Page 19 - Puhipi

Sir Thomas Gore Brown, Greys successor as Governor saw plainly that Europeans

coveted the land of the Maori and were determined to possess it, rightfully if possible,
if not by any means at all. This attitude was clearly neither in the letter nor spirit of
the treaty and was hardly what one who had been granted the rights and privileges of
a British subject should expect. In addition, chiefs who applied to be put on the
electoral register were not allowed a vote, so the Maori, to use the words of John Gorst,

the Waikato magistrate, found himself insignificant and despised in the midst of a
civilisation in which he did not share. He is excluded from Parliament and was not
helped by the Government.

One section of the race, the Waikato people thought it was time for action. They decided
to set up a state in which they would get justice, chose the old chief Te Wherowhero as
the Maori King and renamed him King Potatau.

War broke out in Taranaki, it centred round the sale of a block of land at Waitara
which was offered by a man called Teira when it appears that Wiremu Kingi Te
Rangitake who lived on the land with 200 followers was also an owner. An instalment

was paid, a survey was begun with a military support and hostilities on a minor scale
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broke out with the taking of Kingis Pa on April 18 1860.

A haphazard campaign of skirmishes around New Plymouth ended in May 1861 with
a truce. The King movement, centred on the Waikato attracted followers in other

districts and with the death of Potatau and the accession of his son King Tawhiao, the
military party led by Rewi Maniapoto came to the ascendancy. The movement was a
nationalistic and separatist one, although at first not aggressively so, and it set up its

own institutions on the European pattern. But a deterioration in the Taranaki
situation changed all this.

Grey, back for another term decided to give up claims to Waitara but to enforce those
for an adjacent coastal block called Tataraimaka. But before making his Waitara

decision known, he sent a force to Tataraimaka. The Maori had said that they would
not give up Tataraimaka unless the Government dropped its claims to Waitara and
took this action as an act of war. That was the 4 April 1863 and on the 4 May war
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broke out again in Taranaki with the ambush of a party on its way to Tataraimaka.
The proclamation announcing the abandonment of the Waitara claim did not come
until the 11 May when it was taken as a sign of weakness on the Governors part.
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In the Waikato the Kings supporters warned the Governor not to cross their northern

boundary, the Mangatawhiri stream but Grey suspecting an attack on Auckland
ordered General Cameron to do so. Thus on 12 July 1863 the war with the Waikato
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tribes began. There was a series of actions but seldom a pitched battle, the Maori being
an expert at making a stand and then disengaging. But the advance up the valley of

the Waikato was inexorable and at last a British force of 2000 surrounded the Orakau