site is item number 11 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

On the ground

There is an old Historic Places Trust concrete marker on the site.

Websites

Book

Matthew Wright, Guns and utu: a short history of the Musket Wars, Penguin, Auckland, 2001

Article

Hugh Barr, ‘Matakitaki pa: muskets reach the Waikato’, Historic Places in New Zealand, no. 22, 1988, pp. 3-5

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Main image: Google Maps

Other image: Department of Conservation, taken from Kevin L. Jones, Ngā tohuwhenua mai te rangi: a New Zealand archaeology in aerial photographs, Victoria University Press, Wellington, 1994

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Date established:

1822

Pukerangiora Pā Historic Reserve

Pukerangiora Pā Historic Reserve (1821-22)

A palimpsest etched in blood

Although we think of the First World War as our most costly in terms of human life, the Germans and the Turks spilled less New Zealand blood than the ‘New Zealanders’, as the British called the Māori, did fighting each other in the Musket Wars of the early 1800s. Historian James Belich accuses us of indulging in ‘historical amnesia’ over the New Zealand Wars. In fact we lobotomised ourselves to erase this earlier conflict, which covered more territory, caused more cultural disruption and claimed many more lives than the later wars. Yet ignore it we do. The fiercest fighting took place between 1818 and 1836. Body counts are hazy. The Oxford companion to New Zealand military history says that ‘between 20,000 and 30,000 may have died either in battle or of disease (with one estimate putting the mortality as high as 80,000)’ – about 20% of the estimated Māori population, even at the lower end of the range. While some historians question the accuracy of the ‘musket’ part of the wars’ name, it appears to have stuck.

The name Pukerangiora now covers several sites and a lot of military history. It was besieged twice during the Musket Wars. In 1821 a taua led by Tūkorehu of Ngāti Maniapoto was besieged here for seven months by Te Ātiawa, who surrounded it with earthworks and palisading, adding insult to injury by dubbing the siege ‘Raihe Poaka’ (the penned-up pigs). Blood flowed here again a decade later. Te Ātiawa, weakened by recent emigration to join Te Rauparaha in the Cook Strait area, holed up at Pukerangiora after a large Waikato taua descended on North Taranaki. When the pā fell after a three-month siege, as many as 1200 may have died.

Ironically, Pukerangiora is probably better known for its role in the First (1860-61) and Second (1863-66) Taranaki Wars. The first was the major fight. After their defeat at Puketakauere government forces generally avoided pā, which they knew were there to lure them into attacking, but as the campaign ground on they decided to destroy Te Ātiawa strongholds south of the Waitara. In ‘Pratt’s Sap’, forces under Major-General T.S. Pratt tunnelled laboriously up the slopes towards a new pā, Te Arei (‘the barrier’), erected in front of freshly strengthened Pukerangiora. Te Ātiawa chief Hapurona commanded both. Pratt built eight redoubts and dug two stretches of sap (covered trench). Maori counter-attacked, most famously against number three redoubt on the night of 23 January, suffering heavy casualties in the crossfire between the redoubts. Working under cover of large sap rollers and supported by artillery fire, the British advanced. By March 1861 number eight redoubt was just 75 m from Te Arei pā, which was taking a heavy pounding. Hapurona wisely sought a truce. In a ‘settlement’ disliked by both sides, the Waikato and southern Taranaki tribes withdrew. An uneasy peace descended on Taranaki.

The Second Taranaki War was a sideshow to the Waikato campaign, but Te Arei was briefly again the site of conflict. On 11 October 1864, under cover of thick fog, Colonel H.J. Warre took it. Shots were fired but the defenders quickly withdrew. A redoubt was built quickly but abandoned about three years later. A blockhouse relocated to the other side of the road in 1869 was manned for about a year. Since then sheep have grazed the site. Cultivation destroyed about a third of Pukerangiora but since 1910 the rest has been a Crown reserve, now managed by DOC.

Further information

This site is item number 10 on the History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.

On the ground

The site is signposted.

