Whenua is a New Zealand Herald project to show and tell stories of our land and explain how our history affects the present day. In this article, Rahui Papa tells Julia Gabel the Tainui story.
Waikato-Tainui used to live in a castle.
They, like other iwi around the country, dominated the New Zealand economy before the 1860s and operated domestic and international trade routes.
Waikato-Tainui owned most of the land in the Waikato, a fertile and prosperous district that was attractive to the Crown and settlers who too wanted access to these lands for settlement and farming.
Māori in the Waikato refused to sell their lands and in 1858 the Kiingtanga was established with a primary goal of preventing land sales to Pākehā.
In 1863, the Crown started a war – known as the Invasion of Waikato – to destroy the Kiingitanga and access Waikato land. Hundreds of people across both sides were killed, and the booming Māori economy was destroyed.
The Crown confiscated all the iwi land, and they were pushed into exile south of their region for more than 20 years.
“We used to live in the castle,” Kiingitanga spokesman Rahui Papa said.
“But we were shunted to the garage and now we’re clawing back some of the rooms in the castle.”
In 1995, Waikato-Tainui became the first iwi to settle their grievances with the Crown, valued at $170 million.
“Once we went through the settlement process, the anger sorted of started to dissipate. We can allow the anger to dissipate, but we can never allow ourselves to fall into social amnesia.”
This is the story of the invasion of Waikato and how the loss of 485,620ha has impacted the powerhouse iwi generation after generation.
The golden years
Papa called the time prior to the invasion “the golden years”. Waikato-Tainui were prosperous traders of wheat, flax, pigs and other goods domestically and internationally.
Relationships with settlers were warm – and the Waikato iwi welcomed the newcomers as they offered a new opportunity to sell their produce.
“Prior to the invasion, we embraced settlers. We invited some of these settlers because they brought technologies with them. People would come and trade with us for metal objects, for axes, things like that, and in return, Māori would provide them with food.
“Up the Waipā River, there were at least 10 wheat mills in the 1860s. We exported wheat through to Australia, into the Americas and we even sent a couple of bags to Queen Victoria as a present, and it was acknowledged in a letter.
“That’s how industrious we were. We had ocean-going schooners, the industry was really strong.
“There was no need for social welfare at that time because everyone was being looked after. There was no need for Oranga Tamariki because it was a whānau-dynamic. We did it under our tikanga. We did it industriously, but we did it within the bounds of our tikanga.”
Rangiaowhia, a village near Te Awamutu, was known as the “breadbasket” due to its fertility. But the land’s value was always more than economic. For Māori, land is intrinsic to identity. Landmarks like mountains and rivers are often considered ancestors and tangata whenua feel a deep connection and responsibility to look after them.
“The Waikato River allows the land to be haumako, to be fertile, for the growth of food to sustain the people, just like a nanny would [nurture] her mokopuna.”
They are key features of a pepeha, a way of introducing oneself.
“We always go back to the pepeha. For us here, it’s Taupiri te maunga – Taupiri is the mountain; Waikato te awa – Waikato is the river; and Te Wherowhero te tangata - Te Wherowhero is the man [we descend from],” Papa said.
“That shows, just in reciting the pepeha, that closeness of association between the land element, the water element and the people element.
“We don’t look at Taupiri as a geographical point on a map or look at the Waikato River as just a river flowing through our rohe [territory], we actually look at them as ancestors.”
More than a century after Waikato-Tainui’s land was taken, the Crown acknowledged that losing the land would have made the iwi feel like “orphans”.
The invasion
In 1858, a second kingdom was established in New Zealand.
Historian Dr Vincent O’Malley said in his book, The New Zealand Wars: Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa, that the notion of a Māori monarch was developed after Ngāti Toa and Te Ātiawa rangatira Pirikawau and Tamihana Te Rauparaha (Ngāti Toa) - travelled to England (in 1843 and 1852, respectively) and grew admiration for the British monarchy.
The title of Māori King was offered to several important rangatira in New Zealand, all of whom declined, O’Malley said. Eventually attention focused on Pōtatau Te Wherowhero, “a powerful Waikato ariki whose ancestry connected him to all the major founding canoes from which Māori traced descent”.
At first, Te Wherowhero was reluctant, O’Malley said. He was elderly and as one of the country’s most senior rangatira, he had nothing to prove. He was, however, eventually persuaded to accept the title and the Kiingitanga was established.
Meanwhile, increasing numbers of settlers were arriving in New Zealand and the Crown’s focus on obtaining land from Māori intensified. Adherents to the Kiingitanga had symbolically placed their lands under the mana of the king to ensure it stayed in Māori ownership, O’Malley said.
Land was intrinsic to an identity and way of life. Fears over its loss fed into broader concerns Māori were being reduced to the status of second-class citizens in their own country, O’Malley said in The New Zealand Wars: Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa.
