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Updated: June 7, 2025


There were then not more than ninety soldiers in New Zealand, and when Heke threatened to burn Kororarika, and do the same to Auckland, there was too good reason to fear that he might be as good as his word, for he had 200 well-armed men at his back, and a comrade of his, named Kawiti, had nearly as many.

We had been expecting with great anxiety the return of our brig; and, soon after the termination of this affair, we had the pleasure of seeing her enter the bay, after her cruise from Tongataboo and Tucopea. This was of no importance as it respected Tongataboo or Tucopea; but, on his return to Kororarika, it was not only placing him, but all of us, in a dreadful dilemma!

These inquiries showed much injustice and sometimes wanton cruelty, and when a petition came from the respectable people of Kororarika, asking that some check should be put upon the licence of the low white men who frequented that port, the English Government resolved to annex New Zealand if the Maoris were willing to be received into the British Empire.

There on a little platform on a chair of state sat the new Governor, with the officers of the ship in their uniform, and a guard of mariners and sailors; while beside the platform stood the leading white men of Kororarika. Flags fluttered all round the spot. At noon, when Hobson took his seat, there were over five hundred Maoris, of whom fifty were chiefs, in front of the platform.

In the August of 1844 a young chief named Honi Heke, who dwelt at the Bay of Islands, on account of a private quarrel with a rough whaler, entered the town of Kororarika with a band of armed followers. He plundered a few shops and cut down a flagstaff on which the Union Jack floated from a steep hill behind the town.

But fights and ambushes, slaughters, the eating of prisoners and all the horrid scenes of Maori war went on from week to week all over the North Island. Kororarika.# All this fighting of the Maori tribes made them more dependent on the trade they had with white men.

In the year 1838 there were about 500 persons resident in the little town, which was now called Kororarika, but at times there were nearly double that number of people resident in it for months together. A wild and reckless place it was, for sailors reckoned themselves there to be beyond the reach of English law.

All were jealous of him, in consequence of his possessions at Kororarika giving him such a decided advantage over every other tribe, by his trade and intercourse with Europeans.

Grey agreed, but left 200 soldiers at Kororarika in order to keep the Maoris of the district in check. Rauparaha.# During the eighteen months while Heke's war was going on, troubles had been brewing at Wellington, where Rauparaha and Rangihaeata kept up an agitation.

When a chief throws off his mats, he seems as proud of displaying the beautiful ornaments figured on his skin as a first-rate exquisite is in exhibiting himself in his last fashionable attire. It is an essential part of war-like preparations. The whole of this district of Kororarika was preparing for the approaching war.

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