www.waikatotimes.co.nz
MONDAY, MAY 2, 2011
7
Watermarked boundary of invasion
With a name now more
likely to be associated
with traffic accidents
than military
campaigns, the
Mangatawhiri Stream is
rich in historical
significance.
When voters elected a black person to the
White House in 2008, they showed a new
openness. In 2012, Americans could have a
chance to demonstrate inclusiveness to
another minority: Mormons.
Earlier this month, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, a member
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints (LDS), took a major step toward a
presidential bid by forming an exploratory
committee. A candidate for the Republican
nomination in 2008, he was a close
contender behind John McCain. Romney
appeals to voters who favour conservatism
and a strong military. Some observers
believe he would be Barack Obama’s
toughest opponent next year.
However, a 2007 poll found that 41 per
cent of white evangelicals said they would
be less likely to vote for a Mormon. Despite
strenuous public relations efforts, the LDS
faith struggles to overcome its history of
At the foot of the Bombay hills on State
Highway 1, the Mangatawhiri Stream
flows close to the busy rural settlement of
Pokeno.
In the early 1860s, the stream was the
recognised boundary between European
settlement in and around the township of
Auckland and the settler outposts of
Pukekohe and Waiuku, and the Waikato
hinterland to the south.
Following the truce in the first Taranaki
Land Wars in mid 1861, the second Maori
King, Tawhiao, asked Governor Sir George
Grey to keep European people north of the
stream and Maori would stay south of its
banks.
There could be trade between the two
societies, as Waikato farmers were
supplying much of the grain and other food
crops for the Auckland market, but there
was to be no further incursion into Maori
land by European settlers.
Tawhiao no longer trusted European
land-purchasing agents and wanted to
avoid the bloody clashes that followed the
attempts by former Governor Gore Browne
to force the sale of 600 acres at Waitara in
Taranaki.
Against the advice of Tawhiao, some
Waikato warriors had gone south to fight
alongside their Taranaki relatives and
Grey saw the Maori King and his followers
as the principal cause of the Taranaki
conflict and an impediment to expanded
British colonisation.
Rumours of a planned major attack on
polygamy and racism. Romney’s greatgrandfather had five wives. Although the
church supposedly set aside polygamy in
1890, church leaders performed plural
marriages into the early 20th century and
polygamy in Utah today bothers many
Americans. Until 1978, the church barred
black people from its lay priesthood. Many
Christians view LDS beliefs as outside
Christianity.
The religion’s founder, Joseph Smith,
ran for president in 1844 before a lynch
mob killed him. In 1968, George W Romney,
governor of Michigan and father of Mitt,
lost the Republican nomination to Richard
Nixon. Congressman Mo Udall lost the
Democratic nomination to Jimmy Carter
in 1976 after black activists criticised him.
How will Mitt Romney fare?
Dr Raymond Richards
Senior lecturer in history,
Waikato University
Auckland were also circulating and Grey
gave his newly appointed commander of
the Imperial Forces in New Zealand, Major
General Sir Duncan Cameron, the task of
subduing the so-called Waikato ‘‘rebels’’
before the attack could be mounted.
Historians are not sure if Grey was
aware that the rumoured attack on
Auckland had originated during a nightlong rum drinking session of sailors and
Waikato Maori, and was little more than
befuddled bravado.
Cameron’s first task was to build a
supply road from Auckland into the
Waikato, supposedly to facilitate trade, but
few people, Maori or Pakeha, were under
any illusion that the road was anything but
a military highway.
Maori tribes living in the northern
Waikato were in no doubt that British
soldiers would invade their homelands as
soon as they were able. Rather than wait
until they were faced with a huge, wellequipped army, small groups began a
number of pre-emptive raids on outlying
farms and little settlements, trying to drive
the farmers back towards Auckland.
Intimidation and threats led to blows, then
shots, and a farmer was killed near
Ramarama.
On July 11, 1863, Grey issued a
proclamation demanding that all ‘‘natives’’
living north of the Mangatawhiri Stream
were to sign an oath of allegiance to the
Crown and give up their arms or retire
south of the stream.
None of the senior Waikato tribal leaders
had signed the Treaty of Waikato or ceded
sovereignty to anyone. Grey’s
proclamation was, in effect, a declaration
of war: both sides took immediate action
the next day.
Somewhere near Ramarama a British
supply convoy of wagons and drays on the
Complaints about the price of milk have
dominated many a headline recently.
These concerns are far from new. Townie
grizzles about the cost of bovine products
have been as perennial in this country as
farmer indignation about everything else.
An opinionated journalist for the
Waikato Times noted in October of 1875
that given the anticipated yield of hay that
season, ‘‘the price of milk and butter ought
not be so high’’.
The anonymous writer added that
‘‘sixpence per quart is a high price to pay
for milk, especially as grazing for cows can
be had on the run for 2s 6d per annum’’.
Sixteen years later, another Times
correspondent commented on the
‘‘unpleasant announcement’’ that milk was
to rise from 4d to 5d per quart.
The 1886 readership is favoured with a
new road was attacked by Waikato Maori.
Five soldiers were killed and as many
wounded before the raiders withdrew.
From his troops’ winter quarters at
Pokeno, several miles to the south, Duncan
Cameron, unaware that his supply train
was being attacked, led his army across the
Mangatawhiri Stream in what was, in
effect, an invasion of the Waikato. They did
not travel far before meeting stiff
resistance.
At Koheroa, not far from the riverside
township of Mercer, Waikato fighters
under the leadership of Rewi Maniapoto
were still building a heavily fortified pa
when Cameron led a section of his army of
about 500 men across open country in open
skirmish order.
