NZ Wars: Stories of Tainui | Extended Interview - Rahui Papa | RNZ

let's just start right back at the beginning we'll turn to a bit of a timeline prior to mangatafari crossing there had been an exchange between keaney tafio and governor grey are you able to share that story with us yes so after taffy became the king governor gray made his way through to ngaruwahi and had a discussion with tafiyan and principally because of the relationship of tafiyao in his younger days and falling out with his father he was exiled to kabul island and to governor gray's house and so they had a wonderful relationship it wasn't until the establishment of really the kingitanga that the relationship between governor grey and the king turner absolutely went south and so they had that uh discussion there was the declaration in auckland and so taffy said to him look uh if you cross the magataphati then i'll have to be at war because that's what the strong shoulders all those those guru the council of advisers to tafiya was was saying to him and so he had to put a stake in the sand really although he wanted to do the passive resistance uh type situation so governor gray came down he came down to see prototype before his death and then he came down to see tafiyawa about putting the kingytanga down or putting the kingitanga aside because it was looked on as an uh a frontal attack really on the monarchy of england uh and as governor gray was the face of the monarchy of england uh you know those sorts of uh discussions ensued so the corridor was if you cost them but prior to that statement there had been an ultimatum really wasn't there about around the kingitanga about whether they seated this or our seeded sovereignty sovereignty to their queen very much say so our whanau and tamaki especially were there was a declaration that if they didn't agree to the mana of the queen then they had to move south of the mangata feeding and into the waikato and so some of them did so they were significant hapu and actually they were sort of hedging of bets so some people of the hapu came south and some people stayed to look after the land interests that declaration happened in 1863 all that while though they were creating the great south road to to move troops south because they that was it was sort of like a fainter complete that they were going to attack the waikato a number of people from tamaki camp south a number of people stayed to like hedging their bets and then really war broke out and so the ones in tamaki actually stayed there to look after the fedora and that was really a a strategy on behalf of those hapu and on behalf of the kington if we just jump back a little bit i think one of the interesting things in researching this story and listening to some of the kai korea is this relationship that uh governor gray had with porta tote can you elaborate a little bit more on that because he even gave his son to governor a greater look after on his first tour of duty said governor grace here two terms as governor on his first tour of duty the the it wasn't about uh creating the battles and things like that so uh governor grey came he actually learned to speak maori he got on with a number of from the north from all around really and he knew how to create those relationships and one of the strongest relationships really was with potato te pero fero so in the 1840s 1844 portato and alfano and tamaki staged the big porphyry for governor fitzway in dimura it was a huge affair later on when governor grey came they had an awesome relationship and actually governor gray was a prolific writer so there was a wasn't a number of writers at that time and so governor gray actually recorded a lot of the more there because stephenville was a more daretime man and instead of giving you a yes or no answer he would use a more tattie and you would have to think about what he was meaning in those sorts of way and so they had a wonderful relationship actually so much so that governor gray asked the federal fellow to become the protectorate of auckland and so tefero ferro lived at the domain at pukekawa in pukekarwa there at the domain he lived at mangere and bought a number of ngati mahuta people to be trained by the militia of the time as a protectorate of auckland there had been uh sort of notions of people from the north the south and the in the east uh that were wanting to attack auckland um the the trade routes were were some of the strongest from uh the interior of the waikato up the waikato river across to the manukau harbour and then right into auckland and market road in in selling their we as their schooners would stay there and that was all because of the relationship really between those rangatira and governor grey so they had such a such a relationship that when young matutada fell out with his father he was shipped off to kabul island to learn some diplomacy or things like that and he stayed there with tarou barahara's daughter and so you know there's just those relationships later on when taro braha was in prison he was imprisoned on a boat in auckland and te firafiro asked particularly petitioned governor grey to release him to his cottage at pukekawa and so te rauparaha became under house arrest in deferral because of that relationship with governor greene therefore that discussion between tafial and governor gray over standing down that must have been with what we now know about the relationship the kind of inter-general relationship they had in their whanau um in both families it must have been a pretty intense conversation can you share what what was said we really went sour was in the discussions between governor grey and to fiddlefield when governor gray come down and he said well i can't because it was actually put up by all the chiefs of the motsu and i don't even i don't have the money to uh to do that and then governor grace says i'm going to eat i'm going to drink all of your water i've got a cow that's going to drink all of your water and eat all of your foods and then what would you eat and to feed a food or ultimately said i will eat you okay and so from then on there was no more discussions between grey and to federal federal but grey knew that he couldn't attack to fiddlefield because the the word of the motsu was their bond and so those ones that had supported the federal federal to become the king they would be honor bound to come and support and gray really couldn't take on the collective maori of that time and so it wasn't until after 1860 that governor gray started to devise the plans of invading the waikato because that ultimately saw the death of te ferufirum and then when davio became the king some of those honor bound relationships weren't there anymore you know they had passed away with the federal federal they had they said that they were only trying to consolidate maoridom for time but there were a number of uh tribes that were still uh in support so tafyao well matutaira at