Edwin Harris, Volunteer Rifles going on duty, New Plymouth, 1860. PUKE ARIKI, A65.892 Marines disembarking the Victoria at New Plymouth. Watercolour by Edwin Harris, 1860. PUKE ARIKI, A65.882 CONTENTS 1 | The New Zealand Wars 2 | The Māori and British Forces 3 | Colonial Warfare and Military Intelligence 4 | Blurred Images 5 | The Northern War 6 | Chiefs and Governors 7 | War at Wellington 8 | The Spark Ignites in Taranaki 9 | The Conflict Widens 10 | War Spreads to the Waikato 11 | The Invasion of the Waikato 12 | The War Reaches Tauranga 13 | Tragedy at Te Ranga 14 | Conclusion Notes References Acknowledgements About the Author A warrior at Pukehinahina–Gate Pā. He carries a shotgun (tūpara), a hatchet/tomahawk (pātītī) and a cartridge case. Ink drawing by Lieutenant Robley, 68th Regiment. ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY, E-023-010 1 THE NEW ZEALAND WARS Many of us have been brought up on a kind of history which sees the human drama throughout the ages as a straight conflict between right and wrong. Sooner or later, however, we may find ourselves awakened to the fact that in a given war there have been virtuous and reasonable men earnestly fighting on both sides. Historians ultimately move to a higher altitude and produce a picture which has greater depth because it does justice to what was thought and felt by the better men on both sides. 1 —Sir Herbert Butterfield T HE NEW ZEALAND WARS were a series of small campaigns fought between Britain, its colonists and the nascent government of New Zealand, and some of the Māori inhabitants. They spanned a period of nearly thirty years between 1845 and the early 1870s, although some historians consider that they continued through to Parihaka in 1881 and even to the arrest of Rua Kēnana at Maungapōhatu in 1916. The wars have had a dramatic effect on the governance, land ownership and development of the nation through to the present day. They have cast an immense shadow across the nation’s history, they are the origin of many of the issues that have caused ongoing friction between Māori and the Crown, and they continue to fuel anger and disaffection among various interest groups today. The first of the wars flared up a mere five years after the two races had appeared to have made an encouraging start towards building a nation together. In simplified terms, the Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti o Waitangi), signed on 6 February 1840, promised a partnership between the two peoples, and as the various chiefs signed the document, Queen Victoria’s representative, Captain Hobson R.N., who was soon to become the first governor of New Zealand, is said to have uttered the words he had no doubt just learned: ‘He iwi kotahi tātou’; we are now (all) one people.2