Websites

Books

R.D. Crosby, The Musket Wars, Reed Books, Auckland, 1999
David Green, Battlefields of the New Zealand Wars: a visitor’s guide, Penguin, Auckland, 2010

Credit:

Text: Gavin McLean, 2013

Main image: Jock Phillips

Other contemporary images: Jock Phillips and Kevin Jones

Historic images:

Alexander Turnbull Library
References: E-294-006/007 and E-294-010/011 (painted/sketched by Henry James Warre)
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of their images.

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1821-22

Hongi Hika

The Ngāpuhi rangatira Hongi Hika became a pivotal figure in New Zealand history. He was a skilled and driven leader in war and trade, and his actions had far-reaching consequences.

Ngāpuhi and rival iwi Ngāti Whātua fought in 1807 or 1808. Ngāpuhi were decisively beaten, and their war leader Pokaia was killed, as were two of Hongi Hika’s brothers. Hongi succeeded Pokaia, and thereafter was determined to avenge the Ngāpuhi losses.

Hongi built mutually beneficial relationships with European visitors, and encouraged the establishment of mission stations under his protection. He oversaw a tribal operation growing potatoes. These were traded with Europeans for muskets and powder.

On a voyage to England in 1820 he obtained more muskets. With this arms advantage, he began a series of successful military campaigns against other iwi in the region. His many captives were put to work on crops, growing more potatoes to exchange for more weapons, creating a spiral of war, trade and more war.

Hongi’s campaigns set off a chain reaction of further wars and migrations, as displaced groups sought new lands. This brought about a major redistribution of the Māori population, particularly in the North Island.

At home Hongi is said to have been a gentle man, who worked alongside his people on day-to-day tasks, and treated his family well.

His ambition to redress the balance between his people and Ngāti Whātua was never completely fulfilled. In 1825 his son was killed in a battle against Ngāti Whātua, and he grieved deeply.

Illness and misfortune began to dog him, and he died from a musket wound in 1828, at Whangaroa. The last resting place of his bones was kept secret.

By Angela Ballara; adapted by Johanna Knox

Read full biography of Hongi Hika (DNZB)
See also: Musket Wars

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Missionaries and muskets at Kerikeri - roadside stories

In the 1820s the Kerikeri mission station was under the protection of Hongi Hika and the Ngāpuhi tribe. Hongi had encouraged the establishment of the mission – largely because he wanted access to muskets, which gave Ngāpuhi a great military advantage over other tribes. Today the 1822 mission house is New Zealand’s oldest building.

Transcript

Archival audio: After an introduction, Ernest Kemp talks about Kemp House.

English missionary (actor): This day Shungi and his people with some other tribes arrived here from the fight with the dead bodies of Titi and Arpu. The widow of Titi and other women rushed down upon the beach in a frenzy of rage, and beat into pieces the carved work at the head of the canoes with a pole. Then they got into a canoe and pulled out several prisoners of war into the water and beat them to death.

Narrator: During the 1820s, members of the Church Missionary Society regularly witnessed gruesome scenes at Kerikeri as returning warriors from the Ngāpuhi tribe handed over captives to the widows of their comrades slain in battle. The missionaries could only look on as these women took revenge on the prisoners, who then became a part of the cannibal feasts that followed.

The missionaries did not understand that the Ngāpuhi custom of eating slain enemies restored the mana, or prestige, of the warriors killed in battle. Defenceless in an unfamiliar landscape, the missionaries were entirely dependent on the protection of Hongi Hika and his Ngāpuhi tribe.

The Church Missonary Society’s interest in the area followed a visit to Sydney in 1814 by Hongi Hika, who wanted to encourage a mission in his tribal area. Ngāpuhi cared little for Christianity, but Hongi Hika understood that a mission would attract traders and allow his tribe to acquire muskets, which were the key to Ngāpuhi’s remarkable military successes in the 1820s.

In 1814, a mission, led by the Reverend Samuel Marsden, was established at Rangihoua Bay, near the mouth of the Kerikeri Inlet. Despite [the original Rangihoua mission] being a total failure, Marsden tried again in 1820. This time he located the mission station beside Kororipo Pā, a fortified village at the head of the Kerikeri Inlet. It was the centre of Ngāpuhi’s extensive empire and where Hongi Hika based his war canoes.