the time uh became the king and then governor gray come down and he said the same thing to him but matu taida had a council of people that were there you know some of them were born before before the 1800s you know they were they were born in the old ways and they and they were really um uh tried to repulse the uh influence of governor gray over tafio and over the people that was the definitive modern yeah and that's when the corner came about that actually you have to pledge allegiance to queen victoria so this was the second tour of duty of governor grey and he said you have to pledge allegiance to queen victoria and they said and so that became the point in time where the declaration for the people around tarmac or the whole of that of the area of tamaki if you don't pledge your allegiance then bugger off into the waikato bhagavata south of the magata really added to the waikato and that challenge you know if you cross the mangatafari then you you know we'll take it that you're at war with the wake up or was there any warning or lead up to to that crossing oh definitely so the construction of the great south road was one of the biggest warnings and actually there were people that were still moving uh in and out of tamaki and in and out of the waikato selling their goods their flax their wheat their hara and so they were bringing information back and informa you know so there was information on both sides as well there's an idea that there was a proclamation that was sent but may not have been received as far as we knew there was there wasn't an official proclamation of a declaration of war uh it was simply that um you know if you crossed the mangata ferry we will be at war and then the troops showed up on the northern side of the en costa magnatafidi it wasn't so much of a proclamation but viewed by the actions of the of general cameron and his troops and what did it look like how many men were there to people perish not really so they were you know the kohe kohi ridges is up the top there and they were just watching and waiting as soon as they crossed that's when the preparations became at places like rangidiri there there was those places at mercer so they started preparing maori i'm talking about and started preparing for defensives and their strategy was it wasn't supposed to be the big battle at those places it was supposed to be in a bottleneck sort of strategy because it was easier for them to draw them in and then attack them from all sides well raggedy was too open and what they hadn't encountered was the gumboats on the river before i mean they had done that at te kapamwana at miranda and so some of those of our ngati powwa uh relations came west to support but then they actually so they tried to foul trees in the in the river to try and stop it but it was too little and not enough to be able to stop the boats and then the cannons firing from the river as well as the troops coming on the land had never been encountered in the waikato before do you have an idea of what the um if there was the numbers on each side so like i was saying were there wasn't supposed to be the definitive battle there and so it was only uh very small and a lot of them were old a lot of women and children were also there are trying to create the defenses uh and aspects them and so that caused matata within tamihana and they were maniapoto to leave the park actually and go and get reinforcements and so there was another 500 odd of ngati hawa that were making their way through to dangiti but the battle was already you know entrained and so there were far more pakeha militia and when i say pakeha militia i'm talking about others as well like kukutai and tefeoro i had brought their people to fight alongside the pakaha and then the king tungawaris were very few and far between but but the trenches were so and they were so high uh that it was quite difficult for a lot of troops to get up them at the same time so there were mitigating factors on each side before we go to rangity i just wanted to i don't want to wash over the naming of porky nor and i wondered if you might be able to to talk to us about the oral history and the reasons why places had been named you know but what is the what is the meaning of poor keno so actually the attack on waikato started at the east church and they said there was a little skirmish there i think there was a couple of maori that died in one of the pakeha that died at the east church and then they were making their way down because of those matins they called that place but then when they wrote an e they wrote it as an e so now in today's orthographics i suppose it's called poor kennel but but that's because the e was the e maori and the e pakeha had the same uh sort of uh twang and so uh that came about because of that there were there were a number of very very small skirmishes like i like felling the felling the trees into the river and then you know shots were fired and someone would be uh hurt and things like that well that was encompassed in that name and poking in so maori um would have been getting ready because rangidi appears like it would have taken some time to prepare that past site um it's said to be the shape of a tuna can you talk us through that yeah so the the so the power was actually designed uh it was way wider than uh what we see uh today but the power was designed by tifarepu who had been part of parcel in our courthouse up in the north and he saw the the cannons of the pakeha and so created the trenches to be able to uh to absorb i suppose the impact of the cannons but actually so it started from um you know the waikato and then it went all the way into kopuera and then into lake waikari it encompassed almost the whole of the township of where his stance now all on the crest of the hill anyway and so that was it there was they were quite wide and and they did it so that they could move easily around so there wasn't just one sort of snake-like trench they were a number okay and that's how they viewed te hari at the tuna especially the tuna in the river they just don't follow one little current they would go into that hole or there and then the woman and children will be in in parts of it more lower down whereas the men would be up higher and the woman and children's job was to put the powder in the shot into the musket pass it up shoot throw it down again so so it was a continuous cycle yeah there's recollections and letters and recordings about having to bring in these really high ladders can you describe and explain that yeah so the especially the fronts of the two of the trenches so that you had the river uh sort of on the what's that the western sort of side of the rangini trenches and then you had the northern area um and that's where the ground troops came and so on those particular sites there was a sloping hill and so that's how they created their defenses and so when they got there they had to bring they bought their