www.waikatotimes.co.nz
MONDAY, MAY 9, 2011
7
Youngster survived tomahawk attack
While the main Maori
fighting force, led by
Rewi Maniapoto, fell
back southwards,
desperately trying to
stem the invasion, a
number of semiindependent Maori
raiding parties began a
series of deadly raids
north of the
Mangatawhiri Stream,
attacking outlying
farms and small
settlements.
In a graveyard somewhere near Kaipaki,
between Cambridge and Te Awamutu,
there was a headstone marked Joseph
Coates Wallis 1849-1933.
Joe Wallis was born into a pioneer
farming family at Wairoa, south Auckland,
at place now known as Clevedon at a time
when only few small farms had been
carved out of the heavy native forest.
While his mother and younger sister
managed the little house and garden, Joe
joined his father on the farm, milking a few
cows, raising pigs and clearing the land.
It was hard but peaceful existence until
General Duncan Cameron led his army
across the Mangatawhiri Stream several
miles to the south on his invasion of Maoriheld Waikato in July 1863.
While the main Maori fighting force, led
by Rewi Maniapoto, fell back southwards,
desperately trying to stem the invasion, a
number of semi-independent Maori raiding
parties began a series of deadly raids north
of the Mangatawhiri Stream, attacking
outlying farms and small settlements.
Many farming families packed up their
belongings and sent women and children to
the sanctuary of Auckland while the men
joined militia units. Other families opted to
stay on their farms rather than have them
looted and burned by marauding raiders
until the Government decided that all the
women and children should be brought to
safety and sent the Royal Irish Regiment to
escort them to the redoubt at Papakura.
A number of men and their sons,
Rodney Hide is just one in a long line of politicians to have apologised.
The Treasury, in Queen St, Thames.
including Joe Wallis and his father, opted
to remain on their farm as there was still
a lot of farming equipment and livestock to
take care of and protect.
The weeks passed with no sign of Maori
raiders until, in early October, word came
that an attack on supply caravans on the
Great South Rd and settlers at Wairoa was
being planned. Mr Wallis decided to load
what farm equipment he could on to a
large bullock-drawn dray and send
everything to Papakura until the
emergency was over. He had joined the
Forest Rangers but sent young Joe on the
family horse to accompany Job Hamlin,
the old bullock driver, to safety. Pigs and
poultry were turned loose into the bush.
None of the settlers or the militia groups
were aware that a fighting force of Ngati
Maru from Hauraki had answered the call
for assistance against the Pakeha invaders
from Rewi Maniapoto and had occupied a
disused pa called Rawatiroa. They were led
by Matiu and Te Taka who were armed
with relatively new percussion cap
carbines instead of the usual Maori
flintlock shotguns. Their objective was to
disrupt the flow of munitions and supplies
to Cameron’s army and, if the opportunity
arose, to kill any Pakeha men they found in
the district.
The lumbering dray and the two Pakeha
with it were legitimate targets and the first
volley killed Hamlin. Joe attempted to
wheel his horse and gallop to safety but the
ageing hack refused to move amid the
noise and confusion. Joe jumped down and
made a run for safety but was caught and
felled with several tomahawk blows.
The muskets shots had been heard by
farmers about a mile away who assumed it
was militia men out shooting pigeons and
the scene of the attack was not discovered
for several hours.
The abandoned dray and the body of the
bullock driver was discovered by Joshua
Goulding, who was searching for some
missing dairy cows. He raised the alarm. A
party of armed men returned to the scene
and found Joe with the side of his skull an
exposed mess of mangled flesh, congealed
blood and bone chips but still breathing.
The still- conscious boy and the dead
bullock driver were loaded on to the dray
which bumped and thumped along the
rough track for several hours before
reaching Papakura. There, Alexander
Thompson, a surgeon with the Royal Irish
Regiment, spent the rest of the night
cutting away torn tissue, removing bone
fragments and stitching skin across the
huge open wound.
Two years later the leaders of the Ngati
Maru raiding party were captured, tried,
convicted and sentenced to death for the
murder of the bullock driver. However,
before the sentence could be carried out
Governor George Grey intervened and
granted a stay of execution. His attorneygeneral, Henry Sewell, had come to the
conclusion that Maori in the Waikato and
the Government had been at war after July
1863 and that Pakeha men and boys, along
with Maori men and boys, were considered
combatants by both sides. The Ngati Maru
men were released a few weeks after their
trial.
Joe Wallis returned to the Wairoa farm
but took up land near Tuakau, where he
was a well known farmer until about the
time of World War I. In his later years Joe
Wallis moved even further south to a farm
at Kaipaki, where he died in 1933. Perhaps
his gravestone is still there or perhaps only
the clover flowers, wild daisies and
buttercups mark the final resting place of
one of the few people to survive the horrific
injuries inflicted by a Maori tomahawk.
Rodney Hide’s recent departure from the
ACT leadership has again thrown the issue
of apology back into the public spotlight.