Muskets gave Ngāpuhi a great military advantage, and Hongi Hika successfully used them to invade the Bay of Plenty and Waikato. Hongi Hika was wounded in 1827 at the battle of Mangamuka.* He died from his wounds the following year.

While Ngāpuhi extended its tribal empire, the Church Missionary Society consolidated its foothold at Kerikeri. In 1822, an English-style mission house was built for John Butler, the first missionary. Butler did not have the opportunity to enjoy his new dwelling for long, as a dispute with Marsden led to his dismissal a year later.

A succession of missionaries then occupied the house until James Kemp took up residence in 1832. By then Hongi Hika had died, European diseases had decimated Ngāpuhi, and Kerikeri had lost its strategic importance. The mission house was lived in by Kemp and his descendants until 1974, when it was donated to the New Zealand Historic Places Trust.

Kemp House, as it is known today, is the country’s oldest building, and is little changed from its 1822 structure.

Nearby stands the stone store. It was built in 1832 by an ex-convict stonemason and intended as a storehouse. However, by the time it was completed, Kerikeri’s strategic importance had diminished, so it was unnecessary. It has since been used as a library, ammunition magazine, kauri gum trading post and general store. The New Zealand Historic Places Trust purchased it in 1974.

A nearby path leads to the remains of Kororipo Pā, where some of the old earthworks are still evident. On the [opposite] riverbank is a reconstruction of a Māori village.

*The audio suggests that Hongi Hika was wearing his chain mail suit at the battle of Mangamuka, but this is not correct. This is an error which came to light after the video was made. Other corrections and clarifications to the text have been made inside square brackets.

Manatū Taonga - Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 2011. Part of the Roadside Stories series

Archival audio sourced from Radio New Zealand Sound Archives, http://www.soundarchives.co.nz/. Sound files may not be reused without permission from Radio New Zealand Sound Archives (Reference number T906).

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Tuturau Maori reserve and war memorial

Tuturau Māori War memorial, which was erected in 1934 to mark the centennial of the battle of Tuturau.

The following text is adapted from the account by Chris Maclean and Jock Phillips cited below.

The one major memorial (as distinct from wooden markers) to the Musket Wars of the 1820s and 1830s stands in Southland on the back road between Mataura and Wyndham. The ‘battle’ of Tuturau was more of a scuffle, but it came at the end of an epic journey. Te Pūoho was a chief of Ngāti Tama, a subtribe of Te Āti Awa which had moved south from Taranaki at the same time as Te Rauparaha and Ngāti Toa.

Eventually Te Pūoho, squeezed for land around Waikanae, moved across Cook Strait to Golden Bay. After accompanying Te Rauparaha on his journey to capture Kaiapohia, a large Ngāi Tahu settlement in north Canterbury, Te Pūoho developed his own ambitions for conquest. Despite Te Rauparaha’s opposition, Te Pūoho set off with a taua (war party) to the far south in the hope of skinning the Ngāi Tahu ‘eel from tail to head’. After an epic journey down the West Coast, over the Haast Pass, and through Central Otago, Te Pūoho captured the few inhabitants of the Ngāi Tahu settlement at Tuturau in December 1836. His victory was short-lived. Three days later Te Pūoho was woken at dawn by the sound of men on the roof. When he came out to investigate he was shot dead by two Ngāi Tahu warriors. Tūhawaiki, the Ngāi Tahu chief, entered the kāinga unopposed.

On 4 December 1937, the centenary of these events was marked – a year late. A concrete and stone obelisk was unveiled in the ‘Maori Centenary Reserve’ before a crowd of at least 3000. A concert party and several descendants of Te Pūoho’s killer represented the Southland Māori community and a Māori meeting house had also been erected on the new reserve, but this was very much a Pākehā affair.

The wharenui, built of wooden slabs and thatched with tussock, soon decayed and collapsed. The obelisk, built for permanence, carries an inscription in English which does not mention Ngāi Tahu or Ngāti Tama. It reads as if it marks a mainland triumph in an interisland rugby match: ‘The last fight between North and South Island Maoris in which the southerners were victorious took place in this locality in December 1836’.