letters but they found that their letters only come up to like three quarters of the way up the up the trench and well that's not good any so you know you get there you get stabbed with the bayonet bayonetted or shot with a musket uh things like that there were also those little gun holes in the uh in the hills so they were halfway up the boom and so they had to they had to go back and they had to make extensions to their letters so that they could get all the way up to the top of the parapet but from our sort of history no one actually got right up the ladder and over into the trenches from the militia it wasn't until um uh you know the battle sort of uh sort of stopped and the white flag went up uh that they just come flooding into the malay into the past site but no one in the battle no one actually made it to the top of the letters and over the parapets tell us about the white flag um and the red flag that's contestable that yeah so there was a bit of confusion hey so on the gun boats there was the the red flag and so the red flag meant uh to the maori oh because it was resoundingly noisy and well especially with the cannons off the gun boats and things like that and so they felt that the red flag meant more and that the white flag actually meant uh peace or well there was a bit of confusion the night before the end of the battle there was a big downpour and the gunpowder got wet and so uh my tupunati oriori and all of them decided uh actually what are they going to do because their gunpowder was wet so they decided they wanted to put up the white flag have a bit as a way of having a bit of according or parley with the with the colonial troops and the idea was to put up the flag and then when the when the uh colonial troops come flooding into the power they would say homai to border homes they wanted them to give them powder so that they could continue to fight right and so that was sort of like the uh the psyche of our tupuna at that time oh no no we're just experiencing a little little bit of a problem but once we get over that we can get back to fighting so it wasn't as if it was a surrender it was the white flag in particular was supposed to be a pause so they would bring down the red flag to say uh you know when the red flag was up it was about uh having a big old fight when the white flag went up when it was about our hang on let's have a pause let's have a corner you give us some powder and then we can continue to fight well the the colonials didn't see it that way they saw the white flag and they thought oh these guys have surrendered hey awesome awesome awesome which must have been a bit of a surprise to them because they had um some real problems with their regiments and getting into the past site do you think they took that opportunity oh very much so oh very much so if someone if someone even gave a hint of them surrendering they're going to flood and and then they're going to you know and you know they they took the opportunity with both hands i think because they knew it was very difficult for them to infiltrate the part in a full frontal attack so yeah i think they took the opportunity with both hands what was the consequences of that failed surrender if you like all that you know of the white flag going up well in the in the pakis view it was that longing had fallen okay and so but actually there were a number of men that just left there were a number that were incarcerated as well right especially those that had been infirmed or shot or my went out and actually pulled the pakeha into a hollow so that he wouldn't get shot by friendly fire or by and he got shot in the ankle and so uh he actually had to stay like he couldn't escape one of the consequences was the woman and the children were ordered to leave and they were ordered to lead through the trenches and into lake and across and escape around and back into the waikato but the colonial troops at that time had reached the crest of the hill overlooking the lake and started shooting them in the water and so it was a very very traumatic and trying time they didn't surrender but you know the colonial soldiers took it as it was a surrender and they had won and had you heard have we heard about this before um i mean because there are some rules in war but in terms of killing of women and children is that something that had been happening in the wars very much so so really in the pakeha way of doing it there were no women and children in their camp they were but for maori it was the uh protection of their domains and and that's not just a male thing that's a female thing that's a tamariki thing that's a komata thing it's all parts of the community that look after the domain of the community and i think that was one of the uh first most tragic times that that that had happened especially the uh so they would they would had children on their backs and some of our some of the young mothers uh in trying to escape across the lake uh and into waikati and were being shot in the water and so and so you know there's been a number of occasions throughout the generations where people have gone down there and the bones of small children were still prolific so we have this situation where you know you've got pakia troops who have no families with them they're just mostly fighting men and then you've they're coming into contact with whole whanau that are fighting and defending their parasites and things like that and that probably is a theme that comes out later on down at rangio fair and places like that where um would it have been a surprise to them that there were so many women and children amongst the i'm not sure because there was intelligence coming in and out of their path and so one of the things was an enemy is an enemy as an enemy and you know even a young child or a female holding a gun is still a big threat the other thing about the fall of rangiti was when the gunpowder got wet and the ammunition of the of the power had been compromised by the time they they got in they were the only ones with guns hey and so it wasn't as if they could sort of do a resurgence with the patu versus the musket or something like that it was about um you know these tamariki these wahine these men these kaumatua all trying to navigate a pause so that they could possibly dry out their gunpowder or get some more to continue to fight some hapu left you know as you said women and children were killed and other people tell us about those who were um incarcerated there were a number of that were incarcerated they were they were taken through to auckland and i'm talking men woman and children that were taken through to auckland they were initially incarcerated on a boat in the auckland harbour the marine but then there was a lot of sickness there so they had to do something one of the one of the things that we uh know is that there was a woman on that was incarcerated from jagiri called hariata and she gave a lot of the wayatas to