Last week, we ran a piece by Buddy Mikaere on the aftermath of the Battle of Pukehinahina-Gate Pā and its devastating consequences for Tauranga Māori. In this week’s extract from Victory at Gate Pā?, Buddy Mikaere and Cliff Simons look at what made the battle itself so remarkable for both Māori and Pākehā.
On 29 April 1864, just over 200 Māori faced a force of about 1,700 Pākehā on a grassy hillside on the outskirts of the fledgling town of Tauranga. Both sides fully intended to destroy each other.
But the fight that followed — the Battle of Pukehinahina or Gate Pā — is largely remembered as a Māori victory, even though they abandoned the battlefield during the night.
It is also remembered for being one of the worst reverses suffered by an Imperial force at the hands of “natives” in the history of the British Empire.
But can we really say that it was a Māori victory? It certainly contained all the elements of a victory, because in a stunning feat of arms and courage, a small band of Māori sent a much larger and better armed adversary fleeing in panicked disarray.
However, the Māori side hardly acted as victors after the battle. They abandoned their shattered pā and crept off into the night, taking many of their wounded comrades with them. In the light of what happened next, it was a classic Pyrrhic victory where the battle was won but the war was decisively lost.
The Pākehā “army” that day was made up of a mix of soldiers, sailors and marines backed by a formidable artillery battery — the biggest ever assembled in colonial New Zealand. The soldiers were a mix of veterans of Crimea and the Indian campaigns, while the sailors and marines were drawn from the warships that had transported the troops from Auckland. Some of the ships had come from the Baltic via the Australian Station.
This mixed force was in turn backed up by a reserve force of some 600 “local” troops, most drawn from the 1st Regiment of the newly formed Waikato Militia.
The Militia numbered in its ranks both locals and recruits from Australia drawn to New Zealand by promises of land grants in return for military service.
The defending Māori irregulars came mainly from the three-local iwi of Ngāiterangi, Ngāti Ranginui and Ngāti Pūkenga, reinforced by contingents from other tribes: Waitaha, Whakatōhea from the Eastern Bay of Plenty, perennial Tauranga allies Ngāti Rangiwewehi of Te Arawa and an itinerant band of Māori mercenaries, Ngāti Koheriki, largely members of the Hauraki iwi of Ngāti Pāoa and who came from the East Wairoa–Hunua area.
The Māori numbers were estimated to be around 230, possibly a few more. When the battle was over on the following morning, there were 111 British dead and wounded. On the Māori side, it was estimated that about 25–30 Māori had been killed and an unknown number wounded.
In New Zealand, this small piece of our history is not particularly well known. School curricula for many generations have not been too fussed with New Zealand history, something that is thankfully changing.
But it is a shame, because it means many opportunities have been missed for us to ask ourselves questions like: what lessons can we learn today from the events of that afternoon in 1864 and its aftermath?
Largely driven by the revival of Anzac Day remembrances, our attitudes to wars past have changed dramatically. Where once the war dead were characterised as noble and glorious heroes who laid down their lives to preserve our freedom, that is now undergoing a subtle change and is being replaced by a sobering sadness at the waste of millions of lives and a sometimes bitter resentment at the blind loyalty to the inept leadership that threw those young lives away.
On a smaller scale, it is the same with Gate Pā. Over 150 years on, there is no glorious victory to celebrate, but there is a sadness derived from the mature reflection of hindsight and regret that no one in Tauranga on either side saw the opportunity to broker a resolution that did not involve fighting.
So why should this battle, a relatively small affray in the affairs of the Empire, be of such i