The wider Kihikihi district is associated with Raukawa and Ngati Maniapoto. The presence of both of these iwi in the Waipa and Waikato river region dates back to the arrival of the Tainui waka at Kawhia. The important rangatira Rewi Manga Maniapoto (?-1894), a direct descendent of the ancestor Maniapoto, had whakapapa links to Ngati Paretekawa, a hapu of Ngati Maniapoto. Between 1819 and 1820, Ngati Maniapoto and Waikato forces fought and defeated Ngati Toa, who were led by Te Rauparaha, and their Raukawa allies. Raukawa eventually followed Te Rauparaha south. In the mid-1800s, Kihikihi was the home of Ngati Paretekawa and another Ngati Maniapoto hapu, Ngati Ngutu, and was regarded by Rewi Maniapoto as his kainga. By the beginning of the Waikato War in 1863, Kihikihi was a large settlement well known for its beautiful groves of peach trees and fertile soil.
Little is known of Rewi Maniapoto’s early years except that he would have been educated and brought up as a chief, and it is unclear exactly when he was born. His memorial gives his date of birth as 1807 but this would have made him 87 when he died, rather than in his seventies as most contemporary sources describe him. His mother, Te Kore, was killed by Waikato at Paterangi, close to Kihikihi. His father Te Ngohi, also known as Kawhia, would later be a signatory to the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. In the 1830s, the first Church Missionary Society missionaries arrived in the Otawhao (Te Awamutu) district and Rewi subsequently received a Wesleyan education at Te Kopua mission station, studying scripture and gaining literacy. He was particularly interested in their lessons on European agricultural techniques – the kainga at Kihikihi contained peach and apple orchards, wheat and maize fields, and water-powered flourmills, creating produce for the European market. The missionary John Morgan (1806/1807?–1865) was another formative influence and after their meeting in 1841 Rewi Maniapoto extended his protection to Morgan for 20 years. Although his name is the Catholic Maori version of Levi, there is no record of Rewi being baptised, and he was described as Anglican when he died in 1894.
In the 1850s, Rewi Maniapoto was involved with the beginnings of the Kingitanga (Maori King) movement, which was founded in in 1858 with the aim of uniting Māori under a single sovereign, and developed into one of New Zealand’s most enduring political movements. Waikato is the seat of the Kingitanga. In 1858, Rewi Maniapoto raised the flag of the first Maori King, Potatau Te Wherowhero (?–1860), at Ngaruawahia. Two years later, Rewi Maniapoto and other leaders such as Te Winitana Tupotahi and Raureti Paiaka constructed a whare runanga (meeting house) called Hui Te Rangiora at Kihikihi, which housed a runanga or council created under Kingitanga auspices.
With Rewi Maniapoto as tumuaki (head of the Council), the runanga made laws for the local area and also formulated strategies for protecting Maori land. The latter included discussing a course of action after the Government attacked Wiremu Kingi Te Rangitake (circa 1795-1882) at Waitara, Taranaki. Rewi secured the approval of the ailing Te Wherowhero to assist Kingi in his resistance to land sales in Taranaki, and he and his Ngati Maniapoto forces arrived in time to ensure the defeat of Crown troops at Puke-Ta-Kauere, on 27 June 1860. Te Wherowhero’s death two days earlier meant that his son Matutaera, later known as Kingi Tawhiao (?-1894), took on the mantle of Kingship.
In the early 1860s, Governor George Grey (1812–1898) authorised the construction of several roads leading directly into the Waikato, and also planned Pokeno township and established a police station at Te Kohekohe. In response to these and other aggressive actions against the King’s authority, Rewi Maniapoto took the initiative and instigated the expulsion of the government magistrate, John Gorst, from the region. Grey ordered Lieutenant General Duncan Cameron (1808-1888) to begin the invasion of the Waikato. The Waikato campaign was the largest of the New Zealand Wars and involved the deployment of some 12,000 Crown troops against 5,000 Maori combatants. During the course of the war, Rewi Maniapoto participated in many battles and was renowned for his leadership and great skills in military strategy.
