We are crashing about in the katote ferns somewhere inside the eastern boundary of 300,000ha of contiguous Urewera forest. In front, a coil of supplejack catches on Andy Blick’s pack, and as my mate trudges forward it stretches full length before suddenly springing backwards to whip me sharply in the face. I take the hit with a grunt, wiping the sting and drips away, and press on.
We then break out onto a flat covered by pole forest. It is immediately obvious we have arrived onsite. Roger Dahm, another expedition member, has already peeled off out-of-sight. Andy shoots away to the right, leaving me standing next to the husk of a fallen rimu giant, and this is where I drop my pack and Winchester carbine.
A kakariki chatters in the treetops of the 130-year-old regrowth. The waterway we have been following loops around this island of scrub, which is surrounded by old-growth tawa and rimu forest. I want to look over the flat ground on the opposite side of the rimu, so clamber over. The fluted trunk is sprouting tufts of grass and although still covered in bark, the sapwood underneath is mush.
I don’t think any more about it as our three-person team sets out to confirm that this is indeed Te Kooti’s Waipaoa Headquarters, where the famous 1871 gun-battle with the Arawa Flying Column (AFC) occurred. Although scant, the evidence is there: the half-loop in the adjacent Waipaoa River; scattered whare slabs of heart totara; one ancient stake with a tomahawk-worked end; three probable whare sites – now mere rectangular depressions in the ground; the tawa-covered sentry knoll where sentry Patara Te Whata was shot dead; that vertical bank on the opposite side that took the bullet meant for Te Kooti, but killed Paora Te Wakahoehoe in the process; the moat-like banks of a dry creek that feed into a side stream with a small waterfall.
This splattering waterfall draws the three of us to the pool at its foot. The location was so accurately described by one of the attackers – Gilbert Mair – that we can easily visualise the Ringatu captive Mere Maihi kneading her kete of pikopiko there in the pool, watched by Mair on the opposite bank.
I take four photographs and later many more of the other points of interest before we have lunch. Then we shoulder our packs and set off back to our fly-camp downstream. A few hours on, it suddenly hits home – the fallen rimu that I had hopped over was probably the very tree that Ringatu fighter Wi Heretaunga was diving over when shot in the knee by Mair during the attack. (The aftermath saw the wounded Heretaunga subjected to a bush court-martial, then executed that night.) It is the only fallen podocarp on the hectare-sized area and its heartwood alone would be durable enough to retain its form after lying for over a century in the open.
Long before our Waipaoa expedition, I studied the episode in a number of old history books and was fully conversant with all aspects of it, as I was with the 26-month Urewera Campaign, the last of the New Zealand Wars. I had also pored over the period photos with a magnifying glass, and read screeds of unpublished firsthand accounts – including dispatches and diary entries – filed away in some of New Zealand’s premier archival institutions.
The trail through this forest of published and archival paperwork has led me and my friends onward into the actual theatre of war itself, the primary forests of Te Urewera. Over the course of many privately financed expeditions, we have explored, discovered and compared past with present. By walking the original Maori war trails, we have found a wilderness of waterways, mountains, centuries-old trees, rare forest birds, ancient Tuhoe pa and also the long-hidden battlesites of the protagonists.
The 1870-72 Urewera expeditions were driven by a vengeful Colonial Government (also known as the Kawanatanga), desperate to track down and destroy Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki and his Ringatu guerrilla force then regrouping within the boundaries of the Tuhoe tribe’s forested rohe. To this end, the politicians backed a new counter-insurgency operation designed to be relatively simple and cost-effective: the expensive Armed Constabulary (AC) field force was redeployed piecemeal to occupy a line of posts and stations from Poverty Bay and Hawke’s Bay to Lake Taupo and across to the Bay of Plenty.
Mounted orderlies and coastal vessels, bolstered by the newly erected electric telegraph lines, addressed the problems of unreliable supply trains and delayed/disrupted lines of communication. At the same time, the bounty on Te Kooti’s head was upped considerably to £5000 sterling. With such a financial inducement it was left to the main Kawanatanga fighting tribes or Native Contingents (NC) – Te Arawa, Ngati Porou, Ngati Kahungunu and lower Whanganui – to launch their own independent expeditions to make this campaign of forest and fern a short one.
