THE WAIKATO WAR.
We broke a King and we built a road—
A courthouse stands where the reg’ment goed,
And the river’s clean where the raw blood flowed,
When the Widow give the party.
—“Barrack-Room Ballads.”
The eviction of Mr Gorst from Te Awamutu served to precipitate the
Waikato War, but in truth a conflict had become inevitable. There was a
widespread feeling that the time had come for a racial trial of
strength, and the conflict was due as much to the aggressive policy of
the Government and the anti-Maori tone of the newspapers and the
politicians as to the martial preparations of the Kingites.
The construction of the military road and the establishment of military
posts in obvious readiness for an advance into the Waikato confirmed
the natives in their belief that the Government meant to force a way
into the interior and shatter their home-rule plans.
The first definite act of war was Lieutenant-General Cameron’s despatch
of troops across the frontier, the Mangatawhiri River, on 12th July,
1863.
Te Huirama, with a body of Waikato, barred the way with rifle-pits on
the Koheroa ridge, near Mercer, and on 17th July the first engagement
took place. The troops under Cameron charged the Maori position with
the bayonet, and the Kingites were driven out with the loss of their
leader and about thirty others. Numerous skirmishes followed in the
South Auckland country on the northern side of the Mangatawhiri; the
Lower Waikato and Wairoa and Hauraki war-parties carried gun and
tomahawk into their enemy’s country, following their favourite tactics
of ambuscade and plunder. There were many bush fights, in which the
Forest Rangers and the Forest Rifle Volunteers, as well as Imperial
troops and militia, were engaged.
The three principal fortified posts of the Kingites in the early stages
of the war were Paparata, Meremere, and Pukekawa. These positions were
designed to stop the southward progress of the troops and enable the
Maoris to levy war on the frontier settlements. Pukekawa is the
beautiful round green hill on the west side of the great elbow of the
Waikato, where the river bends westward below Mercer; anciently a
fortified pa of the Ngati-Tamaoho stood on its summit. When the Waikato
War began the Ngati-Maniapoto came down the river in their canoes and
selected it as their headquarters, and from Pukekawa as a convenient
base they made raids on Patumahoe, Mauku, Camerontown, and other
frontier districts. They expected to be attacked there, and entrenched
themselves, but General Cameron did not carry the war to the west side
of the Waikato.
Presently the arrival of gunboats specially adapted for the river war
enabled Cameron to outflank and capture the strongholds on the east
bank of the Waikato and to occupy Ngaruawahia, the Maori King’s
headquarters, unopposed. His only serious check was at Rangiriri, where
in disastrous frontal attacks the Imperial naval and military forces
sustained heavy casualties—47 dead and 85 wounded. The pa surrendered
next day, and 183 prisoners were taken. The Lower Waikato was
conquered, and the General with his steam flotilla shifted the army to
the Waikato-Waipa delta for the final blows to the Kingite cause.
PATERANGI AND WAIARI.
Falling back from pa to pa, Waikato and Ngati-Maniapoto at last
concentrated their forces in the great series of entrenchments at
Pikopiko, Paterangi, and Rangiatea, defensive works intended to block
the march of the Imperial and Colonial troops on the principal Kingite
cultivations and food stores at Rangiaowhia. The chief fortification
was Paterangi; the traces of this elaborate system of earthworks can be
seen to-day close to Mr Harry Rhodes’ farmhouse on Paterangi Hill.
General Cameron’s headquarters were at Te Rore, on the Waipa, and there
he camped for several weeks early in 1864. The principal engagement
during this period of waiting—for Paterangi was too strong for frontal
attack—was a lively skirmish at Waiari, on the Mangapiko River. Forty
Maoris fell that day (14th February, 1864), and six British soldiers
lost their lives.
Here, at Waiari, that free-roving and adventurous colonial corps the
Forest Rangers had their first taste of sharp fighting in the Waipa
country. We shall hear a good deal of those Rangers in the succeeding
chapters. There were two companies of them, each fifty strong. No. 1
Company was commanded by Captain William Jackson—afterwards Major
Jackson and M.H.R. for Waipa—and No. 2 Company by Captain G. F. Von
Tempsky, who as Major of Armed Constabulary fell in the bush battle of
Te Ngutu-o-te-Manu, in Taranaki, in 1868. The Rangers were armed with
Terry and Calisher breech-loading carbines and five-shot revolvers, and
Von Tempsky’s men also used bowie-knives, made in Auckland from a
pattern supplied by him, somewhat on the model of the bowie-knife of
Arkansas and Texan fame.