“When large areas of land passed into Pākehā hands, with it went broader authority and control.”
The Crown wanted Waikato land – but the Kiingitanga did not want to sell it – so the Crown started preparing for war. Thousands of imperial troops were brought to New Zealand and the Governor at the time, George Grey, ordered the construction of Great South Road, a supply line stretching from Auckland to north Waikato.
Grey alarmed Kiingitanga supporters by threatening to “dig around” the King until he fell, O’Malley said. British troop numbers were increased, and a steamer ship was placed at the ready.
Grey still needed a justification for the war for “the Crown could not simply attack its own subjects without just cause”, O’Malley said.
Grey and government ministers searched for reasons, eventually citing Waikato involvement in the first Taranaki war, their suspected incitement of an ambush at Ōakura, their eviction of Civil Commissioner John Gorst from Te Awamutu in April 1863 and an alleged plot to attack the settlement of Auckland and massacre its residents.
“But on closer inspection, these justifications failed to stack up. Indeed, Rewi Maniapoto, the alleged ringleader of the assault on Auckland, was returning from a tangi in Taupō when he received news that the war had begun. He had become the scapegoat for a deliberate war of conquest and dispossession.
“The Crown did not invade Waikato to save the settlers of Auckland, but to destroy the Kiingitanga.”
Papa said the Crown invaded the Waikato to obtain land and the “rich resources” of the Waikato particularly the fertile “food basket” village of Rangiaowhia. The Crown also felt threatened by the rise of Māori and the Kiingitanga, Papa said.
“Māori were becoming too strong and too powerful, and they needed to cut it at the knees right then and there otherwise we would start making alliances with other countries and diminish the mana of the colonial government in this country.”
Grey issued a set of ultimatums in 1863. The first was sent on July 9 to Māori living in South Auckland, many of whom had moved there in the 1845 with Te Wherowhero to protect the settlement from potentially hostile tribes.
“It required them to swear an oath of allegiance to the Crown or immediately leave,” O’Malley said.
The ultimatum read: “All persons of the native race living in the Manukau district and the Waikato frontier, are hereby required to immediately take an oath of allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen ...
“Natives who comply with this order will be protected. Native refusing to do so are hereby warned forthwith to leave the district aforesaid, and to retire to Waikato, beyond the Mangatāwhiri. In case with their not complying with this order, they will be ejected.”
In his book, O’Malley said many Māori feared that in swearing allegiance they might be required to fight for the Crown against their own relatives and few were willing to take the oath under these circumstances.
“Tāmati Ngāpora, one of the leaders of the community, pleaded for the alleged wrongs of the Kiingitanga to be investigated before evicting them. His appeal was rejected, and entire communities were forced off their lands at gunpoint, taking with only what they could carry.”
A second ultimatum was issued and addressed to the chiefs of Waikato. It included familiar allegations against Waikato Māori while declaring the lives and property of all “well-disposed people” would be protected.
“Those who waged war, on the other hand, were to suffer the consequences, including forfeiting all rights to their lands guaranteed to them under the Treaty of Waitangi.”
A draft version of the ultimatum revealed the wording was still being finalised on July 13, O’Malley said, a day after the invasion had begun.
“The ultimatum was little more than window-dressing, designed to create the false impression that the tribes had been given every opportunity to comply with the Crown’s demands.”
On July 12, 1863, Lieutenant-General Duncan Cameron directed hundreds of troops to cross the Mangātawhiri River, the boundary between Crown and Kiingitanga lands.
The invasion of Waikato was under way.
Papa said Ngāruawāhia, the home of the Kiingitanga, was abandoned.
“The corpse of Pōtatau Te Wherowhero was uplifted and taken to a secure location because it was felt if the governmental troops came in, they would disregard and disrespect one of our most prominent leaders and the remains of that leader. He was actually uplifted and taken south to a safer place.”
O’Malley said the Crown had as many as 12,000 imperial troops to call on, alongside naval units. The Kiingitanga had around 4000 people, the majority from Waikato and Ngāti Maniapoto, along with support from other North Island iwi.
The British had firepower, technology, steamers and gunboats, while the Māori defenders had muskets and had built a series of elaborately deceptive pā at strategic locations to slow Cameron’s advance south.
“They established maioro or trenches,” Papa said.
“They established groundworks that were able to absorb that cannon fire and that was because of what they had heard from other battles in the north, in Taranaki, for example, and that word come back and so they would re-elaborate on their defensive positions like mounds with holes in them so they can still fire.
“If a cannonball was to hit the mound, it would be way less effective than if it was able to go through a traditional pā, for example.”
O’Malley described the face-off as “a professional standing army belonging to one of the world’s most powerful nations unleashed upon a civilian population”.