Maori inhabitants had been withdrawn from Kihikihi by the time that Crown troops arrived there on 23 February 1864. Rewi Maniapoto did not attempt to defend the village as it had no entrenchments or natural defences. The troops burned and looted the village, and destroyed Hui Te Rangiora. Just eight days after occupation, military surveyors started drawing up 400 one-acre lots and Kihikihi soon became the most southerly settlement of the Auckland Province. After the war many of the allotments were given to members of the disbanded Forest Rangers.
Two of the most tragic battles of the New Zealand Wars took place at nearby Rangiaowhia on 20 February 1864, and at Orakau, four kilometres southeast of Kihikihi, between 31 March and 2 April 1864. The siege of Orakau later became mythologised in popular culture, as in the 1925 film Rewi’s Last Stand. Rewi was opposed to building a pa at the site because it was too exposed and had no water source, but he agreed to the wish of the majority. In late March, the 300-strong force, including many women and children, was surrounded and besieged before being able to complete its fortifications. By 2 April, the defenders were facing 1,400 troops, had run out of food and water, and were nearly out of ammunition. Major Gilbert Mair (1843-1923), on behalf of General Cameron, offered the defenders the chance to surrender. The famous reply of ‘Ka whawhai tonu matou, Ake! Ake! Ake!’ (We will fight on for ever and ever!) has often been attributed to Rewi Maniapoto although the truth of what was spoken, and by whom, is debated. Around mid-afternoon that same day the men, women and children broke through enemy lines and headed for the Puniu River, pursued by von Tempsky’s and William Jackson’s Forest Rangers. Under Rewi Maniapoto’s expert military command the incomplete pa had resisted five attacks, but just over half of the defenders were killed, most of them during their retreat. The battle of Orakau proved to be the last major engagement of the Waikato War.
In the following years Rewi Maniapoto transitioned from military leader to political negotiator, carefully wielding his influence with both Maori and Pakeha to affect change. On 29 June 1878, Rewi met with Grey at Waitara. A ‘negotiated peace settlement was concluded…whereby Rewi accepted the new order of things’. Rewi Maniapoto was aware that he had placed himself in a delicate position between King Tawhiao and the Government, and stated that he wished ‘to have things so arranged that both races can go together without one crushing the other.’ But his plan to create a self-governing Maori district, broadly identical with the limits of the King Country, where these lands and a proposed main trunk railway through the territory would be used to advantage Ngati Maniapoto and Waikato was rejected by both of these iwi, possibly because it was perceived as accepting, and even encouraging, European intrusion.
In 1879, the government gifted Rewi Maniapoto an acre of land close to the site of the destroyed Hui Te Rangiora in Kihikihi, and promised him a house and pension. The house was intended as a place in which the new peace could be cemented. The Waikato Times reported that ‘the allotment occupies one of the finest sites in the township, and, it being a corner one, is very valuable’. The house was constructed by J.H. Mandeno and the government covered the building cost of £677. It was just over 17 metres long and nearly 13 metres wide, and inside was a drawing room, dining room, kitchen, laundry, and eight bedrooms. The materials used were kauri and rimu for the frame, kahikatea for the external cladding, kauri shingles for the main roof and corrugated iron for the curved roof of the verandah. The foundation stone was laid by Maniapoto’s daughter Nia Te Kore. The house was handed over to Rewi Maniapoto in early February 1881, in a ceremony attended by his former adversary William Jackson, amongst others. A number of conversations were held between Rewi Maniapoto and the government about the promised Crown Grant, which was to allocate the land to him, and then pass the land to his daughter, at that time around eight years old, on his death, and which was to also have three chiefs as trustees for the land if she died without issue.
Like the earlier whare runanga, the new house was named Hui Te Rangiora and was similarly an important place of gathering and discussion. In subsequent years, it was the site of many notable meetings between Rewi and people such as Grey, Tawhiao, Native Minister John Sheehan (1844-1885), and Mair. Historian James Cowan (1870-1943), who knew the house well from childhood, later recorded ‘seeing King Tawhiao, with six hundred armed Kingites, march in from the Maori country and take up his quarters in the house.’ This was shortly after Tawhiao’s formal surrender to the Government in 1881. Rewi Maniapoto lived at the house for a time with his wife Te Rohu and their daughter, although he preferred to live in a house on the other side of the Puniu River. He also later set up a general store on a corner of the site with a business partner, which for a time became a successful business. Maniapoto’s only daughter, Nia Te Kore, died in 1890 before her father while still a young woman, although his wife also had a son from a previous marriage.