Writing about New Zealand’s internal wars

Cover of The war in New Zealand, by William Fox, originally published in 1866. This reprint was published in 1973 by Capper Press.

Writing about New Zealand’s internal wars

War has had a great impact on New Zealand society. Over the last 60 years books about war have become a mainstay of local non-fiction publishing. Generations of New Zealanders have learned about our exploits in two world wars and the impact of these conflicts on the nation. But how familiar are we with our internal wars of the 19th century?

Musket wars

Tens of thousands of Māori died in the intertribal Musket Wars of the opening decades of the 19th century. On a per capita basis the estimated casualty figures for these wars are equivalent to around 200,000 New Zealand deaths in the First World War (in which 18,000 lives were actually lost). Yet they have remained ‘shadowy events for many New Zealanders’.

This may reflect the fact that the Musket Wars were almost exclusively fought by Māori, with European participation largely confined to the supply of weapons. They were of no great consequence to the early authors of the grand narrative of European colonisation. Ron Crosby’s The Musket Wars (1999) and Angela Ballara’s Taua (2003) are two significant works that have attempted to shed more light on the causes and consequences of these devastating campaigns. Tom O’Connor’s Tides of Kawhia (2004) and Pathways of Taranaki (2006) give fictional accounts of life in New Zealand during this important time of early contact.

The Northern War

Lindsay Buick’s New Zealand’s first war, or, The rebellion of Hone Heke (1926) took the traditional line that the history of our internal wars began with Hōne Heke’s assault on the British flag in 1845. Buick was a member of a small group of New Zealand-born historians writing in the first quarter of the 20th century. In conjunction with men like Robert McNab, James Cowan and Elsdon Best, he attempted to make New Zealand’s past readily accessible to the general reader.

The wars of the 1860s

More has been written about New Zealand’s wars of the 1860s, although interest in these conflicts hardly compares to the obsession with America’s great internal war of the same period. In 2001 it was estimated that more than 50,000 books on the Civil War had been published, with 1500 more appearing annually.

Most of the 19th century accounts of the New Zealand Wars have been ‘justly forgotten’. William Fox declared in The war in New Zealand (1866) that he had ‘strong convictions; but convictions are not prejudices’. In 1864, as Colonial Secretary in the Whitaker ministry, he had overseen the confiscation of nearly 3 million acres (1.2 million ha) of Māori land, justifying this by arguing that Māori had started the fighting.

John Featon apparently served as an Artillery Volunteer in the 1860s before becoming a journalist in the 1870s. The blurb in the 1971 reprint of his The Waikato War 1863–4 (1879) acknowledges that he made ‘no attempt to provide a balanced view’.

James Cowan

The ‘James the First’ of New Zealand writers on these wars was the ethnographer, historian and journalist James Cowan. Cowan ‘straddled fiction and non-fiction’ and was a pioneer oral historian. He talked to men who had fought in these campaigns and visited the sites of many of the bloody struggles in which they had been involved.

In 1903 Cowan interviewed Kimble Bent, an American-born soldier who deserted from his British army regiment in south Taranaki and joined the forces of Tītokowaru. Though he was widely condemned as a traitor, Bent’s reputation was somewhat restored by Cowan’s The adventures of Kimble Bent: a story of wild life in the New Zealand bush (1911). Cowan’s major work, The New Zealand Wars: a history of the Maori campaigns and the pioneering period (2 vols, 1922–3), ‘remains seminal’.

James Belich

The ‘James the Second’ of the New Zealand Wars, James Belich, confronted traditional interpretations with The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian interpretation of racial conflict (1986). He argued that not only New Zealanders deliberately forgotten the wars, Māori military and political achievements had been under-rated.

A television series based on The New Zealand Wars brought to the attention of many New Zealanders Māori figures and experiences that had previously been ignored or downplayed. Belich’s work was both ‘controversial and influential’ and inspired new debate on the course and outcome of these conflicts. Matthew Wright’s Two peoples, one land (2006) offers a useful post-revisionist interpretation.

