Wanganui Campaign

Part of New Zealand wars

Date	16 April – 23 July 1847
Location	New Zealand
Result	British victory

Belligerents

United Kingdom

Māori

Strength

600

Casualties and losses

Three killed, one wounded

Three killed, 12 wounded

The Wanganui Campaign was a brief round of hostilities in the North Island of New Zealand as indigenous Māori fought British settlers and military forces in 1847. The campaign, which included a siege of the fledgling Wanganui settlement—then known as Petre—was among the earliest of the 19th century New Zealand wars that were fought over issues of land and sovereignty.

The Wanganui settlement had been established by the New Zealand Company in 1840 on land supposedly bought by William Wakefield in November 1839. By 1845 the settlement had grown to about 200 people and about 60 houses. The settlement was surrounded by about 4000 Māori and although settlers engaged in trade with them for food, there was also friction over their occupation of land which some Māori chiefs denied having sold, with New Zealand Company surveyors reporting obstruction and harassment. Settlers were also nervous about a possible spread of hostilities from the Hutt Valley over disputed land occupation, where one of the most prominent fighters was Te Mamaku, a principal chief of the Ngāti-Hāua-te-Rangi tribe of the Upper Wanganui.

In December 1846, 180 soldiers from the 58th Regiment and four Royal Artillery men were landed at Wanganui with two 12-pounder guns and began fortifying the town, building the Rutland Stockade on a hill at the town's northern end and the York Stockade towards the south. Another 100 soldiers from the Grenadier Company of the 65th Regiment arrived the following May. The establishment of the garrison heightened Te Mamaku's expectations of government intervention, and he vowed he would protect settlers but fight the soldiers.

On 16 April 1847 a minor chief of the Wanganui people was accidentally shot by a junior army officer, suffering a head injury. A small party of Māori decided to exact utu (revenge, or recompense) for the blood-letting and attacked the home of a settler named Gilfillan, severely wounding him and a daughter and killing his wife and three children with tomahawks. Five of the six killers were captured by lower Wanganui Māori; four were court-martialled in Wanganui and hanged at Rutland Stockade. The execution prompted a further revenge attack. About 500 or 600 heavily-armed Māori formed a taua (war party) that swept down the Wanganui River in a procession of war canoes in early May, initially plundering and burning settlers' houses and killing cattle. The warriors also killed and mutilated a soldier from the 58th Regiment who ventured out of the town. The town's residents abandoned their homes at night to begin sleeping in a small group of fortified houses.

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Wikipedia