A series of skirmishes were fought throughout the Waikato. A “bloody and brutal” battle ensued at Rangiriri, where 37 British and at least 48 Kiingitanga fighters were killed. Up until this point, the Kiingitanga had often had their women and children inside the pā, supporting the men as they fought.
‘An incomprehensible act of savagery’
After Rangiriri, the Crown requested the defenders move their women and children out of the pā and to some place safe. Rangiaowhia, the fertile bread-basket village, was designated as a safe haven for women, children and the elderly.
Meanwhile, the British troops moved south, preparing for their next battle. They discovered a strong, elaborate pā at Pāterangi which Cameron soon realised he would not be able to conquer without significant losses, O’Malley said.
Cameron pushed his troops further south and at dawn, on February 21, 1864, armed cavalry and foot troops charged the settlement of Rangiaowhia – the safe haven where the Kiingitanga had sent their women and children.
“Terrified, screaming residents ran in every direction for their lives,” O’Malley said.
“Rangiaowhia was not a fighting pā but a place of refuge for women, children and the elderly. This was not so much a battle as a raid on an open and largely undefended village.”
The Kiingitanga’s fighting men were nowhere near Rangiaowhia – but back at the pā at Pāterangi, waiting for the British assault that never came.
“Among the victims [at Rangiaowhia] were seven people torched to death inside a whare,” O’Malley said. Some accounts claimed the hut caught fire accidentally due to guns fired at close range while others maintain multiple huts were deliberately torched.
“As fire engulfed the whare, one elderly man came out with his hands raised in a gesture of surrender. The man was immediately shot and killed. None of the other occupants dared come out following this incident. All, including a young boy, were incinerated.”
The assault on Rangiaowhia was “an incomprehensible act of savagery”, O’Malley said.
“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.”
Orākāu: The final battlefield
The final battle of the Waikato war was fought at Orākāu from March 31 to April 2, 1864 – almost a year after Duncan Cameron crossed the Kiingitanga boundary with troops and invaded the Waikato.
At Orākāu, the Māori fighters were from a range of tribal affiliations including Tūhoe, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Raukawa, Waikato and Ngāti Maniapoto. Although these fighters easily repelled the initial British assaults on their pā, their food, water and ammunition supplies soon ran low and their situation become dire, O’Malley said.
“Interpreter William Mair stepped forward and made the offer [of surrender], telling the defenders that their position was hopeless and that they had better surrender while they could still save their lives.”
To this came the immortal response of Rewi Maniapoto: “Ka whawhai tonu mātou, ake, ake, ake! (We shall fight on forever, and ever, and ever!)”.
Mair said that if the men would not come out, the women and children might at least be spared, O’Malley explained in his book. Ngāti Raukawa wahine toa Ahumai Te Paerata stepped forward and declared “ki te mate ngā tane, me mate ano ngā wāhine me ngā tamariki!” (If the men die, the women and children must die also).
Papa said after what happened at Rangiaowhia, the Māori did not trust the Crown. “They had shot children, and women and elderly.”
However the defenders’ prospects inside the pā were dwindling and they exited the pā, trying to escape through a gap in the British defence, O’Malley said.
“A brave bid for freedom turned into a bloody ordeal. As the men, women and children scrambled their way toward the Pūniu River, cavalry and other troops hunted them down through bush, scrub and swamp.
“Large numbers were killed in the subsequent British pursuit, the smell of decomposing corpses from the nearby swamp where many fell lending a foul stench to Ōrākau for weeks afterwards.”
After the war
The Waikato War ended in 1864, but Māori faced a fresh assault.
In 1863, the New Zealand Settlements Act was passed, allowing the Crown to confiscate land from Māori who had been “in rebellion” against the Queen.
“That was really just a further insult to the raupatu,” Papa said
More than 1.2 million acres of land was confiscated from Waikato-Tainui. The British took all Waikato-Tainui’s territory north of the Puniu River, near Te Awamutu, up to South Auckland.
“If we look back into the history of the Settlements Act and the confiscations within Waikato, you had some joker sitting on a hill somewhere by Miranda, pointing a straight line that landed at Karapiro, straight across to Ōrākau, to the top of the Pirongia mountain down and around the Whāingaroa Harbour and then back to Auckland,” Papa said.
“That’s how they determined that would be the confiscated area. Funnily enough, all of those areas were the highest-producing areas within the Kingitanga.
“That led to no more industry. That meant that our people didn’t have mahi to do for the betterment of the community.”
The Kiingitanga was pushed into exile south of the river. The once-thriving Waikato-Tainui economy was gone.
Papa said the land confiscations were “absolutely devastating”, causing deep psychological pain for those forced to leave their lands, their sacred sites, such as urupā, and the food sources they relied upon.
“The raupatu probably had the biggest devastating impact on the people, physically, psychologically and spiritually.
