First Taranaki War - Further Clashes

Further Clashes

From August to October 1860, there were numerous skirmishes close to New Plymouth, including one on 20 August involving an estimated 200 Māori, just 800 metres from the barracks on Marsland Hill. Many settlers' farms were burned and the village of Henui, 1.6 km from town, was also destroyed. Several farmers and settlers, including children, were killed by hostile Māori as they ventured beyond the town's entrenchments, including John Hurford (tomahawked at Mahoetahi on 3 August), Joseph Sarten (shot and tomahawked, Henui, 4 December), Captain William Cutfield King (shot, Woodleigh estate, 8 February 1861) and Edward Messenger (shot, Brooklands, 3 March). There were frequent skirmishes around Omata and Waireka, where extensive trenches and rifle pits were dug on the Waireka hills to threaten a British redoubt on the site of the Kaipopo pā.

With British forces in Taranaki boosted to about 2,000 by July, the British intensified efforts to crush resistance. Governor Browne was particularly worried that a general uprising would occur while the bulk of troops in the country were concentrated in Taranaki and he appealed to Britain and Australia for more reinforcements. Major Nelson, meanwhile, destroyed several Te Atiawa villages including Manukorihi, Tikorangi and Ratapihipihi, Pratt launched a major attack with 1,400 men near Waitara on 9 September, burning and looting four entrenched villages, and in October, he marched with a force of more than 1,000 to the Kaihihi River at Okato to conduct an operation with sapping and heavy artillery to destroy several more pā. On 6 November, a party of between 50 and 150 Ngati Haua Kingites were routed in a surprise attack by 1,000 troops at Mahoetahi.

There were some humiliating setbacks for the British, however, with 1,500 troops retreating from a small Māori force at Huirangi on 11 September and a force of 500 suffering casualties in an ambush while destroying a pā on 29 September.

Kingite warriors continued to travel between Taranaki and Waikato, providing a peak force of about 800 in January 1861, with weapons and ammunition being bought on the black market in Auckland, Waiuku and Kawhia, while in Taranaki posts at Omata, the Bell Block, Waireka and Tataramakia were garrisoned – with each of those often surrounded by a cordon of pā.