the people that could write at the time and so there was a lot of reference about those mata that's how we know that there were women and uh and men that were incarcerated uh on the boat uh in tarmacking they decided that they were they weren't going to have a bar with it so the sickness was becoming rife they needed to get off and so they got off and they escaped to kabul island and they escaped to kobo island and there were a number of maori that were commissioned to go and ask them to return and from there they made it to the homeland made it to the big island you know with ngati manuhiri and ngati tikawara maki and that's reflected in a hundred acres was given because of those two that were there and then they made their way home down the western western coast crossing the monaco uh and then back into the waikato was it years later or months or do you know how long it was did they ever come back to to the to the fight or was it way past them some of them did but it was it really took them a number of years so 1863 uh was rangidi in november and then by the time te oriori and them got back it wasn't until the end of 65 and then a lot of them because of those sicknesses there passed away within timmy hannah antion in 66. tell us about he seems to be just woven through all the stories he was a very high profile character i suppose before and during the establishment of the king italian so when mata te fifi and ko were coming up for multaki and interviewing various ones they got to a point back in two foreign tour when they asked to have her for a second time and got a decline that's where they gave up but we removed tamihana could see the the vision of nationhood i suppose that was coming up and around that time too william mutamihana had gone to auckland to seek an interview with the governor of the time and he was left in the waiting room for uh more than a day and then by the time he kept asking to see the governor because they had a sort of gentleman's arrangement that they would be able to uh have access to the of the park and when when the one of the clerks said oh you have to call through my legs that was when he knew you know the writings on the wall you know these guys uh they don't even want a relationship anymore and so he left and discussed uh and sort of uh turned his mind to the establishment of the king internet as a form of nationhood for maori and so he took up the challenge from the iran principally uh supporting the federal federal as the king prior to all of that happening within tamihana and his people had killed the grandaunt of the federal federal and he knew that to finish if he was but to become the king he wouldn't be able to extract revenge because he would have to put all of those things down and so um um nominated again and when te philofero said uh they talked about the sun rising again in the morning okay and so he said oh no i've got to come back to my whanau especially maniapoto to ask for support he went to tiffinoff went to tiako to his uncles there he came to ngati apakura naruto [Music] so this granada's unavenged death they were encouraging to leave it aside and to accept the king and tenure the support of ngati maniapoto was ultra important to to fiddle fiddle because the whole area from the waikato and its rivers and mountains and then the food basket of ngati maniapoto meant that he would be if he was to do it then he would he would require the support of all of these people actually was still a bit uh uneasy about accepting it and so they called the huiya rangi alfie and prior to ferophilo because that was really uh a fedora homako was like fertile for growing a whole lot of things prior to feral fedora coming when tamihana brought his daughter to be married to a man from ngati apakura and because davidoviro's grand aunt was closely aligned in atiyabukura that was looked on as clearing that when by the time tiffitofer will come and titapihana the old tonga told the filofero about what had happened he threw his head on the ground and he and he sort of agreed that he would be that he would accept the kingship because the debt had been paid and and that would have weighed on his mind all the time and so that was one of the first indications of the federal federal agreement to be the king and then moving back there was a number of different ceremonies and different pieces of cordille all the while at pai thai just outside of there was a whole big corner with kukutei saying we don't think that you should accept the kingship then you had to have some being a bit more forceable and then you had willie but quoting scripture like deuteronomy and you should establish a king that's one of your brethren that's one of your whanau you know you shouldn't set a king from uh anywhere else in the world they should be homegrown in your land you know that's me paraphrasing the bible by the way and so yeah he could see things before they happen he could see that the the relationship was changing changing so much that actually the maori chieftains were being degraded in their time he could see that the winds of war were coming but it wasn't until ranging out here or the battle at hydini that he said actually i now know what this word i now know this is a battle for the whole of new zealand he thought they were just coming to attack the kilitana when he saw what they did at randy alfie he knew actually these guys aren't going to stop and so carrying on and so from then on he became sort of more peaceful like and adopted the bible and established places like pedia uh with its own courthouse with its own school house with its own uh wheat uh mill with its own you know industry for the people and so that's where he turned his attention to a more whanau order type situation for the people at the time i was going to ask you actually as was he a fighter had he been part of you know the battles prior to alfie he was born into fighting so he was the son of the great tewahara intimaharoa was a strategist warmonger in his own time and so in his early days he was named tara pipipi and as tara pp he took fight in the into maori battles at makitsu in rotorua in all of those places and he actually became a bit renowned for them and and he himself said he was a kaitangata a person that had eaten the flesh of man but later on through influences he became a very devout christian and he was one of the first ones to put his patu on the ground at tamahiri to concede i suppose he wasn't a he wasn't an overly tall man he had at least two or three wives um you know in a number of uh children um yeah and but his sense of vision was was just bloody awesome and and then later on in the taranaki conflicts he went down there with teodiori and hotene and others to try and settle things down because his eldest son had led some of ngati hawa to fight in taranaki and he went down to try and create i suppose a negotiated peace between the governor gaul brown and at that time