East Cape War

East Cape War
Part of New Zealand land wars
Date 13 April 1865 to June 1868 Location New Zealand Result Government victory
Belligerents
New Zealand Government European settlers Māori	Māori

The East Cape War, sometimes also called the East Coast War, refers to a series of conflicts that were fought in the North Island of New Zealand from about 13 April 1865 to June 1868. There were at least three separate unrelated campaigns fought in the area during a period of relative peace between the main clashes of the New Zealand land wars, between the end of the Invasion of the Waikato, and beginning of Te Kooti's War. Although separate, they have all come to be known together as the East Cape War.

All of these conflicts stem from a common cause, the arrival of the Pai Marire Movement or Hau Hauism from the Taranaki region around 1865. Originally Pai Marire was a peaceful religion, a combination of Christianity and traditional Māori beliefs, but it quickly evolved into a violent and vehemently anti-European (Pākehā) cult. The arrival of the xenophobic Hau Hau in the East Cape effectively destabilized the whole region causing great alarm among the settlers and also seriously disrupting Māori society because of its disregard for traditional tribal structures. During this period the New Zealand Government was inadvertently helping Pai Marire recruitment by the confiscation of Māori land, a policy that generated resentment among the rebel Māori.

Early actions

The first and most notorious incident was the murder and partial canabilism of missionary Carl Volkner outside his church at Opotiki on 2 March 1865, which came to be known as the Volkner Incident.The attack on Volkner was led by Kereopa who eaten Volner's eyes and drank his blood.The Hauhau had spread the false rumour that Father Garavel had been hung by the Government.He had been expelled from New Zealand by the Catholic church for aiding the rebel Kingities in Opotiki by sending a letter to the Waikato Kingities. This outraged the European settlers who demanded justice, but New Zealand Government had committed almost all of their forces to fighting the Second Taranaki War. It took five months before they were able to free up men to deal with the murders. Several units of Colonial Militia and a large contingent of Taranaki Māori were shipped around the coast to Opotiki and turned loose in the area with instructions to burn, pillage and destroy as much as possible. Faced with starvation and no effective weapons the locals had no choice but to surrender.

Meanwhile the Hau Hau had provoked a civil war among the Ngāti Porou, one of the major tribes of the area. They successfully preached violence when the tribal leaders were urging caution. The Ngāti Porou chiefs, who were opposed to the Hau Hau fanaticism, wrote to the Government requesting assistance, particularly arms and reinforcements. Their appeal reached Donald McLean, a major landowner in the Napier region. He already had available a sizeable store of weapons, enough to equip a force of 100 militia and arm the Ngāti Porou. They sailed up the coast and the two forces joined up on 6 July 1865.

Over the next few months there were a series of skirmishes all over the East Cape during which the government forces were almost always successful. Hitherto in the various conflicts with the Pākehā the Māori had always shown themselves to be consummately skilful warriors, so skilful that although heavily outnumbered they had already fought the British Army to a standstill on several occasions. Surprisingly their military abilities seemed to have left them, and the Hau Hau had an almost perfect record for losing every skirmish, fight and battle they got into.

Early in October, 380 Pākehā and Ngāti Porou loyalists surrounded a force of about 600 Hau Hau. Even though the Hau Hau had a strongly fortified pā and the weather conditions were atrocious (one of the attackers died of hypothermia) 500 of the Hau Hau were forced to surrender. This was complete reversal of the trend; a fortified and defended Pā was usually found to be virtually unassailable.

At about the same time a Hau Hau war party attacked a group of Ngāti Porou women who had only a few shotguns and well flung rocks to defend themselves. They did so with such good effect that when the Hau Hau retreated they left behind thirteen dead.

In the event this attack cost the Hau Hau even heavier casualties. The loyalist Māori of the Ngāti Porou were angered because non-combatants had been attacked. Particularly incensed was a rising leader or war chief among them, Ropata Wahawaha. He led a group that tracked down and captured the Hau Hau responsible, and personally executed the ones who came from his own hapu, or sub-tribe.

Waerenga a Hika

Early in November of the same year a large group of Hau Hau built a pā on the outskirts of a Pākehā settlement in Poverty Bay, some 10 km from Gisborne. There is some doubt about the nature of this group. Some authors suggest that they were refugees fleeing from Ropata and the Ngāti Porou. However there were at least 200 armed men with the party, threat enough to the settlement which seemed to be confirmed by their building a Pa. Once again it fell to Donald McLean to assemble of force to deal with the threat and to organize the shipping to move his warriors into the area. This was completed by about 12 November, including Ropata and some 300 Ngāti Porou.