In early March 1870, a Ngati Porou contingent kicked off the Urewera Campaign. Major Ropata Wahawaha NZC led his 370 warriors from the East Coast and entered Te Urewera from that side of the island, while a Whanganui force, comprising 250 men under Major Kepa Te Rangihiwinui NZC, moved inland from Opotiki. Tuhoe villages were stormed and plundered in the search for Te Kooti, setting the scene for the next two years.
While Kepa and Ropata were deep within the interior, 100 Ringatu fighters staged a raid on the coast, taking 170 prisoners, 30 to 40 stands of arms, a substantial amount of powder, general goods and killing two Arawa scouts, before moving up the Waioeka River to Maraetahi. Upon having this news relayed to them, Ropata and Kepa returned to the coast, then set off for Maraetahi, which they attacked forthwith, killing anyone who resisted, but also taking more than 300 prisoners in the process.
The Ringatu were routed, and about 20 of those unlucky enough to have been taken alive were summarily executed. Ropata’s adjutant Captain Thomas Porter observed that: “It was horrible to see the manner in which some of the dead were hacked about. One man was partly in and partly out of the river, his head was smashed to atoms, and the brains floating about upon the water … When returning, in the bed of the creek where the dead Hauhaus [Ringatu] were, we found a number of them buried, and others half-eaten by dogs; also two dogs hanging upon a tree close by, evidently done by the Hauhaus.”
Te Kooti and a score of the Ringatu inner-core escaped by working their way further upstream towards the little-known region of Te Wera. As Kepa and Ropata withdrew with their prisoners to Opotiki, Te Kooti treated his wounded and dying and he sent off orderlies with written messages to his allies. Somehow he rallied the surviving dispirited Ringatu.
At this time two companies of the newly formed Arawa Flying Column became operational, patrolling the western borders of Te Urewera. Number One Company under Captain Gilbert Mair NZC was based at Kaiteriria and Number Two Company under Captain George Preece NZC was stationed at Te Teko. From this time until December, several Tuhoe, Whakatohea and Ngati Kohatu hapu emerged from the Urewera forests to surrender to the AFC and other government units in the Bay of Plenty.
Yet another 250-strong Kawanatanga expedition attacked the eastern Tuhoe settlements at Lake Waikaremoana in May/June of that year. Ngati Kahungunu, with some attached Pakeha soldiers and civilian scouts, at last accomplished what no previous government force had: overrunning and defeating the lake-dwelling Tuhoe tribes in a number of waterborne operations, thereby seizing the military initiative in this region.
Today, the foreshore around Lake Waikaremoana is still clothed by the same jungle-like forest that witnessed the various Kawanatanga assaults of yesteryear. For two seasons, totalling 12 months, I lived and worked in the bush at Waikaremoana as a kiwi-tracker, and in the course of my day-to-day work stumbled on a number of the lake’s geological and historical wonders.
The formidable Panekiri Bluff rises from the southern end of the lake. Panekiri wears its pitted and etched rockface like a form of mokomokai, and glares down upon a number of well-hidden taonga and historical sites pertaining to the period.
Still existing are the overgrown Maori whare pits and earthwork defences at Pukehuia, Tikitiki and Matuahu Pa garrisoned by Tuhoe during the above Ngati Kahungunu assault. There is the sentry rock at Te Onepoto, close to the AC Redoubt site, which is covered by soldiers’ graffiti dating back to 1869. The former Onetapu Beach, where Te Kooti raced his horses after the Mohaka raid, can still be traced out beneath its cover of regenerating manuka forest.
Underwater lie the shadowy outlines of two 12m clinker-built longboats deliberately sunk by a Kawanatanga army before it withdrew from the area in an earlier military foray.
By July, Te Kooti had organised another strike force of 28 fighting men, which attacked the Ngati Porou settlement at Tolaga Bay, but things did not go as planned and they encountered stiff resistance. Low on powder, shot and percussion caps, the Ringatu retreated in disarray, followed up by a composite body of 100 AC and Ngati Porou.