so he was a sort of a mediator he was he mediated some of the peace on the climax between the the colonials in toronto moana there were a number of things he was a uh as a christian he knew how to read and write and so he wrote copious amounts of letters he was a family man too a pedia was a lot of his whanau and you know gainfully employed in doing stuff but but a very communist man as well so it wasn't about your pay is the money for you it was about uh kai for the people and so he was all about building i suppose the nationhood within ngati hawa let alone the king in general so he would have had a great sense of what rangi alfie the food bowl of the waikato was was all about before it was invaded and i've read some of his letters which have been shared in those books um it seems to be that he was always one step ahead of of um the war um would that be right like and then he's really he he gets well upsets like an understatement but um when rangi alfier happens he writes some letters to the crown like you know we had an agreement can you share some of the that preamble to um waiari haideni his communication with the crowd yeah very much so so it actually started pre uh board you know just after the kicking dinner he would write letters and try to send letters even to england uh to say to them look we're not we're not establishing this as a threat to you guys hey we we think that the the maori king is one side of the house and the pakis queen is one the other side of the house and the tahu who is god almighty and we all shelter under the you know uh so he was a he was a sort of a passive guy he didn't want the war he didn't want the war in the waikato but after his experience with the governor and then uh the crossing of the mangata philly so he was one of those ones that were advocating for a peaceful negotiated outcome but then you had some of the hotter heads within uh the king yitanga they were saying now let's just bowl them over and once we win we're going to go and sack auckland and all of those sorts of things well within tamihana when they were when he was taking his people there was a there was a case where uh ngati hawa were accused of reigning some of the pakeha farm houses and killing cattle and things like that went and he admonished his own people for for doing things that were un-gentlemanly like even in the face of war and so the letters started really before the wars he after rangidi they got together on a particular island in the middle of the waikato with other leaders including tafio and started sending letters and so those letters were talking about hey how's about we sit down and we start talking about but the agenda of the militia and the colonial agenda at that time had it been fulfilled they wanted to get to dungeon because that was the bread basket that was providing kai for uh trade uh into uh australia uh into the americas and as far afield as london and so keep coming a little bit as they keep coming along and after all of those letters were flying out you know flying out after though uh raghiafi and hydini tamihana came back to krapiro and because he thought that they might come down the river one of the snags though was that the collapsible waterfall was too high and they couldn't like pick up their bloody gumboots and bring it up to the top to carry on and that's why the last dam on the waikato river is that right and so it was uh a blockage really for for that so what he did is on the hill above krabilo he created another power he thought that they were going to be attacked but by the time uh two had come across and kahuna had come across and thereby manipur had established oracle that was where the flow of the militia was traveling and and after oracle there were no other uh sort of big battles and so his readout became a readout for the pakeha and then he crossed the river over to pedia and sort of sought to live in a bit more peaceful like nation what happened um before rangi alfie how did we get to rangio from langhiri they came up to ngarua wahia but ngaruwa had been abandoned by that time because they had seen the impacts of the gunboats and it was going to be they didn't have really enough time to be able to do that so they so they moved more into the interior as they come up and then they come up the waipa and then they uh came over to wayari which was really just a small sort of settlement with a bit of a lake uh and so they were they were having a bit of a coco there and got shot by some of them you know there was a couple of uh deaths there but all of the militia were making their way through to the patarangi line because that was the big part that was the big part it was pretty uh you know sound and impregnable and it was far enough away from the river so that the gum boats didn't have an impact as soon as cameron got there and he saw the structures again high trenches and parapets and things like that and they would have to do so much more money to be able to do this even general cameron said we're not even going to try to do this right and that's where the mama do dixon and all of those took the guerrilla warfare away from there because they had heard about the sanctuary in union and and others of the time had tried to negotiate that while we're fighting over here you leave our people alone over here but the consequences came uh that they took the guerrilla warfare around and into dangerous to entice the people from patarangi to come out and it succeeded so when they come out and they got to the heidi rise that's was when gunshots were really fired randy alfie was an invasion now it was a it was a devastation really of old people of females of tamariki that were in scots there and they thought that they had the protection of the churches there but it was you know in the final analysis it was actually some of the ministry that was giving like wagner and giving those sorts of cool one of those people that came over from ngati mubahi was kireo petro and he was involved in paterangi and his family were living in so he followed wagner you know here because the woods the seeds of those walls over there a lot of them were actually bought from here had was rangi alfie something completely different to what we'd seen prior to you know to what happened there did it even were even the colonial soldiers shocked by what had happened there very much so some of them even deserted and were caught muscled or i think that's the tip caught muscled or put before a judge some of them were actually deported back to south africa uh and to england because they didn't agree uh with what had happened firstly at corporate uh and then maori knew they would go to the eighth degree and then with the burning of the church there looking out over you that was they had struck up wonderful relationships with religions at the time they found there is nothing these guys you know there is no end that these guys won't go to for their purpose and so it