Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
South Island, but the fighting of the 1840s confirmed that the North Island at that time
comprised a European fringe around an independent Maori heartland.
'I believe we were all glad to leave New Zealand. It is not a pleasant place. Amongst the natives there is
absent that charming simplicity…and the greater part of the English are the very refuse of society.'
Charles Darwin, referring to Kororareka (Russell), in 1860.
In the 1850s, settler populations and aspirations grew, and fighting broke out again in
1860. The wars burned on sporadically until 1872 over much of the North Island. In the
early years, a Maori nationalist organisation, the King Movement, was the backbone of
resistance. In later years, some remarkable prophet-generals, notably Titokowaru and Te
Kooti, took over. Most wars were small-scale, but the Waikato war of 1863-64 was not.
This conflict, fought at the same time as the American Civil War, involved armoured
steamships, ultramodern heavy artillery, telegraph and 10 proud British regular regiments.
Despite the odds, the Maori won several battles, such as that at Gate Pa, near Tauranga, in
1864. But in the end they were ground down by European numbers and resources. Maori
political, though not cultural, independence ebbed away in the last decades of the 19th
century. It finally expired when police invaded its last sanctuary, the Urewera Mountains,
in 1916.
