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them. Local Kawanatanga were now in great spirits about the prospects for peace at Tūranga, and that afternoon a large runanga was held at Te Poho-oRawiri in consequence of Raharuhi’s arrival.
During the course of this meeting Raharuhi offered the settler James Wyllie immediate restitution of property plundered from him, even going so far as to ask where this should be delivered. Wyllie declined this offer on the basis that he would first have to communicate with the officer in command (who had already declined to make any decisions regarding peace terms, pending the arrival of McLean). The apparent absence of anybody willing to assume responsibility for suing for peace was unfortunate given that Raharuhi was very close to the terms demanded by the Colonial Secretary, particularly in relation to the surrender of Pai Mārire exiles from the East Coast. Raharuhi offered to go inland first thing the next morning ‘and have the men who are most obnoxious to Henare [Potae] delivered up to him immediately so that Henare may go back again to his own place’. Once again his offer was ignored. Finally, on the morning of 9 November Donald McLean – someone clearly authorised to negotiate peace – arrived at Tūranga along with 260 further Ngāti Porou. He had not come to talk peace, however. On 10 November Raharuhi Rukupo met with Paraone of Rangitukia. Paraone later reported back that some of the Rongowhakaata Pai Mārire party had agreed to join the Government side after receiving the likely terms of surrender. Raharuhi had told Paraone that he would go off to the ‘inland Hauhaus’ (meaning Te Aitanga-a-Mahaki) to see if they would also agree to surrender. On the evening of 10 November messengers were despatched to both the Rongowhakaata and Te Aitanga-a-Mahaki Pai Mārire camps, conveying McLean’s terms of peace. All ‘murderers’ and others guilty of serious crimes were to be surrendered up, and all outsiders immediately expelled from the district. Tūranga Māori were further required to hand over all their weapons, take an oath of allegiance to the Crown, and compensate the settlers for all losses sustained. If they failed to comply with these terms then their lands would be confiscated. Leonard Williams for one was not optimistic about the prospects of either Te Aitanga-a-Mahaki or Ngāti Maru giving in without resistance, and for their part the Ngāti Porou chiefs reportedly considered that the conditions should be offered ‘at the point of the bayonet’. Yet on the same day, a settler at Wharaurangi, on the banks of the Waipaoa River, wrote that ‘some tribes of the Whānau a Mahaki have agreed with Raharuhi Rukupo to give up the Hauhau superstition and all turn to the Queen’s side’. Clearly this was a reference to Te Aitanga-a-Mahaki – the iwi now solidly typecast as die-hard troublemakers and rabble-rousers. Clearly, the arrival of hundreds more Ngāti Porou and Crown forces had a somewhat startling effect on a people already anxious to avoid fighting if at all possible. On 11 November further evidence came of Te Aitanga-a-Mahaki’s reluctance to fight with the departure of the Ngāti Porou refugees for home. On 12 November Raharuhi and others wrote to McLean, informing him that the ‘Hauhaus’ had ‘left with their Rangatiras’, and urging him to come and visit them. On the same day (a Sunday) there were further reports concerning the willingness of Ngāti Kaipoho and Ngāiteaweawe to agree to McLean’s demands and of Ngāti Maru having ‘gone off to Patutahi to shew their disapproval of the terms’. Yet even this supposed opposition from Ngāti Maru was
He KŌrero Tuku Iho
modified the next day. Hemara, a Ngāti Kahungunu Māori present with Tareha to try to mediate peace, informed Williams early the next morning that they opposed Raharuhi’s conduct in turning around so suddenly, ‘but that they were not really opposed to McLean’s terms’. Tareha and his assistant appear to have been almost the only outsiders genuinely interested in finding a peaceful solution to the crisis at Tūranga.
ready to come in on the following day.
Certainly McLean hardly seems to have gone out of his way to secure the peace agreement that was now virtually within his grasp. He also visited Williams on the morning of 13 November, to seek advice concerning the response to his previous ultimatum. Signed by nearly all the leading chiefs, this stated that ‘they were willing to come to terms but that they were very anxious that he should go to see them’.
This portrayal of Pai Mārire actions in the crucial three days before military action commenced at Tūranga is entirely consistent with the official line of an obstinate people determined to fight it out. Yet the evidence reveals a completely different picture. If McLean had crossed the river to accept their submission then there would have been no war at Tūranga, no Waerenga-ā-Hika with all of the associated trauma. McLean knew this and deliberately refused to do so. What followed was in no way the fault of Tūranga Māori. They had done all they could to avoid conflict.