became a real point in time that changed the mind shift of maori that was when mistrust with the religions come not notwithstanding the fact that the missionaries hadn't been all uh nicely nicey and hunky-dory and all of those uh sorts of things but that was a there was a real point in time where a lot of the religions uh maori or especially uh in taiwan came away from them was did we after that start to see maori very much so and okay so prior to uh that everyone had their own sort of atua you know [Music] all of those uh aspects uh but then when the with the coming of the of religion uh to aotearoa and especially to embracing religion when he said um that sort of told the people at that time and especially with the king tango being raised up with the bible you know not not a crown or or things like that it was actually the bible and being ordained with oil was hugely uh christian influences uh in the uh processes and procedures of the king and so yeah we we saw various um we saw although those were already there but we saw a resurgence of people coming away from christianity and embracing those a bit more and then ultimately in the adoption of the pai mari and the tariyah did what happened alfie said a really real example for oracle was one of those stop-gap past sites like like mercer it wasn't they were they weren't ever supposed to have their big fight there hey because it was swampy it was too open it was unfinished but went too high come and they said we didn't carry our guns all this way you know to just sit here and have a corner they wanted to fight and rewi had to honour them because here they had put out the karanga to come and support and so they fought in an unfinished power they fought a bit away from water they fought with uh minimal ammunition you know all of those all of those things had a big waiting and then with the swamps around you know all the so the colonial troops they just had to sit on the drier drier ground because it was so bloody hard to get through the swamps and so yeah so oracle was starkly different it was starkly different it was supposed to be one of those stop-gap ones and then they move back closer to autorohanga whether where the hills come into an arrow type thing so that they would camp on the top have things in the in the middle draw the militia in and then be able to but it didn't eventuate that way they had got what they wanted rangi alfie was definitive because that was the that was the food bowl that was providing uh not only the king kingitanga troops but actually all of the people it was so they would bring kai from kaffir they would bring kai from the river and they would amalgamate around rangi alfie to do the more inland things like the taro and the uh and then the wheat and then the you know all those um market garden uh type things this was well before pukekohe had taken off as a market garden sort of center within tony can you kind of tell us what happened at oracle i mean there's been movies made about it pakia remember it quite romantically and the rest of it but what is the version there's a whole number of different versions and every family has their own ones really but the militia came they and then two had come over in kahumunu there were a number of the tairafiti expedition actually were making their way over to support as well but with the imaginations of the pikia blockade a lot of that didn't come to fruition so by the time those other eb had come they were tired and they were weary ngati ngati manawa had all like hinged their bits some come some stayed um a whole number of two foreign had come up to support at oracle but yeah so the version is is that they came there and they were still digging their trenches by the time the militia came and then they uh they decided that they were going to fight at the end of may and the beginning of april and so really it was a it wasn't really a battle it was sort of like a siege he said the militia just stayed on the the drier pieces of ground because it was very very swampy all around the park and then cut off their access to the river so that cut off access to water and so there were a woman and children uh in the past i mean one of our crawler remembers his grandmother was one of the ones running running through the trenches filling up the powder in the shop there as well and then really uh they they were starting to run out of ammunition and it was sort of noticeable and so the the parque noticed that that was happening and so they said to them what well send out your woman and your children right send them out and we won't harm or molest them but the influences that had happened at copuera and angie alfie meant that they didn't trust the word of the of the enemy and so they refused and actually it was a woman who was a humay to pirata that stood up heated his daughter from ngati te kohirai in tufaretua that stood up and said no if our minute to die then we will die also and then there's a bit of a debate about who said it but it was either or evie that said and we will fight off forever and ever they started because the munitions had gone right down they started using peach pips as their you know in their muskets they're very engineering in my view but they knew they couldn't last much longer and so they had to make a break for it and they had to make a break towards the river so they led levy and then lead the vanguard of the people to get to the river and all the while so they they must have taken the pakeha by they must have got a shock or a surprise because they were quite close to the river before actually the the the pacquiao came out oh check these waters they're escaping it started shooting them from behind but a lot of them got over over the pudunu river and it was there really well sorry it was sort of almost immediately after that that taffy owl came to some peaceful discussions with um cameron uh enco and put his hat on the map well when he put his head on the map the brim of the hat was around the purnu river and so they were um they were sort of saved within within the king country and what was the fate for the rest death a lot of them died very very few of the two high contingent went home maybe a couple of others and there's a there's a gedi uh that the one that the woman of two white performed to tiffany why did you come home why didn't you die with the rest of our husbands all those uh sorts of really really sad occasions that yeah so there was a number of uh dead uh in all raka we i uh particularly think that that was one of the the most casualties that had fallen in the in the wars between ibi and the crown of the time was and so that's why it was a big thing the other thing too was that there was no defeat because of the escape and so that's where the glamour of ray's last stand and things come and and actually the influence of that that was far and wide so in the south was a pacquiao woman who was watching or you know who had grown up