The Poverty Bay massacre of 1868

Abstract

In order that one may approach the main theme of this thesis, the massacre at Poverty Bay, the events leading there to, and the effects thereof, some slight knowledge is required of the general situation in New Zealand in the years immediately preceding. The writer considers that no apology is needed for introducing into a work that has for its title "The Poverty Bay Massacre of 1868", such apparently unrelated topics as the campaigns of 1845 to 1868 and the cult of Pai-Marire. In any historical review, cause and effect are so closely related that it is difficult, when choosing a particular field of research, to decide how much to include and, more important, how much to discard. The Maori Wars in the Waikato and Taranaki districts spread through the whole of the North Island and in time to the East Coast. Here they were intensified by the blend of Christianity and savage barbarity that is known as Pai-Marire or Hauhauism. It was during this campaign on the Coast that Te Kooti Rikirangi first came into political prominence. A study of Hauhauism is interesting in itself; reviewed in connection with the central figure of this thesis, Te Kooti, it acquires new significance. It is doubtful how far he was sincere in the religious ritual he instituted, itself a modification, and an adaptation of the old Pai-Marire cult, but out of it he fashioned a powerful weapon against the Pakeha. Perhaps it deserves a place as a psychological study of the influence of community worship in a mysterious and militant ritual upon the religious emotionalism of any sect and when, as here, that sect was composed of semi-civilised or wholly savage Maoris at a critical period in the history of their race, it was inevitable that it should issue in action.

This thesis represents an attempt at more than merely collecting loose threads about the massacre into one narrative. It has been the writer's aim to place the massacre in its right setting in the history of New Zealand, and thus to show its significance. The method chosen has been that of grouping the events round one central figure, that of the perpetrator of the massacre, and the first four chapters therefore are incidental though necessary. The history of this man continues long after 1868, the date of the massacre and a small section has been added to cover the period 1868 to 1893, the year of his death on the plea that though irrelevant to the subject of the thesis it gives a rounded effect that might otherwise be lacking--Introduction.