{"story":["The fertile Wairau plains, at the head of Cloudy Bay about 70 km south-east of Nelson, looked like the answer to the Nelson settlement's shortage of flat land. Ngāti Toa had controlled the area since their conquests across Cook Strait, and their leaders Te Rauparaha and his nephew Te Rangihaeata consistently denied that the Wairau had ever been sold. Te Rauparaha was adamant that it had not been part of the New Zealand Company's 1839 purchases. Part of the Company's case rested on an older paper. In October 1832 a whaling captain, John Blenkinsop, had obtained a deed of purchase for the Wairau, signed on Te Rauparaha's behalf by his brother Mahurenga, though Te Rauparaha understood it to let Blenkinsop take water and timber from the Wairau in return for a single 18-pound cannon. In 1839 William Wakefield bought the deed from Heni Te Huahua, a widow of Blenkinsop. Where the Company believed it had bought land, Te Rauparaha considered it had merely acknowledged his mana (authority) over it.","Company surveyors sent to the Wairau early in 1843 met opposition at once. Te Rauparaha, Te Rangihaeata and another senior chief, Te Hiko, came to Nelson to talk with Captain Arthur Wakefield, the Company's agent in Nelson. They asked that the question be left to William Spain, the land commissioner who was investigating all the Company's claims. William Wakefield told his brother to carry on, and a fresh survey party arrived in April; the Company hoped that once settlers were on the land the Crown would have to recognise its claim. Spain was due to investigate the Company's claim in June. In early June Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata sent the surveyors off and burnt their huts, after carefully setting aside the men's belongings and stores. In Nelson, warrants were issued for the two chiefs' arrest on a charge of arson.","On 17 June 1843 an armed but inexperienced party of about 50 settlers, sworn in as special constables and led by Wakefield and the police magistrate Henry Thompson, reached the Tuamarina Stream. NZHistory puts the party at 49; the biography of Te Rangihaeata gives 47 constables plus the leaders. On the far bank were nearly twice as many Māori, women and children among them. A small group crossed on a canoe, and Thompson twice tried to put handcuffs on Te Rauparaha, an insult to his mana. Te Rangihaeata shouted that he was on his own land, and that Māori did not go to England to take Pākehā land. Then a shot rang out, perhaps fired by accident by a settler scrambling back across the stream. Te Rongo, one of Te Rangihaeata's wives, was killed, by a stray shot as she sat by the fire according to his biography. In the confused fighting about nine of the settlers were killed, and four more in the disorderly retreat up the hill. Wakefield ordered a ceasefire, waved a white handkerchief and surrendered with the men around him.","Te Rauparaha seems to have been willing to spare the captives, but Te Rangihaeata demanded utu (revenge) for Te Rongo, and nine prisoners, Wakefield and Thompson among them, were killed. In all 22 Europeans died; NZHistory gives four Māori dead, Te Ara 'at least four'. Settlers saw the killing of men who had surrendered as cold-blooded murder, and feared a general uprising. Te Rauparaha stayed on the defensive: he had much to lose, and many of his people, influenced by the missionary Octavius Hadfield at Ōtaki, did not want war. The new governor, Robert FitzRoy, told the Nelson magistrates that people who burnt their own property could not be charged with arson, and that the Wairau had never been purchased. At Waikanae on 12 February 1844 he declared that the settlers had provoked the fighting. He condemned the killing of prisoners but said that since the Europeans were first in the wrong he would not avenge their deaths. London approved, and settlers were furious; Nelson burnt him in effigy when his recall was announced in late 1845. The causes and people of the Wairau resurfaced in fighting in the Hutt Valley and Porirua in 1846. A memorial to the dead settlers was raised at Tuamarina in 1869, and Te Ara now counts the clash as a precursor to the New Zealand Wars."],"sources":[{"title":"The Wairau incident","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/wairau-incident","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Ngāti Toa and the New Zealand Company","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/wairau-incident/ngati-toa-and-the-new-zealand-company","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Violence erupts","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/wairau-incident/violence-erupts","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"The fallout from Wairau","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/wairau-incident/fall-out-from-wairau","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Te Rangihaeata","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1t63/te-rangihaeata","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Te Rauparaha","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1t74/te-rauparaha","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Nelson region – Māori history","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/nelson-region/page-4","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"New Zealand Wars – Overview","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/new-zealand-wars/page-1","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Wairau Affray","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wairau_Affray","publisher":"Wikipedia"},{"title":"Te Rauparaha","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Te_Rauparaha","publisher":"Wikipedia"}]}