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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 9, Issue 11 (February 1, 1935)

The Closed Frontier

The Closed Frontier.

It was in the year 1869 that Wahanui created some alarm in the pakeha settlements by raising an armed party with the avowed intention of clearing the white people out of the Upper Waikato. This was shortly after the White Cliffs massacre, the killing of the Gascoigne family and the missionary Whiteley at Pukearuhe, on the southern coast boundary of the King Country. But he and his men from the Mokau abandoned their warlike intentions when they reached Te Kuiti, and he remained there as one of King Tawhiao's advisers, eventually to become, in effect, his Prime Minister. At that period there was no more stubborn opponent of pakeha intrusion than Wahanui. Not even the fiery Rewi surpassed him in haughty antipathy to the British flag and all it signified. They bitterly assailed the pakeha for his “muruwhenua,” the forcible appropriation of land, and had their military resources been equal to their resolution there would have been a series of swift raids across the border and attacks on the farms and townships. The period 1869–75 was indeed an anxious era along the frontier. But fortunately for the peace of the Waikato the Kingites realised the ultimate hopelessness of any attempt to renew the war.

Wahanui played a friendly part in 1873 when Mr. James Mackay, the Government Civil Commissioner in the Upper Waikato, was murderously attacked in his tent at Te Kuiti, where he was pluckily negotiating with the chiefs for the surrender of the killers of Timothy Sullivan, one of Grice and Walker's employees, on the disputed border land near Puahue.

After Rewi Maniapoto had rescued Mackay from the fanatic Hauhaus who sought his death, he sent the Commissioner with an armed escort of twenty-five mounted men to Te Uira, Wahanui's home on the hills above Te Kuiti. Wahanui received Mackay cordially, had a tent pitched for him, and set an armed guard of nine men to patrol around the kainga all night. Te Kooti went up to Te Uira too, and insisted on adding three of his own men to the guard.

Such incidents show that Wahanui and the other leading men disapproved of the frontier murder, and of treacherous attacks on Europeans who trusted to their spirit of chivalry and fair play. While page 19 they were determined to maintain their independence and their isolation from the pakeha, they countenanced only such methods as were determined upon by the council of the leading men of Ngati-Maniapoto and Waikato.