October 28 is He Rā Maumahara, the national commemoration day for The New Zealand Wars. This essay is an excerpt from Vincent O’Malley’s recently published book, The Invasion of Waikato | Te Riri Ki Tainui.
The Mangatāwhiri River is a small waterway with a big place in New Zealand history. As an official Imperial Army report of August 1863 observed, “[t]he passage of this stream by an European force has been always regarded by the natives of the Waikato as tantamount to a declaration of war”.
A few weeks earlier, at dawn on 12 July 1863, Lieutenant-General Duncan Cameron had led a party of 380 British troops across the river, which marked the boundary between Kīngitanga territory and areas controlled by the Crown. The British forces and their civilian accomplices in the capital city of Auckland – Governor George Grey and settler government ministers – knew exactly what they were doing: they were invading Waikato, home to some of the largest and most powerful iwi in the country, and the heartland of the Kīngitanga, the Māori King movement. The Crown had, in effect, declared war on Queen Victoria’s Treaty partners.
Boiled down to its essence, the fighting that followed over the next nine months was a struggle between two competing visions of what New Zealand was, and what it might become. While Europeans for the most part expected to be in charge, under the Treaty of Waitangi Māori had been promised ongoing control over their own affairs and a stake in deciding matters of joint interest to both peoples, Māori and Pākehā. So which was it going to be? Would Pākehā finally gain the dominance and control they had long expected and sought, or would Māori hopes for a relationship based on mutual respect and partnership be realised at last? The answer would determine the fate of the nation for the next century or more and it was the Waikato War – Te Riri ki Tainui – that would provide it.
That is why Ngāti Hauā rangatira Wiremu Tāmihana was right to describe this conflict as “a great war for New Zealand”. The stakes could not have been higher. This was a defining and transformative conflict in the nation’s history. The two twentieth-century world wars involved many more New Zealanders in absolute terms, but it was war in the Waikato that had a bigger impact on the course and direction of New Zealand as a whole. It is the story of how we got to where we are today.
The Waikato tribes had long been regarded as among the Crown’s closest allies – so much so that large numbers of Tainui people had moved to the outskirts of Auckland in the 1840s to protect the settlement from hostile iwi. But all that changed in 1858, when Pōtatau Te Wherowhero of the Tainui tribe Ngāti Mahuta was raised up as the first Māori King. Although supporters explained that they had selected a ‘kīngi’ (king) not as a challenge to Queen Victoria but simply as a focus of unity for Māori, Crown officials chose to see matters differently. They began plotting how to undermine and ultimately destroy the Kīngitanga, a course that led to the invasion of Waikato five years later.
Against all expectations, the Kīngitanga survived the onslaught directed against it and continues to thrive today. But the Tainui tribes and their allies paid a terrible price – large numbers were killed at rates that, in relative terms, exceeded those suffered by New Zealand troops in the First World War several times over. Those who survived, often carrying lifelong injuries or scars – physical or psychological – found their way of life destroyed. Entire villages had been razed to the ground, crops torched, livestock looted, waka smashed and taonga pilfered. A lucrative and, until recently, thriving economy had been brought to an abrupt halt. And the effects of these actions were compounded by the sweeping and indiscriminate confiscation of large areas of Tainui-owned land between Auckland in the north and the Pūniu River in the south – 1.2 million acres in all – as punishment for the alleged ‘rebellion’ that was supposed to have left the Crown with no choice but to invade.
In effect, the Tainui tribes were compelled to underwrite the costs of their own suppression. And the crippling legacy of this history continues to be felt and experienced today in multiple ways. It is there in the still-grim socio-economic statistics for Māori in the region, in the names of streets and towns across Waikato, in the multiple monuments and memorials to Crown forces that took part in the invasion. It is evident in the Pākehā amnesia about this history that has endured for so long, and even in the names that Tainui parents have given their children to ensure the stories of what happened are carried forward and remembered, at least within their own communities.
In November 1995, Queen Victoria’s great-great-granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II, signed into law the Waikato Raupatu Claims Settlement Act in the presence of Pōtatau Te Wherowhero’s great-great-great-granddaughter, the Māori Queen, Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu. Besides monetary compensation of $170 million (just 1.7 per cent of the unimproved value of the lands confiscated), the Act also included an unprecedented apology from the Crown “for the loss of lives because of the hostilities arising from its invasion, and at the devastation of property and social life which resulted”. The text of the apology further declared that ‘[t]he Crown acknowledges that its representatives and advisers acted unjustly and in breach of the Treaty of Waitangi in its dealings with the Kiingitanga and Waikato in sending its forces across the Mangataawhiri in July 1863 and in unfairly labelling Waikato as rebels’.
At first glance, the term ‘invasion’ might appear a loaded one. After all, how could the Crown invade its own realm? That was also the position Crown negotiators initially took in their discussions with Waikato-Tainui in the 1990s, before eventually relenting and agreeing to the inclusion of the word in the deed of settlement. They were right to do so. After all, the area south of the Mangatāwhiri River was controlled by the Tainui tribes prior to 12 July 1863, and their right to manage their own affairs had been confirmed in Te Tiriti o Waitangi. A boundary had been named, and the consequences of crossing it were understood by all. As the British recognised, it would be an act of war. And it is not as if Europeans at the time avoided the phrase. Cameron, for example, wrote in 1861 about “the amount of force required for an invasion of the Waikato country”. Attorney-General Frederick Whitaker had declared that “[a]n attack on Waikato must not be an invasion only” Contemporary newspaper accounts are replete with references to the “invasion of Waikato” (or “the Waikato”).
For some Pākehā today, that framing is difficult to accept. A tiny group of malcontents continue to argue, against the weight of all evidence, that the Waikato tribes had been to blame for the war all along. But beyond this far right fringe element, that case has been well and truly closed. When even the Crown abandons this narrative, you know it is time to move on. That does not mean casting this ‘difficult’ history to one side, but rather finally giving it the prominence that it deserves in our national history.
In recent years some positive steps have been taken in this direction, as New Zealanders begin to come to terms with our history, warts and all. One such step has been the establishment of a national commemoration day for the New Zealand Wars, Te Pūtake o te Riri, He Rā Maumahara, held annually on 28 October.
The push for this came from Ōtorohanga College students and supporters who in 2015 marched on Parliament to deliver a petition calling for such a commemoration. This soon expanded to a nationwide campaign for improved teaching of New Zealand’s history in schools resulting in the new high school history curriculum introduced in 2023.
The Invasion of Waikato | Te Riri Ki Tainui by Vincent O’Malley ($40, Bridget Williams Books) is available to purchase through Unity Books.