{"story":["By the late 1850s the settlers at New Plymouth wanted more land than local Te Ātiawa were willing to sell, and Governor Thomas Gore Browne was under pressure to break the deadlock. Wiremu Kīngi Te Rangitāke, a senior Te Ātiawa chief, had led nearly 600 of his people home from Waikanae in 1848 and settled on the south bank of the Waitara River. In March 1859, at a meeting with the governor in New Plymouth, Te Teira Mānuka, a young Waitara rangatira (chief), offered the 600-acre (240-hectare) Pekapeka block on that same bank. Kīngi rose and refused: 'Waitara is in my hands, I will not give it up.' His biographer Ann Parsonson writes that Te Teira appears to have been pursuing a grievance over a broken marriage promise, and that Kīngi spoke as protector of the rights of the whole community at Waitara. Gore Browne accepted the offer subject to proof of Te Teira's sole claim to the land. He had come to believe that Kīngi had no customary rights at Waitara, and the government was prepared to buy up the claims of small groups rather than wait for all claimants to agree. In the historian James Belich's reading, the governor believed British sovereignty had to be asserted by denying Kīngi's autonomy, 'even at the risk of war'.","An instalment of £100 was paid to Te Teira late in 1859, and surveyors went in on 20 February 1860, four days before the purchase deed was signed. Elderly supporters of Kīngi obstructed them; martial law was declared on 22 February and troops occupied the block. Kīngi's people built a pā (fortified village) at Te Kohia, overlooking the British camp. On 17 March 1860 Colonel Charles Gold's guns fired on it all day, and that night the defenders left without loss of life. Te Kohia set the pattern: quickly built, expendable pā drew British fire while bunkers and covered trenches protected the garrison. Taranaki, Ngāti Ruanui, Ngā Rauru and fighters from the Kīngitanga (Māori King movement) joined the defence. On 27 June about 350 British troops attacked Puketakauere, near Waitara, and were cut down by fire from hidden rifle pits; 30 soldiers were killed and 34 wounded. Te Ara puts the Māori dead at five; NZHistory says five to eight.","Major-General Thomas Pratt took command in August 1860. With 1400 troops he destroyed pā around New Plymouth, most of them empty, and on 6 November caught a party of about 150 Ngāti Hauā reinforcements at Māhoetahi before their defences were finished, killing nearly a third of them. He then turned to siege warfare, digging a sap (covered trench) towards the old pā of Pukerangiora. A night attack on No. 3 Redoubt on 23 January 1861 cost Māori perhaps 50 dead, according to Te Ara. New Plymouth was crowded with settlers who had fled their farms, and disease there killed more than 120 people. The Ngāti Hauā leader Wiremu Tāmihana negotiated a truce on 18 March 1861. Kīngi left the talks to him but would not make peace until Waitara was returned, and did not sign the terms; Hāpurona, who had led Te Ātiawa in the field, did. NZHistory counts 238 British military killed or wounded and some 200 settler farms destroyed, and thinks it likely that more Māori than Pākehā were killed and wounded.","The truce left the underlying questions open. The Crown agreed to investigate the Waitara purchase, and Māori held the Tātaraimaka block south-west of New Plymouth as a bargaining chip meanwhile. In 1863 Governor George Grey sent troops to reoccupy Tātaraimaka and in May renounced the Waitara purchase, but by then an ambush at Ōakura had killed nine soldiers and fighting resumed as Grey turned to invade Waikato (see Invasion of the Waikato). In January 1865 the Crown confiscated land that included the Waitara block. In 1927 a royal commission found that Kīngi's people had been 'treated as rebels and war declared against them before they had engaged in rebellion of any kind'. In the Te Atiawa Claims Settlement Act 2016 the Crown records that in 1860 it deemed resistance to the Pekapeka survey an act of rebellion, and it 'unreservedly apologises for its actions during the Taranaki Wars'."],"sources":[{"title":"War in Taranaki 1860-63","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/taranaki-wars","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Pressure on Māori land","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/taranaki-wars/pressure-on-maori-land","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"The Waitara offer","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/taranaki-wars/waitara-dispute","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Te Rangitāke, Wiremu Kīngi","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1t70/te-rangitake-wiremu-kingi","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"New Zealand Wars – North Taranaki War, 1860–1861","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/new-zealand-wars/page-4","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Fighting begins","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/taranaki-wars/fighting-march-june-1860","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Puketakauere","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/taranaki-wars/puketakauere","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"A change in tactics","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/taranaki-wars/change-in-tactics","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Stalemate","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/taranaki-wars/peace-breaks-out","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"The second Taranaki war","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/taranaki-wars/second-taranaki-war","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Te Atiawa Claims Settlement Act 2016","url":"https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2016/0094/latest/whole.html","publisher":"New Zealand Legislation"}]}