For Leonard Williams, as for McLean, nothing but complete and unconditional surrender would now do. He was, he said, glad to hear McLean say that he had no intention of visiting the Pai Mārire to discuss peace terms and would instead issue another ultimatum, accompanied by a letter advising them to come in that day if they were sincere in their professions of peace. This, to the great disgust of Tareha, McLean proceeded to do. Tūranga ‘Hauhau’ now had until midday, 16 November to surrender or suffer the consequences. The Pai Mārire party might well have asked, ‘surrender from what’? The fugitives from Tokomaru had already gone home, and restitution had been offered for the damages done to settler property. There had been no ‘rebellion’ at Tūranga. What then was there to surrender from? Fundamental questions concerning the equity of the campaign being directed against them tended to be forgotten for the moment, however. For the Tūranga Pai Mārire faction, extricating themselves from the impending conflict without losing face appears to have been the prime motivation at this time. Tribal and chiefly honour could be kept intact and peace concluded on the terms McLean had proposed simply by him going to them, rather than the other way around. There were also more practical concerns. To cross the river and lay down their arms would be to deliver themselves up to their old tribal enemies, and to an uncertain fate. During the civil war further north some Tūranga Māori who found themselves caught up in the conflict had been executed in cold blood after being taken as prisoner. Who could state with any certainty that others might not share a similar fate this time? As the Waitangi Tribunal concluded, Donald McLean would have been aware of this dilemma. For McLean, and for other Crown officials it was not a question of making peace but of crushing the independence of Tūranga Māori by force of arms while the resources were available to do so. While Tūranga Māori desperately strove to maintain peace, Europeans were just as anxious to ensure war. As McLean’s close ally J.D. Ormond had written days earlier ‘I expect to hear...that war has broken out at Poverty Bay & I hope so too – we ought to give them a lesson whilst we have the force at hand to do it.’ He would get his wish. Early in the evening of 13 November Leonard Williams departed Tūranga for Auckland, probably content in the knowledge that he too had done his best to ensure that a confrontation with the Pai Mārire forces was now an inevitability. Thereafter we lose the most detailed source of day-to-day events at Tūranga, at a crucial period when Tūranga Pai Mārire were seemingly on the verge of surrendering. However, Williams was later informed by Harris that, after he had left on 13 November, Raharuhi and Wi Kingi Te Paia had visited McLean to assure him that 270 of their people were
When they did not come in, so the story goes, McLean, ‘wishing to give them every chance’, extended the deadline by a day. When they still did not come in by the appointed hour, McLean, washing his hands of the affair, handed over control to the commander of the forces, Major James Fraser, and the siege of Waerenga-ā-Hika commenced shortly thereafter.
Rongowhakaata and Te Whānau-a-Kai Pai Mārire, led by Anaru Matete, had fortified themselves at Pukeamionga, a hilltop overlooking Patutahi, with their Te Aitanga-a-Mahaki kin taking cover at Waerenga-ā-Hika. With the expiry of the deadline on 16 November all available troops set out for Pukeamionga, camping at Huiatoa overnight. By the morning, however, Fraser had changed his mind and the troops instead marched on Waerenga-ā-Hika. McLean’s instructions, dated 15 November, stated that if, by the appointed hour, ‘a full and complete acceptance’ of the ultimatum was not received, it would be Fraser’s duty to ‘enforce to the full the conditions insisted upon by me on behalf of the Government’ and that ‘The tribe that more particularly requires to be chastised is the Aitanga Mahaki residing at Waerengahika. This tribe has fostered and encouraged the Hauhau murderers from the first appearance of Kereopa & Patara at Tūranga immediately after Mr Volkner[‘s] murder up to the present time.’ On the morning of 17 November Fraser and his troops marched on Waerenga-ā-Hika. As they approached the former mission station, they fired unsuccessfully upon a group of Māori coming in their direction. This turned out to be Wi Haronga and his family, who had stayed on at Waerenga-ā-Hika to guard the mission property, departing only at the last moment while others were busy removing lead from the roof to use as ammunition against the arriving troops. Fraser and his forces claimed possession of the strategically-valuable Bishop’s house, from which they commenced firing into the pā. This exchange of sporadic firing continued for two days until, on the evening of 18 November, a party of Rongowhakaata and Te Whānau-a-Kai Pai Mārire – who had been watching the siege from Pukeamionga – cleverly managed to sneak in to Waerenga-ā-Hika by disguising themselves with the white calico arm badges of the government forces. The following day as many as 200 more reinforcements arrived to support their Te Aitanga-ā-Mahaki brethren, this time carrying with them the Pai Mārire fighting flag, Riki. These men were soon joined by warriors from inside the pā, and together these groups advanced on the British troops. Rather than wait to find out their intentions, Fraser ordered the advancing party to be fired on. Thirty-four Māori were killed in this exchange, compared with just one slight injury on the government side. On 20 November an hour’s truce was permitted for burial of the dead. Even so, this minor victory for the British had hardly altered matters. Fraser reported on 21 November that ‘the aspect of affairs remains unchanged, the Continued on page 17