The Rangers at Waiari were ordered to clear the Maoris out of the scrub
which covered the old pa in the river-loop. They dived into the
thickets, and soon killed or dispersed the Kingite warriors, and then
covered the retreat of the main body of troops to Te Rore and Colonel
Waddy’s advanced camp. The Rangers enjoyed the work so much that it was
difficult to get them home to camp at Te Rore for their tea. The
British dead and wounded had been removed, and as many as possible of
the Maori dead were brought across to the north bank of the Mangapiko.
General Cameron had ridden up from the main camp at Te Rore in time to
witness the defeat of the Maoris in Waiari. The Rangers, covering the
return of the troops, came under a heavy fire in front and from both
flanks, and returned it with coolness and accuracy from the cover of
the manuka and fern.
A veteran corporal of No. 1 Company (Jackson’s) recalls Colonel
Havelock’s ire at the indifference of the frontiersmen to the bugle
calls. “It was getting dusk,” he says, “and still all our Rangers had
not come out of the scrub, and we could hear their carbines cracking in
reply to the heavy banging of the double-barrel guns. Captain Jackson
was standing alongside Colonel Havelock, A.D.C.—the son of the famous
hero of the Indian Mutiny—who asked why the Rangers had not returned.
Jackson replied in his blunt fashion that he didn’t know; he supposed
they’d come out when they had finished their job. The ‘Retire’ was
sounded again, but still our fellows kept popping away in the dusk. At
last, Colonel Havelock, swearing that he would turn out the 40th
Regiment and fire on the Rangers if they did not obey orders, called up
all the buglers that could be found and told them to sound the ‘Retire’
all together. Presently our boys came out of the manuka and joined us,
as pleased as kings with their afternoon’s hot work.”
A very few of those hard-fighting Rangers are left to recall the
incidents of a vanished phase of New Zealand life. Some—like Major
Jackson—settled down to pioneer farming, but for others the warpath had
attractions irresistible, and long after the battle of Orakau many of
the young veterans strapped on their fighting gear again and followed
“old Von” to Wanganui and Taranaki to do battle against the Hauhaus.
The corps ceased to bear its distinctive name; most of its members
returned to their sections of land in the military settlements on the
confiscated Waikato land; some joined the Armed Constabulary. And when
Von Tempsky fell to a Hauhau bullet before the stockade of Te
Ngutu-o-te-Manu it was a young officer who had been his subaltern in
1863–64, J. M. Roberts—now Colonel, and holder of the New Zealand Cross
for valour—who coolly and competently extracted the rearguard after a
terrible night in the forest of death. He had learnt his work well in
Von Tempsky’s practical school in many a scout and in many a skirmish
in a country where the name of the Forest Rangers is already but a dim
legend, so quickly has the work of nation-making marched in New
Zealand.
Von Tempsky was a clever artist in water-colours, and had a gift of
writing animated narrative. He wrote a journal of events covering his
service in the Waikato War, and his story of the fighting at
Rangiaowhia, Hairini, and Orakau will be given in the chapters which
follow. His account has the merit of being a participant’s direct
description of the engagements; moreover, it now sees print for the
first time. [5]
Among the notable figures of that day whom Von Tempsky describes in his
journal was Bishop George Augustus Selwyn. There is a word-vignette of
the great Bishop, riding unostentatiously with the army, his old
pack-horse ambling along laden with his tent and simple camp gear.
“What comfort the wounded and sick derived from his presence may be
imagined,” wrote Von Tempsky. “Often have I followed with my eye his
fine, manly figure wending its way on errands for the good of others;
and the study of that man’s character, strongly impressed in a face
where hard work has stamped its signet on high-bred features, would
yield materials for an epic poem. How that man’s being has clung to a
preconceived idea of his work in this country! How every fibre of his
existence has wrapped itself round that one object, the improvement of
the aboriginal! Through good and evil times he has stood by his work,
strong, fresh, after years of disappointment, unalterable in his
purpose, even if in opposition to the good of his own race. There
perhaps we find the one flaw in an otherwise almost perfect character.”