with the stories about the the gallantry the you know the virality the strength the things of really mania put on so she named her nephew really later on he became riwi allen who took part in the chinese revolt and he became someone of of note his house is still a historical significant site in beijing you know so the effects of the or the the the ripple effects of uh oracle have been felt across the world you mentioned there the um the neri that the tuhoe women sing and there's yeah how does wakato tainui remember those how those how those um uh battles those um deaths being recorded in oral history yeah so the uh there we commemorative park um there are people and a number of those people were named after the touhou contingent it has also been a point of fallout between uh particularly between daenery and to right from those times and we have never ever forgotten the sacrifice of those awesome people and actually we think that it wasn't hakai needing the hakka to do the invitation by piripita him to the whanau and ratana [Music] was it strikes a sense of comradeship and in those histories between tanmi and and we remember them by um by talking about them all the time we have uh we te puer and particularly in the times of te puer uh tried to repay with some of the settlement monies of the 1946 settlement that weren't accepted by the whanau too it wasn't about but then those those relationships are such that they have been fostered in right through to the current decade and through the names so many people in waikato and in the king country are called mama or mamma um they're a significant name not mine right throughout the battles actually so the naming of the children is but you you hear it especially at rangiolfia because you know they they tried to kick the hole in the wall but by the time the the flames were engulfing the church they could only create a small hole so generally only children could get out and hide in the swamp and then those ones turned around and looked back we had deke which is the trigger the pain the invasion or you know the ah there are heaps and heaps of names heaps and heaps of names there um but right from rangidi right through they would name particular children about after particular events that happened the land confiscations of waikato you know 1.3 million acres hectares i guess because how you know following um oracle you know what happened in the next year and the next decades what would life have been like for waikato and people from te rohiborte really was exile so there were a number of that had stayed on their lands but but those who were particularly the ones that had either um not uh sorry either fought with the pakeha or not opposed the pakiha and so there were a number that stayed but the vast majority of the kingington support had to get out and they had to move into the hender henry and it became a safe safe haven or sanctuary for anyone decorate came there were a number of uh different ones that came to te neheme henry that had uh prices on the head that came to the king country because it was a safe haven it was like a sovereign nation actually within new zealand because it was the mana not only of the king but of the rangatira of that time and that extended out to kaffir right down to tambaaranui and tiffany and you know parts of two foreign it was quite a vast uh uh sort of area so it was exile really and pakeha tried to come and um especially donald mclean and others of the minister um you know they were ministers within the parliament they had tried to come to make deals you know things like that but the vast majority of those weren't uh accepted and it really and so tafiyang had a bit of a trek around taranaki and that really that had a that had a defining sort of influence on on him because of tiffity and tahu because of they were home and the paimanider because of tito and the strength and so they decided that they would follow a path of rejuvenation of mana motuhake uh whether it be in communications whether it be in finance whether it be in land so they set up a land league they set up their own uh sort of spiritual um uh what's called like spiritual organization it wasn't so much of a haki uh but more of a problem you know to play mighty in its uh beginning and then they come back and that's what tafiyal tried to set up within the hanehanui it took him 20 years really to move around his supporters and to really think about it because the the confiscation of 1.2 million acres of land in the waikato was devastating yes hey because the land was where your home was where your urupa was where your tupuna lie where you get your clay all of those things but actually it was the psychological damage that tarapatu had him had inflicted on the king italian and its people and it took davey a while to get the sort of mind shift out of the doldrums of the of the mind and into a place where they could actually discuss where are we trekking to from here so the raipatu became the single most devastating impact on the king but it also became the single most rallying point for the psyche and the people of the kingdom going forward so the search for redress happened coming back after 1881 tafiao laid his weapons down at pirongia in front of gilbert mir the then magistrate at the time really bringing the waikato chapter of the of the wars to an end it took until 1881 to to be able to do that and then he came back into the waikato after after 84 when he went to england 85 he come back and started just to establish mana matsuhaki pathways including the pokai including a banquet including his own communications through te hokiyo including his own parliament you know all of those things were coming about because of the pathway was there a price to be paid for creating tenehenui the king country very much so the price was into tribal squabbles right and so you had a different rangatira who had mana over there particular domains they were they were supportive of the king don't get me wrong but they felt that they had the mana over there their river there kaina there you know those those things and so they became it became a little bit bitter uh between the kingitanga and the local mana if you like it also came about that the government were trying to divide and rule okay so tafiao had said before he went to england he said no to the railway and he made it clear of his intentions as soon as he was away some of the ngati manipuris agreed to the railway but they had their own reasons for doing those things as well so they were they were doing what they felt was important to look after the mana of their localities and parihaka had just happened i guess in 1881 so yeah so the railways were so so the decision i guess would have been with with knowing what was happening down the road well it's the same protagonists hey so bryce was down there bryce came to kaffir and started to threaten uh the king turner and then gilbert mayor as the as the