Interesting news story about the discovery of a British Army multiple grave in New Zealand from the 1846 Northern War, part of the long running Maori Wars.
According to the Telegraph article: “The men had been buried according to Maori burial rites, along with objects that had been in their possession such as a clay smoking pipe.”
According to NZ archaeologist Jono Carpenter the men died during an attack on the Ruapekapeka pā on 11 January, 1846, in which 1600 British soldiers battled 400 Maori fighters. “Despite the British troops far outweighing the Maori, the battle was seen as a draw by both sides.”
The Guardian article has a few interesting history links too about the Northern War or Flagstaff War of 1845-6.
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/northern-war
with some video of the battlefield, Pa fort, reenactment etc on NZ One News coverage: https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/remains-british-soldiers-died-more-than-170-years-ago-discovered-in-northland-mass-grave
The Flagstaff part of the Maori Wars is also covered in a chapter of Britain’s Forgotten Wars: Colonial Campaigns of the Nineteenth Century by Ian Hernon (Sutton, 2003).
There is an extensive Wikipedia entry on the Maori or New Zealand Wars, an interesting Osprey Men at Arms on the Maori Wars, a fair amount online and a short simple set of Maori Wars rules by Andy Callan that he allowed me to reprint on this blog from Military Modelling, September 1983.
Andy Callan wrote last year “Wow! That’s a real blast from the past. When I wrote these rules I saw them as a sort of Victorian assymetrical Vietnam equivalent – high tech westerners vs wily bunkered-down natives…”
I remember well the pictures of Peter Laing 15mm Maori War figures (Crimean and Zulu War figure) with a carpet forest.
https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/08/04/maori-wars-update/
and
https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/13/peter-laing-figures-in-carpet-forests/
Lots of interesting material for both historians and skirmish gamers. A difficult style of formal war, siege and guerilla fighting to reproduce.
One interesting longlived veteran from this period is Sergeant Edwin Bezar (1838-1936), who wrote his military autobiography in 1891 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Bezar
http://www.enzb.auckland.ac.nz/document/?wid=4529&page=1&action=null
1916 the Maori “Kaiser”
I was also surprised to read about the “Maori Kaiser” as he was dubbed in WW1, a Maori leader who popped up in 1916, mentioned in this NZ history website on the Maori in WW1 and WW2. One of the last gasps of Maori armed resistance before the civil rights struggle later through the 20th Century.
Titled by other papers “Kaiser’s Maori Ally”
There is a free digitised NZ newspaper archive which features the Maori Kaiser story
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/FS19160222.2.39?query=Maori%20Kaiser
and other Australian digitised newspapers https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/1033823
An interesting article looking on both sides of Maori feeling about WW1 and WW2:
https://teara.govt.nz/en/nga-pakanga-ki-tawahi-maori-and-overseas-wars/print
This teara.govt.nz website features this short summary:
A Māori Kaiser?
Ngāi Tūhoe of the Urewera was one of the tribes that suffered greatly in the 1860s wars. In 1907 the followers of Tūhoe prophet Rua Kēnana established a community in the Urewera mountains, at Maungapōhatu. With the coming of war Rua discouraged his followers from volunteering. Some Pākehā feared that he was a Māori ‘Kaiser’, actively supporting the Germans. A party of 67 police marched on Maungapōhatu in April 1916, to arrest Rua on charges of illicitly selling alcohol. An armed confrontation occurred in which Rua’s son and uncle were killed.
As one Maori concluded, reported in Ian Hernon’s book, eventually the Maori were outnumbered by pakeha foreign settlers and crippled by introduced disease.
“Overwhelming numbers and disease crippled and contained the daring Maori. But the spark of resistance did not die out … in 1928 an anonymous Maori wrote: “We have been beaten because the pakeha outnumber us in men. But we are not conquered or rubbed out, and not one of these pakeha can name the day we sued for peace. The most that can be said is that on such and such a date we left off fighting.” (Page 75)
Blogposted by Mark, Man of TIN, 20 December 2017.
Man of Tin blog 