A posse of British settlers sent to…

June 1843 CE

A posse of British settlers sent to arrest Māori chief Te Rauparaha clash with members of his Ngāti Toa tribe on June 17, 1843, resulting in twenty-six deaths.

Wairau is near Nelson and Blenheim, at the top of the South Island.

The New Zealand Company had built a settlement around Nelson in the north of the South Island in 1840.

It had planned to occupy two hundred thousand acres (eight hundred and ten square kilometers), but by the end of the year, even as allotments were being sold in England, the company's agents in New Zealand were having difficulty in identifying available land, let alone buying it from local Māori, to form the settlement.

The settlers had begun to purchase large areas of land directly from Māori, without consulting the newly established colonial government and often without establishing vendors' rights to sell the land.

The situation has led to tension and caused disputes between the two parties.

In January 1843 Captain Arthur Wakefield had been dispatched by the New Zealand Company to lead the first group of settlers to Nelson.

He is the younger brother of Colonel Edward Gibbon Wakefield, one of the principal officers of the company, and William Wakefield.

Arthur had written to Edward that he had located the required amount of land at Wairau, a distance of about twenty-five kilometers (sixteen miles) from Nelson.

He said he held a deed to the land, having bought it in 1839 from the widow of a whaling Captain John Blenkinsopp, who had bought it from Te Rauparaha of the Ngāti Toa iwi at Tuamarina.

Wakefield had written to the company in March 1843: "I rather anticipate some difficulty with the natives."

The source of the likely difficulty is simple: the chiefs Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata, along with their kinsmen of Ngāti Toa, own the land and have not been paid for it, but similar disputes had been previously settled through negotiation, and Te Rauparaha is willing to negotiate on the Wairau land.

In January 1843 Nohorua, the older brother of Te Rauparaha, had led a delegation of chiefs to Nelson to protest about British activity in the Wairau Plains.

Two months later Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata had arrived in Nelson, urging that the issue of the land ownership be left to Land Commissioner William Spain.

Based in Wellington, he had begun investigating all the claimed purchases of the New Zealand Company.

Spain will later write write that during that visit, Arthur Wakefield "wished to make them a payment for the Wairau, but they positively refused to sell it, and told him they would never consent to part from it."

Arthur Wakefield had rejected the request to wait for Spain's inquiry, informing Te Rauparaha that if local Māori interfere with company surveyors on the land, he will lead three hundred constables to arrest him.

Wakefield duly dispatches three parties of surveyors to the land.

They are promptly warned off by local Māori, who damage the surveyors' tools but leave the men unharmed.

Te Rauparaha and Nohorua had written to Spain on May 12, urgently asking him to travel to the South Island to settle the company's claim to Wairau.

Spain had replied that he will do so when his business in Wellington is complete.

A month later, with still no sign of Spain, Te Rauparaha had led a party to Wairau, where they destroyed all the surveyors' equipment and shelters that had been made with products of the land.

They burned down roughly-built thatched huts that contain surveying equipment.

The surveyors had been rounded up and sent unharmed back to Nelson.

Bolstered by a report in the Nelson Examiner newspaper of "Outrages by the Maori at Wairoo", Wakefield assembles a party of men, including Police Magistrate and Native Protector Augustus Thompson, magistrate Captain R. England, Crown prosecutor and newspaper editor G.R. Richardson and about fifty men press-ganged into service, swearing them in as special constables.

Thompson issues a warrant for the arrest for arson of Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata.

Wakefield refers to the chiefs in a letter as a pair of "travelling bullies".

Thompson commandeers the government brig, which is in Nelson at this time.

On the morning of June 17, the party, its size swelled to between forty-nine and sixty men, including chief surveyor Frederick Tuckett and others who had joined the party after landing, approaches the Māori camp.

The New Zealand Company's storekeeper James Howard issues the British men with cutlasses, bayonets, pistols and muskets.

At the path on the other side of a stream, Te Rauparaha standd surrounded by about ninety warriors, as well as by women and children.

He allow Thompson and five other men to approach him, but requests the rest of the British party to remain on their side of the stream.

Thompson refuses to shake hands with Te Rauparaha and says that he has come to arrest him, not over the land issue but for burning the huts.

Te Rauparaha replies that the huts had been made from rushes grown on his own land, and thus he had burnt his own property.

Thompson insists on arresting Te Rauparaha, produces a pair of handcuffs, and calls out to the men on the far side of the stream, ordering them to fix bayonets and advance.

As they begin to cross, one of the British fires a shot (apparently by accident).

Te Rangihaeata's wife Rongo is killed in one of the first volleys, sparking gunfire from both sides.

The British retreat across the stream, scrambling up the hill under fire from the Ngāti Toa.

Several people from both sides are killed.

Te Rauparaha orders the Ngāti Toa warriors to cross the stream in pursuit.

Those British who have not escaped are quickly overtaken.

Wakefield calls for a ceasefire and surrenders, along with Thompson, Richardson and ten others.

The Maori kill two of the British immediately.

Te Rangihaeata demands utu (revenge) for the death of his wife Rongo, who was also Te Rauparaha's daughter.

The Maori kill all the remaining captives, including Thompson, Samuel Cottrell, a member of the original survey team; interpreter John Brooks, and Captain Wakefield.

Four Māori die and three are wounded in the incident.

The British lose twenty-two dead and five wounded.

Some survivors flee to Nelson to raise the alarm and a search party, including Wellington magistrates and a group of sailors, return to Wairau and bury the bodies where they are found.

Thirteen are put in one grave and the rest are buried in smaller groups.