magistrate came over and he said to uh said to tafio we're going to we're just going to wipe you guys out taffy i'll say tim well if your wave if if you're so strong then you're the wave of your sea will be able to get to the top of piranha if it doesn't we'll call you a monaco like like useless voila and so the same protagonists that were in taranaki in the waikato i don't know why but there was all those connections between waikato and taranaki and our key way of te kete that were that we fought together we sat together you know we were in our history we weren't always the best of friends we used to have intertribal wars with each other but actually in the coming of the pakiha that cemented a huge phenomena down the west coast following oraco and waikato you know heading into the king country for protection what happened to the land in waikato it was confiscated so a number of the pockets of land were given to the militia because what the the colonial government at the time didn't have any money and so the idea was to get troops from south africa and out of india in england and other places you know other colonized places bring them here they didn't have any money but it was the promise of land so the higher your rick the more land you got and then you got so if you were i think it was a captain and above you got an acre in town if you were lower than a captain then you got a a half acre and that's how they established townships so almost uh almost the whole of hamilton east was militia people and people that were given those half of sections some of them were given quite vast stations you know they um all around you know right right from within the uh and that's why you know they were broken in by those people but they couldn't pay them with money so they paid them with land and so that's where uh those come there were a number that you know the crowd uh kept control of and they were petitioned to give them back to maori and so what they did was they gave them to the friendly hapu right their mind who was the rightful they gave them they gave some of those pieces of an anti-friendly what transpired though later on is that because of the phenomena those hapu actually invited some of the original inhabitants of those areas to come back and stay with them what is the consequence or the legacy of the war on the waikato do you think the legacy of the war in the waikato is about establishing and entrenching a pathway of mana motuhake it was devastating yep but it means to the people there is nothing we can't overcome with the lessons of our tupuna that fought in those battles their strategies their visions their creations their you know when they when they establish banks and uh mills and industry and churches and all of those sorts of things there's nothing we can't overcome in this generation we might find it hard done by because the government doesn't honor the treaty of waitangi or bloody bloody blood these guys actually had 1.2 million acres confiscated of the freedom and they set a pathway for their tamariki to be able to overcome not only the workings of the time but the psychological damage of the time of course a lot of those things have lingered through the generations i think i think that the state of our nation as far as it relates to incarcerations derives from those times and derives from the impacts following those times i mean it's not just one but it has been a gradual thing the illiteracy the mental health issues i think that those are historical issues that haven't been addressed so although in 1995 we settled the ropato for the land what we didn't do was settle those historical issues for especially those historical social issues and so we're setting our mind to doing that coming up it's an ironic when you look at those blocks of land where rangi alfia and oraco are that in those same in that same rohi is now a prison you know that houses so many of waikato maori and tukanui used to be there which used to also be a place that lots of maori was sent when they didn't know what to do with them is do you see a connection there very much so i think that that was actually a strategic thing so the other strategic thing was is that every part within especially in waikato every power that stood up to the colonial forces had a road put right through it and it was supposed to break the back of the power and devastate the psyche of the people from that power right from oracle you can almost see waikiri and it's going to be you know that's just got an influx creating a bigger it's actually a bigger industry than any other social enterprise in the area then the hospital you know just on that side of the purnu just to stamp that mark on that side of the punyo absolutely absolutely i think that they were strategically placed i think that there was more more of an emotional uh placement than there was of a practical because they put them there and then they had to make the infrastructure right and they're still doing it so they've they've put like area it took a new year into place and then they had to build a road to it right and then they had to set up a community to service those uh sorts of things with their own infrastructure but all of those came after the establishment of those places so when the crown put roads through your past sites and your urupa and those what have you been able to do as an area since then to rectify those situations in particular and our workings with nzta and they wanted to move the main road closer to the river where it is now where the bypass and the double laning sort of roads are now one of our kombatu especially one of the kahuyariki tu mati mahuta had a vision about filling in the old state highway one to bringing back the modi of the park so we put that to nzta and that was one of the mitigation factors that happened to uh to do that like the area has been karakian for africa really right throughout the generations because there were bones there were tongue all coming up but the bloody main road was sitting there right through now that's been filled in that particular site has been filled in and it's the first time in my memory anyway that you were actually able to get a shovel and fill in part of state highway 1. and it may be symbolic or emotional but it has gone a long way to be able to say ah what they hadn't encountered was the gumboats on the river before they actually said they tried to foul trees in the in the river to try and stop it but it was too little uh and not enough to be able to stop the boats and then the cannons firing from the river as well as the troops coming on the land had never been encountered in the waikato before

Channel: RNZ

Views: 14,280

Rating: 4.8596492 out of 5

Keywords: RNZ, Radio NZ, NZ On Air, Great Southern Television, Aotearoa Media Collective, NZ Wars, Tainui, Aotearoa, New Zealand

Id: OPtrAr6pi2M

Length: 73min 19sec (4399 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 11 2021