Bay of Plenty
Te Moana-a-Toi
Landing place of several founding waka, and later a frontier of the New Zealand Wars from Gate Pā through to the Tauranga confiscations. Volcanic country that has shaped both its soils and its disasters.
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8 events in Bay of Plenty between 1858 and 1988
Pōtatau Te Wherowhero becomes the first Māori King
Te Kīngitanga
Iwi across the central North Island raised a king to hold land, halt sales and deal with the Crown as an equal. The Kīngitanga continues today.
NgāruawāhiaInvasion of the Waikato
Te riri ki Waikato
Around 12,000 imperial and colonial troops crossed the Mangatāwhiri to break the Kīngitanga — the largest military campaign ever fought in New Zealand.
MangatāwhiriGate Pā — Pukehinahina
A heavier bombardment than anything at Sebastopol failed to break the pā, and the assault that followed was routed by defenders in bunkers beneath it.
Pukehinahina, TaurangaTe Kooti escapes from Rēkohu
Deported without trial, Te Kooti seized a schooner, sailed 300 prisoners home, and led a four-year pursuit through the Urewera that never caught him.
Gisborne and Te UreweraMount Tarawera erupts
The mountain split along 17 kilometres, buried the villages of Te Wairoa, Te Ariki and Moura, and destroyed the Pink and White Terraces.
Mount TaraweraThe Waihi strike
Six months of confrontation at the goldmine ended when police and strikebreakers stormed the miners’ hall and Frederick Evans was fatally injured.
WaihiThe raid on Maungapōhatu
Seventy armed police marched into the Tūhoe prophet Rua Kēnana’s community in the Urewera. Two men were shot dead, including Rua’s son.
MaungapōhatuCyclone Bola
Over 900 millimetres of rain fell on the East Coast in three days, stripping hillsides and cutting the region off. Three people died.
GisborneMeanwhile, nationally
12 events that reached Bay of Plenty along with most of the country. They still shade the map and sit on the timeline above, but they are not Bay of Plenty’s own history.
The Musket Wars
Musket-armed war parties reshaped the map of Māori New Zealand. Perhaps 20,000 died and whole districts changed hands before the fighting burned out around 1840.
New Zealand Settlements Act — raupatu
Te raupatu whenua
The Crown took roughly 1.2 million hectares from iwi deemed to be in rebellion — including from communities that had never fought.
The Native Land Court is established
The court converted customary communal title into individual freehold — the mechanism by which most remaining Māori land was lost, without a shot fired.
Tohunga Suppression Act
An Act making it an offence to practise as a tohunga, aimed at prophets and healers whose authority the state saw as a threat to assimilation.
The influenza pandemic
About 9,000 people died in two months — roughly half as many as died in four years of war. Māori died at more than seven times the Pākehā rate.
The 28th (Māori) Battalion
Te Hokowhitu-a-Tū
A volunteer battalion organised by tribal area fought through Greece, Crete, North Africa and Italy, and took proportionally the heaviest casualties of any New Zealand unit.
Māori War Effort Organisation
More than 300 tribal committees organised recruitment, production and welfare — the most effective Māori self-administration the Crown had allowed since 1840.
The great Māori urban migration
Māori went from about 25 percent urban in 1945 to nearly 80 percent by 1975 — one of the fastest urbanisations recorded anywhere.
The 1953–54 royal tour
Elizabeth II became the first reigning monarch to visit New Zealand. An estimated three in four New Zealanders saw her in person.
Waitangi Tribunal jurisdiction backdated to 1840
The single amendment that made Treaty settlements possible: the Tribunal could now investigate Crown breaches all the way back to 1840.
Te reo Māori becomes an official language
Te Ture mō Te Reo Māori
Te reo Māori gained official status and the right to be spoken in court, fifteen years after the language petition and following a Waitangi Tribunal finding that it was a taonga.
The Sealord fisheries settlement
The Crown funded a Māori half-share in Sealord and allocated quota, settling commercial fisheries claims nationally in one deal.