Brief Golden Age
Missionaries were the first to establish themselves deep in 'the wild Wykatto', as it was soon known. The Reverend John Morgan had set up a mission station at Mangapouri, at the confluence of the Puniu and Waipa Rivers near Te Awamutu.
At this time warfare in the Waikato was ferocious. Rather than present a united front to outsiders, Waikato tribes were feuding lethally among themselves again.
The more war-wearied were ready to hear the Christian message from Morgan and to consider the crafts of peace. Not that transformation was quick. Mrs Morgan, while getting the family breakfast, once witnessed slaves being slain for a cannibal oven.
Morgan, meanwhile, taught the Maori how to use a plough (drawn by men until horses arrived) and the sturdy virtues of sowing wheat, rather than the seeds of war. Fruit trees, then entire orchards, began to blossom throughout the Waikato basin.
Vegetable plots multiplied. Soon there were thousands of hectares of rolling wheatfields and close to twenty Maori mills grinding out flour. Morgan was firmly of the view that stomachs filled with bread would end appetite for war and it seemed he was right.
From 1840 to 1860, Christian Waikato dedicated itself to agriculture. Huge quantities of food were sold to the settlement of Auckland and exported to Australia:
In the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in the north, and then borne about the country for further signatures. Many Waikato tribes held aloof from the document; they also retained possession of their lands. European colonists remained few in their region, which had entered upon a sadly brief golden age.
Waikato Maori Prosper
From 1840 to 1860, Christian Waikato dedicated itself to agriculture. Huge quantities of food were sold to the settlement of Auckland and exported to Australia:
One chief declared, 'We have abandoned our old ways. The rule now is kindness to the orphan; peace, and agricultural pursuits'. 'There were no quarrels', one old woman later sighed in an interview with the historian James Cowan. 'We lived happily in the midst of abundance'.
That abundance was observed with envy by land-hungry colonists cooped up in Auckland. The prospering Waikato Maori set themselves against land sales.
Having progressed so far and fast agriculturally, they didn't need the money, as other Maori tribes might.
Alarmed by the European influx into New Zealand, Waikato leaders saw the need to take the survival of the Maori race into their own hands. British institutions, notably the monarchy, could not be relied on for protection.
The result was the kotahitanga, or tribal unity movement, which in 1858 elected a Maori king - the elderly Te Wherowhero.
Recent scholarship tends to argue that colonists were looking for an excuse for war and a lightning land grab and now had a convincing pretext. A land dispute at Waitara in Taranaki heralded the Waikato conflict.
On his death in 1860 he was succeeded by his son, the younger and vigorous King Tawhiao. The British view was that this dissidence could not be countenanced; there was room for only one monarch, Queen Victoria.
Triumph in the Midst of Defeat
Recent scholarship tends to argue that colonists were looking for an excuse for war and a lightning land grab and now had a convincing pretext. A land dispute at Waitara in Taranaki heralded the Waikato conflict.
Waikato tribesmen travelled south to help out in the fight.
In 1863 Governor George Grey decided it was time to impose his will on the recalcitrant Waikato.
Despite Maori warnings he pushed a military road south from Auckland to the bank of the Waikato River where it moves west to the Tasman (near present-day Mercer).
This was no bluff; Grey knew the act must mean war. As fighting developed there were up to eighteen thousand soldiers - with artillery and gunboats - against perhaps only twelve hundred part-time warriors, armed with tomahawks, antique muskets, and fowling pieces.
After sortie and skirmish, Maori and British met in formal batrle at Rangiriri, where a Maori fortress stood on a slender bridge of land between the river and Lake Waikare.
Thereafter the British campaign was mostly downhill. They took the headquarters of the Maori king at Ngaruawahia without a fight and discreetly they managed to avoid the Maoris entrenched at Paterangi, near Pirongia.
Shells crashed into the fortress and gunboats hit at it from the river. Thirty-eight British lives were lost in ineffectual attempts to storm the Maori stronghold, and it was not until their gun powder was gone that the Maoris conceded.
End of an Era
Thereafter the British campaign was mostly downhill. They took the headquarters of the Maori king at Ngaruawahia without a fight and discreetly they managed to avoid the Maoris entrenched at Paterangi, near Pirongia.
The army was dedicated to ending Waikato's golden age. Villages were razed and rebel crops destroyed. At the undefended village of Rangiaowhia - until now a model of agricultural enterprise - women and children left behind by warrior husbands and fathers were killed along with a number of elderly men courageous enough to fight.