They surrounded the pā on three sides and began a siege. The first day was spent in ineffectual rifle fire from both sides. The next day Major Fraser ordered his men to begin digging a sap towards the pā but this was ambushed and a dozen of his men killed or wounded. There were two more days of rifle fire.

On Day five a large party of men, about 200, emerged from the pā carrying white flags as if to surrender. However they were fully armed and by all contemporary accounts appeared to have no intention of surrendering. In the fighting that followed about sixty Hau Hau were killed while only one of the militia was slightly wounded.

On Day seven the militia acquired a small cannon from Gisborne but no ammunition. Instead they fired empty salmon tins packed with bullets, about a hundred per tin. The effect must have been impressive because after the third shot the Hau Hau did surrender, properly this time. Some 400 of them were made prisoners although many others escaped into the surrounding bush.

Ngāti Kahungunu civil war

December 1865 to January 1866

This conflict happened in the northern Hawke's Bay area. It appears to have been very similar to the Ngāti Porou civil war, conflict between those of the tribe who converted to Hau Hauism and those who remained loyal to the New Zealand Government, the kupapa. In this case the conflict was on a much smaller scale, possibly because each faction involved only a small proportion of the tribe, the bulk of the Ngāti Kahungunu remaining neutral.

The loyalist faction won because they were able to call on support of the Colonial Militia and from the Ngāti Porou warriors.

Napier

In October 1866 one group of Hau Hau attempted to invade Napier in a desultory fashion: they moved into the area in a threatening manner but did little more than camp on the outskirts of the settlement. However they could not be ignored. Once again a mixed force of Pākehā and Māori, commanded by Colonel Whitmore, was formed. They marched out and surrounded the Hau Hau at Omaranui. The Hau Hau were given a chance to surrender which they refused; in fact they refused even to negotiate. They were given an hour to reconsider and then the militia opened fire. The result was a massacre in which most of the Hau Hau were killed.

Tauranga again

January to March 1867

The peace agreement of 1864 had been accepted by most of the Māori of the Tauranga district and the area was relatively quiet. However there was to be some confiscation of land and this was resisted by one small hapu or sub-tribe, the Piri Rakau led by a Hau Hau prophet, Hakaraia. Unlike most of the Hau Hau adherents he seems to have had some military wisdom. They were able to avoid either capture or destruction and for a brief time they had a considerable impact on the stability of the district particularly on the Arawa tribe. However the arrival of Colonial reinforcements forced them to retreat towards the King Country. Hakaraia later joined Te Kooti.

Similarly, south of Opotiki, the Tuhoe were not prepared to accept the arrival of Pākehā settlers on their northern border and made some raids on the farms being established in the area. Attempts by the militia to deal with the Tuhoe were largely unsuccessful because they could always retreat into the mists of the Urewera Ranges.

So this was the East Cape War: not a war but certainly not peace either. Two factors kept the area unsettled. The Government pressed ahead with the confiscation of Māori land and this in its turn provided the Hau Hau with a constant flow of recruits. Then in June 1868 the situation changed drastically with the arrival in Hawkes Bay of Te Kooti.

Further reading

• Belich, James (1988). The New Zealand wars. Penguin.
• Belich, James (1996) Making peoples. Penguin Press.
• Binney, Judith (1995). Redemption songs: A life of Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki. Auckland: Auckland University Press.
• Cowan, J., & Hasselberg, P. D. (1983) The New Zealand wars. New Zealand Government Printer. (Originally published 1922)
• Maxwell, Peter (2000). Frontier, the battle for the North Island of New Zealand. Celebrity Books.
• Simpson, Tony (1979). Te Riri Pakeha. Hodder and Stoughton.
• Sinclair, Keith (ed.) (1996). The Oxford illustrated history of New Zealand (2nd ed.) Wellington: Oxford University Press.
• Stowers, Richard (1996). Forest rangers. Richard Stowers.
• Vaggioli, Dom Felici (2000). History of New Zealand and its inhabitants, Trans. J. Crockett. Dunedin: University of Otago Press. Original Italian publication, 1896.
• "The people of many peaks: The Māori biographies". (1990). From The dictionary of New Zealand biographies, Vol. 1, 1769-1869. Bridget Williams Books and Department of Internal Affairs, New Zealand.