Battle of Ōrākau

After the attack on Rangiaowhia and the fight at Hairini in February 1864 (see Invasion of the Waikato), the Ngāti Maniapoto leader Rewi Maniapoto moved a few kilometres south towards the Pūniu River. In March, Tūhoe and Ngāti Raukawa fighters arrived from the east, determined to fight after missing the earlier battles, and pleaded for Ōrākau, east of Kihikihi, 'as a place to use our guns and ammunition'. Rewi did not want to fight, least of all there: 'Only by not fighting may I retain my lands … do not fight at Orakau'. Pressed by them and by many of his own supporters, he relented. NZHistory names the Ngāti Raukawa chief Te Paerata as the principal architect of the defences and says he insisted on the site. The pā stood in a peach grove; it was easily fortified but had no adequate water supply or obvious escape route.

Te Ara says 300 men began building earthworks under Rewi's direction. On 30 March a British survey party saw the work, and Brigadier-General G.J. Carey sent forces that arrived the next day. Within two days more than 1400 troops had arrived at the still-unfinished pā. With some Waikato reinforcements its defenders numbered about 300, up to a third of them women. On 31 March Rewi held his men's fire until the attackers were less than 50 m away; two volleys turned the charge back, and the officers chose to surround rather than storm the position. Engineers dug saps (trenches) close enough to throw grenades into the pā, and Māori reinforcements who could not get through watched from a nearby hill. When Lieutenant-General Duncan Cameron arrived on 2 April, the defenders were almost out of food, water and ammunition.

Cameron offered the defenders a chance to surrender, or safe passage for the women and children; both were refused. Te Ara calls the reply the most famous incident of the New Zealand Wars, but its wording and speaker are uncertain. Te Ara gives the popular version as 'Ka whawhai tonu mātou, āke, āke, āke!' ('we shall fight on, for ever, and ever, and ever!') and notes several others. NZHistory says some attribute it to Rewi and others to Hauraki Tonganui, a Taupō chief. Rewi's biographer Manuka Henare writes that he may not have spoken the words at Ōrākau, though he is recorded as having used similar words at an earlier meeting at Ngāruawāhia. To the suggestion that the women leave, Te Paerata's daughter Ahumai replied: 'If the men die, the women and children must die also.' At 3.30 p.m. the defenders left the pā in a disciplined body, in daylight, broke through the cordon and scattered towards the Pūniu River, about 3 km away, pursued by cavalry and Forest Rangers.

Most of the Māori deaths came during that retreat. The historian Chris Pugsley estimates that at least 160 of the pā's occupants were killed, with women bayoneted as they lay wounded; Te Ara gives up to 160 Māori and 17 Europeans killed, the greatest loss of life in one battle of the wars. The interpreter William Mair recorded his 'disgust at the generally obscene and profane behaviour of the troops'. Historians disagree about what the battle decided. Pugsley sees the 'decisive victory that Cameron had sought'; James Belich calls it the British 'cruellest disappointment of the entire war', because the Kīngitanga survived behind a new aukati (boundary) on the Pūniu, which the British did not cross. 'Rewi's last stand' became a legendary expression of Māori courage, and Rudall Hayward's 1925 silent film of that name was later remade with sound.