Battle of Rangiaowhia

At 11 p.m. on Saturday 20 February 1864, two Māori, Himi Manuao and John Gage, guided Lieutenant-General Duncan Cameron and more than 1200 of his men past Pāterangi without alerting lookouts stationed less than 1500m away. Next morning the leading elements of this force suddenly appeared before Rangiaowhia. With most of its fighting men still at Pāterangi, the settlement was virtually undefended.

Colonel Marmaduke Nixon’s Colonial Defence Force Cavalry of 88 men arrived first, with Captain Gustavus von Tempsky’s company of Forest Rangers close behind. The inhabitants sought cover. Some took refuge in the two churches while many ran for their whare (houses). A cavalryman was shot outside one of the whare.

The building was surrounded and two ranks of men commenced firing. An invitation to surrender was answered with a volley. Shots fired from close range passed over the heads of those lying on the sunken floor of the whare. When Nixon stepped forward and fired into the house, he suffered wounds from which he was to die several months later. Another trooper was shot while trying to retrieve the body of a fallen comrade. Gustavus von Tempsky and his Forest Rangers now entered the fighting. Whether accidentally or by design, the thatch of the building was set alight. An elderly man came out with a white blanket raised above his head. Clearly unarmed, he was killed by a hail of bullets despite an officer’s order to ‘spare him’. Perhaps enraged by the deaths of some of their comrades, soldiers continued firing into the house. Two more Māori attempting to escape from the fire met the same fate. The bodies of seven Māori, including – it is said – two daughters of Te Kooti’s future associate Kereopa Te Rau, were found in the gutted ruins.

Historian David Green thinks that what happened at Rangiaowhia that morning was not ‘a premeditated massacre but a breakdown of discipline among troops who had psyched themselves up to face much stronger resistance.’ Both Chris Pugsley and James Belich see the bypassing of Pāterangi as the decisive military act of the entire war. But as Belich points out, it was overshadowed by the events that unfolded next morning.

The loss of Rangiaowhia’s resources was a severe economic setback for the Kīngitanga and a major blow to its morale. Cameron had learnt from previous encounters and showed at Pāterangi that it was better to outflank Māori positions than to assault them head-on. The Kīngitanga force had been unable to make Cameron fight on their own ground and lacked the manpower to hold a major defensive position for long enough to frustrate the British into rash action. An end to Māori resistance in the Waikato basin was now only a matter of time.