Readers will recall that Hide apologised in
late 2009 for using taxpayer funds to take
his partner on overseas trips. Over the past
two years, we have witnessed a rash of
public apologies, a period described by
New Zealand comedian Michele A’Court as
the ‘‘sorry Olympics’’. In one week alone in
February 2010, public apologies were
offered by Tiger Woods for marital
indiscretions and British Cabinet
ministers for unwisely using public funds
for personal expenses.
Far from being an isolated event, the
practice of apologising seems to be
sweeping across the Western World. And
this practice has deep historical roots. In
New Zealand, the domain where apology
has been most obvious has been Treaty of
Waitangi settlements and apologies made
to Maori by the Crown as part of the
modern Treaty claims process. Since 1975 –
and especially since 1985 – the work of the
Waitangi Tribunal has led to a number of
landmark apologies to Maori claimants.
Apology and reconciliation have been a
theme in recent Australian history, too. In
2008, then prime minister and Labor leader
Kevin Rudd took the historic step of saying
sorry to Aboriginal Australians for
longstanding historical injustices and
policies of cultural genocide. The
poignancy of the Australian apology was
all the richer because of former prime
minister John Howard’s longstanding
refusal to do so. Apologies are necessary to
allow us to understand our history and
plan for the future.
John Milner
c.1838-1866
Believed to be the oldest burial in
Hamilton East, or at least the
oldest headstone, this monument
marks the grave of John William
Milner, who drowned in the
Waikato River in the section
between Hamilton and
Ngaruawahia known as the
Horotiu in August 1866. Milner
enlisted in the Third Waikato
Regiment in Cambridge, where
the regiment was based, on
November 28, 1864, after the
Waikato wars had ended. He
substituted for another
militiaman-settler who wanted to
leave, surrendering to Milner his
rural and town land grants.
Milner was recorded as a clerk, 5
foot 8 inches (172cm) tall.
Although his birthplace is not
noted, his parents are recorded as
of Manchester on the headstone.
Milner’s grave lies at an angle
to the other graves and reflects
the initial disorderliness of the
cemetery. In 1870, the Daily
Southern Cross reported that
‘‘pigs and cattle roam at pleasure’’
and as a result of a fire in the fern,
‘‘the fences and head-boards were
laid waste’’.
Wooden markers were normal
at the time, but as it was of stone,
Milner’s monument survived.
Fines were imposed on owners
of roaming stock and public fundraising events were held to
finance fences and improve
access. For many years, there was
no plan of the plots or any burial
records. An attempt in 1890 to
keep records and backdate them
to 1884 was unsuccessful, as
nearly all the markers had been
pulled out. The location and
identity of many burials have
been lost.
Professor Giselle Byrnes
History Programme, Faculty of Arts and
Social Sciences, University of Waikato
Photo: FAIRFAX
John Milner drowned in the Waikato River.
Photo: LYN WILLIAMS
Mangatawhiri
Photo: ANNE MCEWAN
American steel magnate Andrew Carnegie
sponsored the construction of libraries
throughout the United States and in a
number of other English-speaking
countries in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. One of those still standing is The
Treasury in Queen St, Thames.
Carnegie was an immigrant Scot who
believed in the power of libraries to
improve working men’s lives. He funded 18
libraries in New Zealand, the greatest
number in any country outside North
America. The Carnegie Corporation’s £2000
grant allowed Thames to replace the
Thames Free Public Library, which was
one of the earliest free libraries in New
Zealand [1880]. James McGowan, local MP
and minister of justice, laid the foundation
stone on April 7, 1905, and Mr Burns, the
mayor of Thames, opened the library eight
months later. The designer, John Currie
[c.1859-1921], was an Irish-born Auckland
architect who also designed a number of
hotels for the Nathan family of Lion
Breweries fame.
Thames librarian Edwin Lowe died
before the new library was completed and
so his widow, Harriet, took up the position
and lived in the house built for the
librarian in Davy St. Mrs Lowe was still in
charge in 1920, when at the age of 79, the
council gave her a month’s ‘‘richly
deserved’’ holiday. Thames got a new
library in 1990, and in 2009 the old building
was beautifully refurbished by the
Thames-Coromandel District Council for
use as an archive centre by the
Coromandel Heritage Trust.
Post script: Hamilton and Cambridge
also got ‘‘given’’ Carnegie libraries.
Hamilton’s building was demolished, but
Cambridge’s remains as part of the Town
Hall complex at the top end of the town.
Mangatawhiri, the name of the little farming settlement 13 kilometres east
of Pokeno on State Highway 2, takes its name from the little stream that
rises in the Hunua Ranges and meanders across the low country to the
Waikato River. The name can be translated to mean ‘‘stream where the
tawhiri trees grow’’. Tawhiri also means waving or beckoning.
Sources include: Places Names of New Zealand (Reed); New Zealand
Encyclopedia (Bateman); teara.govt.nz