Film and later novels

A sense that the wars had been New Zealand’s equivalent to the ‘wild west’ was brought to the big screen by Rudall Hayward’s movie and the tie-in novel by A.W. Reed, both entitled Rewi’s last stand (1939). Māori were no longer demonised. Historian Gavin McLean has argued that this approach formed a bridge to recent novelists’ more positive representations. These works include Ray Grover’s semi-fictionalised Cork of war (1982), Maurice Shadbolt’s trilogy Season of the Jew (1986), Monday’s warriors (1990) and The house of strife (1993), and Witi Ihimaera’s The matriarch (1986).

Related conflicts

A number of writers have provided telling insights into campaigns that fell outside the main phase of the New Zealand Wars. These include Belich’s I shall not die: Titokowaru’s War New Zealand 1868–1869 (1989), Hazel Riseborough’s exploration of Parihaka, Days of darkness: Taranaki 1878–1884 (1989), and Judith Binney’s Redemption songs: a life of Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki (1995). Following the police raids against suspected terrorist training camps in the Urewera ranges in 2007, Mark Derby’s The prophet and the policeman: the story of Rua Kenana and John Cullen (2009) was a timely publication on a region with a troubled past.

Wars on the web

Archives New Zealand’s website showcases the nation’s war art, including many pieces associated with 19th century wars. The National Library’s Papers Past contains more than one million pages of digitised New Zealand newspapers and periodicals published between 1839 and 1945. Readers can access a vast array of primary material at the click of a mouse. The New Zealand Electronic Text Centre provides a growing library of out-of-print war books and memoirs.

Bibliography

This list is adapted from the Penguin book of New Zealanders at war (2009) – an excellent source of contemporary accounts of New Zealand’s 19th-century wars.

Useful assessments of war writing:

Patrick Evans, ‘War Literature’, in Terry Sturm (ed.), The Oxford companion to New Zealand literature in English, 2nd edn, Oxford University Press, Auckland, pp. 566–75
Ian McGibbon, ‘Something of Them Is Here Recorded’, http://www.nztec.org.tm/scholarly/tei-McGSome.html
Brian O’Brien, ‘Literature and War’, in Ian McGibbon (ed.), The Oxford companion to New Zealand military history, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 2000, pp. 276–80
Scott Worthy, ‘“Light and Shade”: The New Zealand Written Remembrance of the Great War, 1915–1939’, War & Society, vol. 22, no. 1, May 2004, pp. 19–40

General histories and guides – New Zealand’s internal wars

Angela Ballara, Taua: ‘Musket Wars', ‘Land Wars' or tikanga? Warfare in Maori society in the early Nineteenth Century, Penguin, Auckland, 2003
John Battersby, The one day war: The battle of Omarunui, Reed Books, Auckland, 2000
James Belich, The New Zealand wars and the Victorian interpretation of racial conflict, Penguin, Auckland, 1988
Elsdon Best, Notes on the art of war, Reed Books/Polynesian Society, Auckland, 2001
Tom Brooking, Milestones: turning points in New Zealand history, Mills Publications, Wellington, 1988
James Cowan, The New Zealand Wars and the pioneering period, 2 vols, Government Printer, Wellington, 1922–23
R.D. Crosby, The Musket Wars: a short history of inter-iwi conflict 1806–45, Reed Books, Auckland, 1999
B.J. Dalton, War and politics in New Zealand 1855–1870, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1967
David Green, Battlefields of the New Zealand Wars: a visitor’s guide, Penguin, Auckland, 2010
Gavin McLean and Ian McGibbon with Kynan Gentry (eds), The Penguin book of New Zealanders at war, Penguin, Auckland, 2009
Nigel Prickett, Landscapes of conflict: a field guide to the New Zealand Wars, Random House, Auckland, 2002
Ian Wards, The shadow of the land: a study of British policy and racial conflict in New Zealand 1832–1852, Government Printer, Wellington, 1968
Matthew Wright, Two peoples, one land: the New Zealand Wars, Reed Books, Auckland, 2006

Credit:

Cover of Sir W. Fox, The war in New Zealand, Capper Press, Christchurch, 1973 (reprint of 1866 original)

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A Ngapuhi raiding party prepares

War speech, painted by Augustus Earle in 1838.

