The Invasion of Waikato and the 9 July 1863 Proclamation
In July 1863 the Crown launched a premeditated war of conquest and invasion directed against Kīngitanga supporters in Waikato and their relatives living further north, around the shores of Manukau Harbour, at Ihumātao, Māngere and elsewhere. These were the same Māori communities who had been feeding and protecting the settlers of Auckland for more than two decades. Earlier, during the Northern War of 1845-46, they had pledged to defend the township from possible attack. But now they stood accused by the Crown of plotting to massacre these very same Pākehā. It was a desperate lie, attempting to justify the unjustifiable – the Crown levying war upon its own subjects.
Those allegations were not only entirely unfounded but also illogical. Destroying the key outlet for their produce would have been suicidal for the Māori communities concerned. Their wealth and therefore power depended to a large degree on Auckland’s ongoing well-being. It was a mutually beneficial relationship – at least until Governor George Grey decided that the Kīngitanga had to be destroyed, paving the way for the invasion of its Waikato heartland in July 1863.
As part of Grey’s preparations, Tainui communities living around the Manukau Harbour and elsewhere were forcibly driven from their lands. On 9 July 1863 a proclamation was issued by the government addressed to 'the natives of Mangere, Pukaki, Thirmatao [sic - Ihumatao], Te Kirikiri, Patumahoe, Pokeno, and Tuakau', warning that:
All persons of the native race living in the Manukau district and the Waikato frontier are hereby required immediately to take the oath of allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen, and to give up their arms to an officer appointed by Government for that purpose.
Natives who comply with this order will be protected. Natives refusing to do so are hereby warned forthwith to leave the district aforesaid, and retire to Waikato beyond Mangatawhiri.
In case of their not complying with this order they will be ejected.
On the same date magistrates were despatched to the various settlements to deliver the notice and demand that Māori take an oath of allegiance to Queen Victoria or leave. As discussed in The Great War for New Zealand (and also in a 2013 article in the New Zealand Journal of History: ‘Choosing Peace or War: The 1863 Invasion of Waikato’) few took the oath. Many of those to whom it was read feared they might be forced to fight against their own kin in the Waikato if they did so. Others read it ‘a positive order to leave’. The overwhelming response was one of bewilderment.
Tamati Ngapora asked whether the ‘day of harvest’ had arrived and was told it had. His request for an inquiry into the conduct of the Tainui tribes was rejected outright. As John Gorst described the scene in his 1864 book The Maori King:
They were Maories and relatives of Potatau. Underlings of the Native Office were despatched in haste to call upon them to give up their weapons and take the oath of allegiance to the Queen, or, in default, to retire beyond Mangatawhiri under pain of ejection. The first native to whom this cruel decree was made known was Tamati Ngapora, the uncle of the Maori King, who lived at Mangere, in European fashion, receiving a large income from letting his lands as grazing grounds to the neighbouring farmers. After a short silence, Tamati asked — “Is the day of reaping, then, at hand?” Being told that it was, he observed — “Why has not the Governor put Waikato on her trial, before stretching forth the strong hand?” Tamati and the other Mangere natives quite understood the alternatives. They must submit to what they regarded as an ignominious test, or lose the whole of their property. And yet, to their honour be it said, they did not hesitate for a moment.
They all thanked the Pakeha for this last act of kindness in giving them timely warning of the evil that was to come upon Waikato, and an opportunity of themselves escaping; but they could not forget that they were part of Waikato, and they must go and die with their fathers and friends...All the old people showed the most intense grief at leaving a place where they had so long lived in peace and happiness, but they resolutely tore themselves away.
And so hundreds of Māori living at Māngere and elsewhere gathered up what belongings they could carry and trudged south to join their relatives in the Waikato. The invasion began three days later. The Tainui communities of South Auckland saw their lands confiscated, their property looted or destroyed and their once flourishing economy destroyed almost literally overnight.
In 1927 the Royal Commission into Confiscated Lands (known as the Sim Commission) concluded with respect to the Tainui communities of South Auckland that ‘a grave injustice was done to the Natives in question by forcing them into the position of rebels, and afterwards confiscating their lands’. Nearly sixty years later the Waitangi Tribunal reached a similar conclusion in its 1985 Manukau Report: ‘all sources agree that the Tainui people...never rebelled but were attacked by British troops in direct violation of Article II of the Treaty of Waitangi’, the Tribunal declared.
Although the Crown apologised in 1995 for ‘the loss of lives because of the hostilities arising from its invasion’ and ‘the devastation of property and life’ which resulted as part of the Tainui raupatu settlement, this history continues to resonate in many ways. And the legacies of this history of invasion and dispossession were also evident following the occupation of lands at Ihumātao in 2016 rezoned for a special housing area but originally confiscated from mana whenua in 1865. It is only through understanding that historical context that we can begin to make sense of the present.
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