They had learned enough bloody lessons
in Taranaki not to take Maori fighters
armed with old shotguns too lightly. When
the imperial soldiers were within close
range of the half-built pa a volley of shots
sent Cameron’s men to ground, with one
man dead and several wounded.
A tough veteran of the Crimean War and
many other campaigns, Cameron bravely
rallied his men and charged the pa, driving
the Waikato force into retreat leaving a
dozen or more of their men, dead and
wounded behind. The Land Wars, which
King Tawhiao tried desperately to avoid,
had come to Waikato.
Today Auckland’s Great South Road and
the Southern Motorway follow the route
carved out of the forest and swamps by
Cameron’s soldiers in 1863. Thousands of
vehicles travel this historically significant
section of road every day but few ever
notice the Mangatawhiri Stream that runs
under the road on its meandering course to
the Waikato River. Waikato Maori elders
have their own theories about the nearby
infamous black spot there.
Sarah McNickle
c 1867-1901
Evidence for one of the more
tragic family histories can be seen
on a tall headstone erected in
Hamilton East cemetery by Moses
McNickle to commemorate the
death of his wife, Sarah, on
December 23, 1901, aged 34.
Sarah had recently given birth
to a son, William, and may have
had complications relating to the
birth.
Moses McNickle came from
Ireland in the 1870s and worked
on the Gordonton and Woodland
estates before buying land in what
is now Claudelands. He married
Sarah Thomas in 1887. According
to a family member, Moses was a
hard, taciturn man ‘‘13 years
older than his gentle Sarah’’.
Moses and Sarah had nine
children, of whom three died
young and another, also called
Moses, was killed in France in
1916.
William’s death in 1911 was
particularly gruesome. The 10year-old had been left alone at
home and his sister discovered
him lying on the kitchen floor in
a pool of blood with half his face
shot away and a gun beside him.
At the inquest, held the next
day at the family home, Moses
McNickle stated that he loaded
the gun a few days earlier to shoot
a hawk, but couldn’t account for it
being at full cock. As far as he
knew, the boy had never handled
the gun before.
The gun was kept on the wall
above the kitchen hearth.
The policeman who attended
said the gun could be fired by
dropping it butt-end on to the
floor and the coroner declared the
death to be accidental.
wide-ranging discussion on the business
practices of the Waikato diary farmer,
lamenting the treatment of stock and
womenfolk (in that order). Local butter is
thought to be ‘‘cow grease’’, the author
leaving us in no doubt that it, too, is overly
expensive: ‘‘I am thoroughly convinced
that the average price received by the
farmers for this concoction ought to realise
a very handsome return upon its
manufacture, and if there is any excessive
profit, it is the farmers who reap it, and the
sooner he is made to comprehend his
position, the better for the palate and
digestive organs of man it will be.’’
A happier year for the consumer,
evidently, was 1904. Milk prices slipped
mysteriously to 1d per pint, a fact the
Poverty Bay Herald described as a ‘‘boon to
housekeepers but a severe blow to milk
sellers’’. They add conspiratorially that
‘‘the marked difference in price is arousing
curiosity as to the cause’’. John Campbell
could not have phrased it better.
Sarah McNickle had recently given birth to a son when she died in 1901
at the age of 34.
Photo: LYN WILLIAMS
TOKOROA
Hamilton’s courthouse in Anglesea St was
opened by J G Cobbe, the justice minister,
on February 23, 1931. Local judges and
magistrates had frequently criticised the
inadequacies of the previous courthouse,
which stood on what is now the SkyCity
Casino site in Victoria St.
The new courthouse was designed by J T
Mair, the government architect who was
also responsible for the Paeroa Post Office
(1926) and the Blue Baths in Rotorua
(1931-4).
Mair was born in Invercargill and
studied at the University of Pennsylvania,
where his college nicknames were
‘‘Foreigner’’ and ‘‘Maria’’! A major
Depression-era construction project, the
courthouse was acclaimed at its opening by
Cobbe and Hamilton’s four-time mayor
John Fow.
It wasn’t as successful in the judiciaries’
eyes, but ‘‘acoustical correction’’ work in
1936 hopefully made them happier.
At a time when art deco was all the rage,
inter-war government buildings like the
courthouse drew inspiration from the
architecture of ancient Greece and Rome.
Classical architectural details like the
symmetry of the facade, the columns with
their Ionic capitals and the arched
windows with overscaled keystones were
intended to create an impression of
enduring tradition and security.
Majestically located on what is arguably
Hamilton’s most historically significant
city block, the courthouse is a classical
temple of justice.
Fittingly, the new courthouse built
beside it in 1993 doffs its cap to Mair’s
classical design but doesn’t try to compete
with it. The promised refurbishment of the
Courthouse by the Ministry of Justice can’t
come a moment too soon for this heritage
treasure.
Tokoroa, the name of the township about 22 kilometres south of Putaruru in
the heart of the North Island’s pine forest country, has a number of
translations. The most obvious is a long pole or stick and may refer to an
event or incident no longer remembered. In some dialects of Maori, tokoroa
can also mean thin or lean and was applied to native rats at a time of the
year when they were thin or lean. In the days when the region was covered
with native forest, the Polynesian rat, or kiore, was a sought-after delicacy
and the condition of the little rodents was an important factor in Maori food
harvesting decisions.
Sources include: Places Names of New Zealand (Reed), New Zealand
Encyclopedia (Bateman), teara.govt.nz