The incident in Rangiaowhia

Today the only visible remnant of the attack on Rangiaowhia during the invasion of Waikato in 1863-64 is St Paul’s Anglican Church. Further up the road is an old Catholic cemetery where a mission station once stood. The two churches marked the outer limits of Rangiaowhia, a bustling Ngāti Apakura and Ngāti Hinetū settlement five kilometres east of Te Awamutu. In the 1850s it was one of the most important agricultural hubs in New Zealand. But all that changed with a devastating and controversial raid early in 1864, 160 years ago today. It is a story few New Zealanders learn anything about.

Throughout the 1850s the Tainui tribes were among the most prosperous in New Zealand, not only feeding the settlers of Auckland but also contributing a significant chunk of the country’s export earnings through wheat sold to the gold miners of Victoria and California. The area around Rangiaowhia was New Zealand’s granary, and in 1849 two young chiefs from the settlement proudly sent a bag of flour ground at their own mill all the way to Queen Victoria. Crowds of Māori flocked to view the two lithographs of the royal family the Queen sent them in return.

Visitors to Rangiaowhia were amazed by the ‘European’ appearance of the settlement. Wheat fields stretched as far as the eyes could see. Peach groves and all kinds of orchards added to the scene. Horses and carts carried produce to market. Lady Mary Martin, the wife of Chief Justice Sir William Martin, observed that “the women sat under trees sewing flour bags” while “fat, healthy children and babies swarmed around”. Governor George Grey, following a visit to the district in 1849, informed the Colonial Office that he had “never seen a more thriving or contented population in any part of the world”.

The ever wily Grey departed the country in December 1853, ignoring instructions to remain and implement a new constitution that established New Zealand’s Parliament. Because the right to vote was based on European forms of land ownership, the still numerically dominant Māori population were effectively denied representation. Parliament became a vocal and aggressive mouthpiece for Pākehā interests. And meanwhile a provision in the Constitution Act known as section 71 which provided for self-governing ‘native districts’ to be proclaimed was never once implemented.

Māori leaders called in vain for the rights promised them in the Treaty of Waitangi to be honoured. When that failed, some turned their minds to new institutions of their own. But despite repeated reassurances to the contrary, the Māori King movement (Kīngitanga) that saw Pōtatau Te Wherowhero raised up as king in 1858 was soon dubbed a challenge to British sovereignty over New Zealand.

By 1861 Grey had returned to the colony. Nearly two years later, after much careful planning and preparation, he invaded the Waikato heartland of the Kīngitanga in July 1863, determined to destroy the movement. It was a deliberate war of conquest, reliant upon a dodgy dossier of evidence signalling a supposed Māori threat to the settlers. And so the British imperial military machine was unleashed against a heavily outnumbered civilian population with deadly and devastating effect.

Spurning Tainui pleas for peace, the governor pushed on after capturing Rangiriri under dubious circumstances in November 1863 (the pā taken after the defenders had raised a white flag to talk terms, not surrender). The following month the Kīngitanga headquarters at Ngāruawāhia was voluntarily surrendered up to the Crown in compliance with preconditions laid down by the government before it would negotiate terms. But still Grey would not come and talk peace.

Ahead lay the fertile fields around Rangiaowhia. But the British path forward was blocked by a chain of defensive pa at Pāterangi so formidable and daunting that Lieutenant-General Duncan Cameron, the commander of British forces in New Zealand, concluded he could not take it by main force. Cameron’s eventual solution was to not even attempt to take the pā.

Instead, at 11pm on February 20, 1864, a column of 1230 British troops and their colonial allies marched silently and in single file around the perimeter of the Pāterangi defences. Shortly before daylight, the troops reached the near deserted settlement of Te Awamutu. Cameron decided to immediately push on to Rangiaowhia.

So it was that at dawn, February 21, armed cavalry, followed by foot troops, charged into the settlement of Rangiaowhia, whose terrified, startled and screaming residents ran in every direction for their lives. The troops encountered little organised resistance but official returns listed 12 Māori killed and a similar number wounded. Casualty rates elsewhere were much higher during the New Zealand Wars, so why is it the attack on this village in particular that was remembered with great bitterness long after the event?

Rangiaowhia was a place of refuge for women, children and the elderly. It was an open village, lacking fortifications or defences of its own. The men of fighting age were amassed at Pāterangi waiting for a British attack that never came. Kīngitanga commanders had been given to understand that women and children would not be killed. Following the Rangiriri battle, the presence of both inside the pā was condemned by Europeans (including Grey) and the Māori defenders urged to remove them to a place of safety. Bishop George Selwyn, the head of the Anglican church in New Zealand but controversially accompanying the Crown forces as official army chaplain, was told nine days before the February attack that Rangiaowhia had been designated such a place and was asked to consult with Cameron and ensure that the people there would not be harmed.

Kīngitanga leaders understood that some kind of agreement had been entered into, making the early morning attack on the settlement (on a Sunday) all the more treacherous. It was after the assault on Rangiaowhia, Wiremu Tamihana later wrote, that he knew, for the first time, that this was “a great war for New Zealand”. Whitiora Te Kumete was even blunter, condemning the “foul murder” in which the troops “did not go to fight the men” but “left them and went away to fight with the women and children”. It was a matter Waikato Māori would return to repeatedly over the years.