“Our whenua is the place where we buried our tūpuna, and so those urupā, those cemeteries are gone from our land. Our river provided all of the kai and once the authority over that had gone, the people ultimately suffered. That psychological and physical damage throughout the generations is absolutely huge.
“The Settlements Act was one of the huge devastating blows because it wasn’t at the point of a musket, it was at the point of pen. Our industry, our farming exercises, we had courts, we had schools, all under the authority Māori and hapu at that time and that was just pushed away with the swipe of a pen.”
As a child and teenager, Papa followed his father around hui where he listened to his elders speak. These elders would constantly “hark back” to the invasion.
“At almost every juncture, they would hark back to the loss, or the invasions of those lands – what it was like before, and what it was like as a consequence of those invasions.
“They sang songs about it that we still sing today. They wrote haka about it that we still perform today. They spoke about things within whaikōrero [oratory] that are still recited today.
“I was fortunate enough to have my great-grandmother, who was born in the 19th century, right up until I was a teenager. Her and the people of that age group would always talk about those things.
“There was a lot of distrust. A consequence of that distrust was they wouldn’t participate in Pākehā health systems. They wouldn’t participate in the schooling systems. They were admonished, whacked while speaking Māori, for example, and they didn’t want that for their children.”
The settlement
The Crown signed a settlement with Waikato-Tainui in 1995, valued at $170 million, representing 1.4 per cent of the almost $12 billion of land estimated to have been lost through war and confiscation.
Waikato-Tainui chose Government-owned land parcels and properties up to the $170 million settlement value from a list of available options. Private land is never included in Waitangi Tribunal settlements.
“As we went through the settlement process, there was a number that was opposed to it because they felt that it was inadequate, really, for the compensation of the time,” Papa said.
‘Although it’s not the optimal compensation that we were looking for, of course, we would have been looking for $11.5 billion [the value of the confiscated lands], one of the things was we didn’t want to cripple the economy of New Zealand.”
With the settlement came an apology from the Crown. It acknowledged that labelling Waikato-Tainui as rebels was unfair; sending forces to invade the Waikato was unjust and a breach of the Treaty of Waitangi; and the confiscation of land through the Settlements Act was wrong and had a crippling impact on the welfare, economy and development of Waikato.
“The Crown recognises that the lands confiscated in the Waikato have made a significant contribution to the wealth and development of New Zealand, whilst the Waikato tribe has been alienated from its lands and deprived of the benefit of its lands,” the apology said.
“The Crown expresses its profound regret and apologises unreservedly for the loss of lives because of the hostilities arising from its invasion, and at the devastation of property and social life which resulted.”
Papa said the mamae – the pain – still remains today, 160 years on.
“Once we went through the settlement process, the anger, it sort of started to dissipate but the memory of that lack of integrity remains today. We can allow the anger to dissipate but can never allow ourselves to fall into social amnesia.
“The social circumstances, I suppose, continued in an intergenerational way. We look around, we have some of the highest incarceration rates, we have some of the highest removal of tamariki rates, we have some of the highest poverty rates, we have the poorest health rates.
“We absolutely believe that is a consequence of raupatu [land confiscation] and those dishonorable deeds.”
The regeneration
What would Waikato-Tainui look like today if the Waikato was never invaded, if the land was never taken?
“Waikato Tainui would look totally different,” he said.
“We would be an international powerhouse in the areas of trade, in the areas of social circumstances. There wouldn’t be a cost-of-living crisis in this country because we knew how to look after our people, under our tikanga, in an industrious way.
“Waikato-Tainui would be in control of its curricula and its educational pursuits, right from our tamariki through to the schooling system, even into the wānanga.
“Waikato-Tainui would be industrious; we would have pivoted to the trends of the time. When the wheat mills and flax mills started to go out of favour, we would have pivoted to the next sort of investment opportunity, not only in this country but globally.
“We would have still had the warrior spirit; we would’ve been the defenders of not only the Waikato but all of New Zealand. I think New Zealand would have been way better off.”
Today, the Kiingitanga is thriving.
“One of the reasons why the British couldn’t topple the Kiingitanga is because they didn’t take into account Kiingitanga is not just an organisation or a movement or a force. Kiingitanga is a way of life. When it rests in your heart, then no one, no other community or culture can attack that.”
Today, Waikato-Tainui has assets valued at more than $2 billion.
“Over time, with strategic management of some of those assets, Waikato-Tainui has been able to create an empire – and I’m not afraid to say that we are empire builders because we had the empire right at the very beginning.
“We used to live in the castle, we were shunted to the garage, and now we’re clawing back to some of the rooms in the castle.”
Read all the stories in the series at nzherald.co.nz/whenua
Whenua is a New Zealand Herald data-led project, supported by the Public Interest Journalism Fund, in association with Māori land legal expert Adrienne Paul (Ngāti Awa, Ngāi Tuhoe) from the University of Canterbury law school.