A Ngāpuhi chief stands in a beached canoe addressing a crowd of warriors, most of whom are seated. Two other long canoes are on the beach, one with a sail is in the water, and others are pulled up close to a pā or kāinga in the left background. A dog sniffs the ground in the foreground. Most of the men are armed with guns; one at far right holds a taiaha. A gourd and flax kit are centrally placed amongst one group.

Earle’s text reads: ‘A party of warriors had collected at the Bay of Islands for the purpose of making a hostile visit to a tribe on the banks of the Thames. They were detained by contrary winds; and for several days were constantly engaged in listening to speeches from their chiefs, who addressed them from a canoe hauled on shore … one [canoe], which I measured, was 70 feet long, and carried one hundred fighting men.’

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: PUBL-0015-09
Artist: Augustus Earle, 1793-1838
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image

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The return of Hongi Hika, painting

The return of Hongi, 1860s.

This image by an unknown artist shows a large waka taua (war canoe) decorated with severed heads. The canoe was owned by the Ngāpuhi chief Hongi Hika, who was returning to the Bay of Islands in January 1819 after raiding Bay of Plenty and East Cape tribes. A second large canoe can be seen in the background.

Hongi Hika became one of the most feared leaders in the land. Most of his actions during his period of dominance have been attributed to the notion of utu and a frenzied quest for revenge for the deaths of whānau (family members) at Moremonui in 1807. Simplistic explanations such as this have coloured interpretations of these wars and of Māori warfare in general.

Utu involved returning affected parties to their prior position. Blood did not always need to be spilt. Personal property could be taken as compensation (taua muru) for an offence – deliberate or unintentional – against an individual, community or society. The nature of muru was determined by factors such as the mana of the victim and the offender, the degree of the offence and the intent of the offending party. Utu had to be obtained – either voluntarily or by force – from the party at fault to restore the mana of the offended individual or group. Concern for mana often resulted in disproportionate responses to actions.

Detail:

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: A-172-037
Artist unknown
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image

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Changing cost of muskets 1814-1827

This diagram shows that muskets were most costly when they were most in demand – at the time of the great northern taua (raids) to the south, between 1818 and the early 1820s.

Credit:

Diagram from New Zealand 1815–1870: the making of a colony, Students’ Bateman Historical Atlas, David Bateman Ltd, Auckland, 2000

Permission of David Bateman Ltd must be obtained before any reuse of this material.

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1820s iwi movements map

This map shows the major iwi movements of the 1820s caused by the intertribal conflicts known as the Musket Wars. This fighting often drove tribes out of their traditional areas and into exile with extended family.

The near neighbours of Ngāpuhi bore the brunt of their assaults. Ngāti Whātua sought refuge in Waikato, and Marutūahu in the upper Waihou valley, south of the Firth of Thames. Areas such as Tāmaki (Auckland) and the lower Waihou valley were temporarily depopulated.

Credit:

Plate from New Zealand 1815–1870: the making of a colony, Students’ Bateman Historical Atlas, David Bateman Ltd, Auckland, 2000

Permission of David Bateman Ltd must be obtained before any reuse of this material.

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nga puhi

NZHistory, New Zealand history online - musket wars

Mātakitaki Pā

Mātakitaki pā (1822)

Our bloodiest killing field?

Further information

On the ground

Websites

Book

Article

Pukerangiora Pā Historic Reserve

Pukerangiora Pā Historic Reserve (1821-22)

A palimpsest etched in blood

Further information

On the ground

Websites

Books

Hongi Hika

Missionaries and muskets at Kerikeri - roadside stories

Transcript

Tuturau Maori reserve and war memorial

Further reading

Writing about New Zealand’s internal wars

Writing about New Zealand’s internal wars

Musket wars

The Northern War

The wars of the 1860s

James Cowan

James Belich

Film and later novels

Related conflicts

Wars on the web

Bibliography

Useful assessments of war writing:

General histories and guides – New Zealand’s internal wars

A Ngapuhi raiding party prepares

The return of Hongi Hika, painting

Changing cost of muskets 1814-1827

1820s iwi movements map