For obvious reasons, official British reports did not dwell on this aspect of the attack. There was little glory to be gained under the circumstances. But most of the prisoners captured at Rangiaowhia were women and children. And Māori oral histories from the time of the raid onwards consistently refer to women and children being killed (some unofficial estimates suggested in excess of 100 deaths, though it is impossible to confirm the actual numbers). Among those killed were said to be the wife and two daughters of Kereopa Te Rau, who was much later tried and executed for the murder of Ōpōtiki missionary Carl Sylvius Völkner. The priest had previously supplied Grey with detailed plans of Rangiaowhia prior to the raid. 

As soon as the men heard of the Rangiaowhia raid, they abandoned their position at Pāterangi and rushed back to defend their families. Prised out of their formidable fortifications, the Kīngitanga force found themselves under attack one day later, suffering heavy losses at nearby Hairini on February 22. Survivors of this latest clash would have heard more details of the terrifying events of the previous day. These included stories of the occupants of at least one whare or hut who were burnt alive.

Some first-hand accounts from those who took part in the assault on Rangiaowhia claimed the hut had caught fire accidentally, as a result of guns fired at close range through the raupō thatching. That would be a natural assumption to make among those who did not witness what really took place (or were trying to conceal it). Others maintained that multiple huts had been deliberately torched. There is no reason why they should have made up such a story. Among their number was the colourful and dashing (but Māori-hating) Gustavus Ferdinand von Tempsky of the Forest Rangers, who also recalled that, as fire engulfed the whare, one elderly man came out with his hands raised in a gesture of surrender. Despite calls to spare him, the man was immediately shot and killed. None of the other occupants of the hut dared come out following this incident. All, including a young boy, were incinerated.

For Kīngitanga supporters urged to fight in a ‘civilised’ manner, just like the British, the assault on Rangiaowhia was an almost incomprehensible act of savagery. They had complied with requests to remove their families out of harm’s way, only for the troops to deliberately target them in the most horrific manner possible. Bishop Selwyn became a particular target for recriminations. Years later the missionary Thomas Samuel Grace (ironically a fierce critic of the war) recalled that he had “twice … nearly lost my life on account of the burning of the women” at Rangiaowhia. In the late 1870s Grace came across one elderly man who became “quite furious” as he recalled the killing of the old people and women at Rangiaowhia. The bitter memories ran deep.

The troops had been “blinded by rage” at the loss of their comrades according to von Tempsky. With Cameron looking on from horseback, Sergeant Edward McHale was shot and killed as he approached the hut subsequently set ablaze. Colonel Marmaduke Nixon, who had led the cavalry charge on Rangiaowhia, was also mortally wounded. His remains today lie buried at the foot of the Nixon memorial in Ōtāhuhu.

Some of the surviving villagers took refuge in the Catholic church. Much to von Tempsky’s disgust, Cameron ordered the troops to abandon their pursuit. Cameron had been responsible for launching an all-out assault on an exposed village occupied by non-combatants. As military historian Chris Pugsley notes, what happened at Rangiaowhia was “the inevitable consequence of soldiers attacking an unarmed settlement and finding nothing to fight but families”. Like many of the British troops, Cameron would later become deeply disillusioned with the war, seeing it as little more than a sordid land grab fought for the exclusive benefit of New Zealand settlers. Perhaps it was at Rangiaowhia that he had begun to feel the first pangs of remorse.

Following Rangiaowhia, Kīngitanga commanders dared not leave their women and children undefended again. Both were present inside the partially completed Ōrākau pā when it was attacked by British troops on March 31, 1864. Lacking food, water or ammunition, the pā’s occupants fled for their lives on foot on April 1 but were hunted down by cavalry and killed in great numbers. At least 150 of the 300 defenders of Ōrākau died in the chase. Further atrocities followed. A correspondent for the New Zealander newspaper reported that “Women, many women, slaughtered, and many children slain, are amongst the trophies of Ōrākau, and ‘civilisation’ in pursuit, or as it returned from the chase, amused itself by shooting the wounded ‘barbarians’ as they lay upon the ground”.

That was not how Pākehā liked to remember Ōrākau. They preferred to frame it as Rewi’s Last Stand, a noble and defiant, but ultimately doomed rearguard action before both parties settled down to enjoy the best race relations in the world, forged through ordeal by battle. Rangiaowhia was even more difficult to depict in this way and so was largely ignored. Awkward silences ensued on significant anniversary dates. There were no memorials to the victims of Rangiaowhia until recently. But Māori never forgot. The invasion of Waikato had destroyed a flourishing economy, rendering large numbers of Tainui survivors landless and impoverished virtually overnight. The consequences resonated over many generations and continue to be felt today.

Stripped of the romantic sheen that early twentieth century Pākehā tried to impart to it, the invasion of Waikato was a brutal and ruthless conflict. The attack on Rangiaowhia was one of the more shameful episodes in a greater tragedy. Acknowledging this difficult history is not a recipe for endless division and recrimination, as some critics like to allege, but rather a precondition for genuine reconciliation. Owning up to our troubled past requires guts and grit. No one ever said it would be easy. But it is an essential step in the process of maturing as a society.