East Cape War - Early Actions

Early Actions

The first and most notorious incident was the murder of missionary Carl Volkner outside his church at Opotiki on 2 March 1865, which came to be known as the Volkner Incident. This outraged the European settlers who demanded justice, but New Zealand Government had committed almost all of their military forces to fighting the Second Taranaki War. It took five months before they were able to free up men to deal with the murders. Several units of Colonial Militia and a large contingent of Taranaki Māori were shipped around the coast to Opotiki and turned loose in the area with instructions to destroy the economic base of Hau hau and their supporters. Faced with starvation and no effective weapons the locals had no choice but to surrender.

Meanwhile the Hau Hau had provoked a civil war among the Ngāti Porou, one of the major tribes of the area. They successfully preached violence when the tribal leaders were urging caution. The Ngāti Porou chiefs, who were opposed to the Hau Hau fanaticism, wrote to the Government requesting assistance, particularly arms and reinforcements. Their appeal reached Donald McLean, a government official and politician who was a major landowner in the Napier region. He already had available a sizeable store of weapons, enough to equip a force of 100 militia and arm the Ngāti Porou. They sailed up the coast and the two forces joined up on 6 July 1865.

Over the next few months there were a series of skirmishes all over the East Cape during which the government forces were almost always successful. Hitherto in the various conflicts with the Pākehā the Māori had always shown themselves to be consummately skilful warriors, so skilful that although heavily outnumbered they had already fought the British Army to a standstill on several occasions. Surprisingly their military abilities seemed to have left them, and the Hau Hau had an almost perfect record for losing every skirmish, fight and battle they got into.

Early in October, 380 Pākehā and Ngāti Porou loyalists surrounded a force of about 600 Hau Hau. Even though the Hau Hau had a strongly fortified pā and the weather conditions were atrocious (one of the attackers died of hypothermia) 500 of the Hau Hau were forced to surrender. This was complete reversal of the trend; a fortified and defended Pā was usually found to be virtually unassailable.

At about the same time a Hau Hau war party attacked a group of Ngāti Porou women who had only a few shotguns and well flung rocks to defend themselves. They did so with such good effect that when the Hau Hau retreated they left behind thirteen dead.

In the event this attack cost the Hau Hau even heavier casualties. The loyalist Māori of the Ngāti Porou were angered because non-combatants had been attacked. Particularly incensed was a rising leader or war chief among them, Ropata Wahawaha. He led a group that tracked down and captured the Hau Hau responsible, and personally executed the ones who came from his own hapu, or sub-tribe.