Over the next 12 months, additional NC patrols rampaged through Te Urewera and the adjacent fernlands. During one tense Ngati Porou encounter with belligerent Tuhoe in early 1871, Porter made this observation: “A notorious character, known as the brave of Tamaikowha, was pointed out to me by the name of Te Patu Toro [scout killer], who is famed among the Urewera tribes for the number of men killed by him; he is also remarkable for the number of weapons carried about his person … he was a perfect model of a man, being above middle height, symmetrically built, handsome in feature, with regularly formed lines of tatu, his hair in top-knot surmounted with feathers, feathers also in his ears, an athlete all over … He was armed with a naval officer’s gold-hilted sword, taken in one of the fights in Waikato or Tauranga. The name of the Scout Killer speaks for itself.”
Operating from a network of bushcamps, Te Kooti and his main force of Ringatu managed to elude the Kawanatanga. It was not to last, however, as the unrelenting pursuit columns systematically criss-crossed ever closer. On a wintry August morning in 1871, the AFC under Mair and Preece at last struck Te Kooti’s well-beaten trail in the Waipaoa, which led them straight to where Mair first spied Mere Maihi next to the small waterfall.
As it was late in the afternoon, an attacking force lost no time in storming the nearby camp, killing three Ringatu fighters; taking some prisoners and routing the rest of the enemy. Te Kooti narrowly escaped across the flooded Waipaoa and paused to fire one shot from his seven-shot Spencer repeater back at his enemies. For Te Arawa, the spoils of war were nine Enfield rifles, two breech-loading carbines, four revolvers, four shotguns, a cartridge belt full with Spencer brass cartridges, and also the famous greenstone mere “Tawatahi”. The AFC suffered no casualties in the attack, and two days later the force with its six prisoners exited Te Urewera.
Just two weeks later, a 100-strong column of Ngati Porou under Porter surprised Te Kooti at Te Hapua. Some of the fighting was hand-to-hand, and once again the Ringatu camp fell. In his diary entry for this day Porter recorded: “Attacked Te Kooti at Maungapohatu killing 5 capturing 13.”
In 2000, after a great deal of research, we managed to find the long-lost Te Hapua campsite on the northern slopes of Maungapohatu. To this day, it is still relatively open, although badly eroded. Studying its lower flank, one could easily visualise Porter and his men hunkered down in the fern and next to the very silver beech trees that still fringed the clearing.
Our team searched through the surrounding bush hoping to uncover evidence to confirm our find. Several old moss-covered stumps belonging to once sizeable trees were found along both sides of the clearing, plus a man-made benched area close to the top of the clearing. The latter was near a ridge top, the logical spot to place a whare for a sentry. In order to create a more effective defensive perimeter in 1871, the Ringatu had dropped a number of trees with the crowns falling outwards. As with our previous trips, I took many photos, including a few of Peter Taiepa of the Tama Kaimoana tribe posing next to some of these surviving stumps.
The felled trees achieved their purpose. The Kawanatanga had again failed in their main objective. Te Kooti escaped, this time by bursting out through the back of the totara whare in which he had been sleeping and running upslope into the forest with a small bodyguard.
The Ringatu leader fled into the headwaters of the Waiau River country, now ultimately intent on making for the King Country (the Rohe Potae still held by the powerful Tainui Confederation under King Tawhiao Te Wherowhero). At this juncture, the AFC took up the pursuit, as did a Tuhoe taua, both parties separately skirmishing with the Ringatu in October. In one of these gunbattles Te Kooti had a couple of his fingertips blown off his right hand.
In December, Te Kooti walked down the Waiau, then turned south for Nga Tapa, located at the confluence of the Mohaka and Te Hoe rivers. From this pa, on January 16, 1872, he launched his last guerrilla raid on a Maungaharuru sheep run east of the Mohaka River. When Preece heard about this latest raid, he immediately set off from Ahikereru with 41 men and made for the Waiau Valley.
In the winter of 2002, as part of a west-to-east traverse to Lake Waikaremoana, I explore the mid-reaches of the Waiau for myself. It is a six-day solo effort, with my heavy pack containing sleeping bag, spare clothes, fly and food; camera; my carbine for wild pig or deer; a good map and compass, and a kakapo feather worn in my ear.
At the end of the second day, I’m bluffed on the tops and have to set up a fly-camp surrounded by an arena of windthrow-covered ridges, cliffs and waterfalls. It is a dismal location, made more so by the rain and swirling banks of mist. Back during the 1870s, this was kakapo country, and from my sub-standard camp I can easily visualise where the main track-and-bowl systems of this large parrot (now extinct in the area) would have been located.
The next day I somehow get out of that difficult terrain and drop into the Waiau, wet through, cut-up by bush lawyer and totally knackered, Te Urewera having extracted its due of blood, sweat and tears.
Compared with the tops on which I had been stranded, the podocarp-clothed Waiau River valley provides easy open travelling and a relative abundance of bush-foods: edible plants, fruits and roots; forest birds; wild pig, etc. For several kilometres, I follow that river, marvelling at the stands of golden-leaved tawa interspersed with giant totara, rimu, kahikatea, matai, miro; the twisted, muscle-bound trunks of rata; a fruiting kohia vine; the whooshing on-the-wing kereru; a screeching kaka; whio on white-water; fresh pig-rooting; kiwi sign on the ground.
Back in 1872, the Arawa followed the Waiau until they at last struck their enemy’s trail, and the next day Preece with 20 men finally caught up with their quarry – Te Kooti and about 20 Ringatu – scrambling up steep country on the far side of the Mangaone Stream. The AFC sighted their Calisher & Terry carbines for 400 yards and opened fire. Some of the fleeing Ringatu paused to return fire, then hauled themselves towards the high ground before pouring on the coals. A running fight developed that lasted about two miles through bush and scrub until the AFC were left far behind.
For the next two months Te Kooti remained at large, skirting the eastern edges of Te Urewera and moving east to arrive unexpectedly at Nuhaka, on the Wairoa coast. But just as suddenly he vanished. AC units using civilian Maori and Pakeha scouts worked hard to pick up the trail. Of these, Captain Charles Ferris was the most persistent, finding then following Te Kooti’s prints, which led westwards.
Travelling light and fast, the Kawanatanga patrol closed the distance until they were mere hours behind Te Kooti. Their Snider carbines were loaded and capped for instant use, as were their holstered Adams and Colt revolvers. In one of Ferris’s dispatches at this time, he recorded: “I follow up the trail with 8 natives as I wish to find out whether T.K. is making for Maungakohatu or Waikare [moana], I expect to get out at the Lake in about 5 days. I have been expecting every day to have a slap at T.K. thinking that he would be settling down for the winter – but he goes steadily on and it gives us all our work to hold our own with him.”
Te Kooti continued moving west through the high fern country and on into the rising hill country covered by the primary forests of Te Urewera. With Ferris hard on his tail, he didn’t stay more than one night in any campsite.
By late April, the AC stations at Lake Taupo, Opepe, Runanga, Tarawera and Te Haroto had been notified to be on the lookout as Te Kooti might attempt a breakout south or west in the days ahead. Ferris, meanwhile, continued his 240km pursuit and followed his quarry clear across Te Urewera. Preece, too, with his company of AFC, was back in the chase. He was as determined as Ferris to run Te Kooti to ground. As well, Mair and his company covered the western edge of Te Urewera. Four further AC patrols – cavalry and bush-fighters – were dispatched from inland localities to scout and endeavour to intercept Te Kooti.
Not unlike a pack of slavering pig-dogs, the Kawanatanga weaved around … close to bailing their elusive prey for good. Many of these pursuers were singularly intent on taking no prisoners.
However, despite these determined and impeccably co-ordinated efforts, the Kawanatanga were too late. Te Kooti and the last of his fighting Ringatu had somehow passed undetected through the intersection of Maori tracks at Heruiwi. They moved northwest, away from the isolated wilderness of Te Urewera, and after two or three days reached the Waikato River, which they crossed near Arowhena on May 15, 1872.
Their simple act of wading ashore onto the western banks of the independent Te Rohe Potae effectively ended the complex New Zealand Wars. The frustrated Kawanatanga combat patrols were recalled, the Native Contingents were sent back to their villages and the AC garrisons on the East Coast front were stood down. Against all odds, Te Kooti had survived one of the greatest manhunts of all time.