In 1891, by now very frail, Maniapoto attempted to have the Crown Grant altered, as his daughter had died before him. He said at the time that he was concerned that the ownership of the land would cause problems amongst his people after his death. At first he asked that the grant be cancelled, and the land returned to the government, and then that the grant could be altered so that could go to his wife, and then to her son. No resolution to his requests were forthcoming before his death.
By late February 1894, Maniapoto was very ill and staying at his home on the Puniu River. He sent a letter to George Grey and expressed his desire that they should be buried in the same grave. Grey travelled to see him, and around this time made plans for a memorial to be erected in Maniapoto’s name. The public was invited to contribute to the cost of the memorial, although the expense was mainly borne by Grey. Soon after Grey’s visit, Premier Richard Seddon also visited the ailing chief.
In early April, the Auckland Star reported that ‘a handsome monument is now being made for Rewi to the order of Sir George Grey, at the works of Mr Tait, monumental mason, Rutland street’. It also recorded that while Grey had paid for the monument, the government had paid for the costs of the Te Reo translation of the inscription. The monument was brought as far as Te Awamutu by train. Rewi Maniapoto returned to the house in Kihikihi especially for the erection of the memorial, and he was able to inspect it before its installation a few metres away from his house. The memorial was unveiled on 23 April 1894 by Seymour George on behalf of George Grey, who had by now left for England. It was ‘a gala day’ in Kihikihi and ‘the town was literally filled with visitors – nearly 1000 people of whom 200 were Europeans.’ Rewi watched the proceedings from his verandah.
On 21 June 1894, Rewi Maniapoto died at his house in Kihikihi. The tangi lasted over a week and drew a very large crowd of mourners, including King Tawhiao who arrived with 200 Waikato, and 12 wagons of food for the feast to follow the tangi. The body was placed under an awning next to the memorial, but for some time there was a dispute between iwi over where the body should be buried. This was resolved when all parties agreed to bury the body at the foot of the memorial, as Rewi had wished. Special dispensation to bury the body on private land was granted by Premier Richard Seddon. The local Anglican minister was absent at the time, so the Maori Wesleyan Minister Reverend Hauraki Paul conducted the service to lay the coffin to rest in both Te Reo and English, at nightfall on 4 July. The coffin was then buried on the southeast side of the memorial at a depth of eight feet: ‘it seemed to most Europeans present a peculiarly strange proceeding, for everything belonging to the deceased in the shape of clothing, mats, rugs, shawls, carpets, rolls of linoleum, even to his hat and umbrella were all thrown into the grave, some pitched under the coffin and some over it’.
The tenor of the newspaper reports of his death reflect the changing sentiments of the time – by the time of his death in 1894 journalists were able to reflect that his actions in the war and afterwards had made him ‘a true patriot, and a chief of whom the Maori race has reason to be proud … Brave, eloquent, unselfish, magnanimous, honest and truthful, he was a foe to fear, a friend to cherish. May he rest peacefully beneath the soil he loved so well’.
After Rewi Maniapoto’s death, a number of petitions from Ngati Maniapoto people to the government strongly disputed the idea that the land would pass to his widow and thence to her son, particularly as now he was buried on the site – they pointed out that his widow’s son (Ngamotu) was not of Ngati Maniapoto descent, and that they could not find it acceptable for someone other than Ngati Maniapoto to care for the land on which their kaumatua was buried. After Rewi Maniapoto’s death, Te Rohu continued to live in the house, but also in the other property on the Puniu River. From around 1897, concern was mounting in Kihikihi about the behaviour of people who used the house while visiting the town. The Town Board reported there was a great deal of drunkenness there, and the house was falling down.
In 1901, the government ‘repossessed’ the land, and Te Rohu was provided with a small pension to move out of the house. For a number of years the house was leased by the chief Te Heuheu Tukino (chief of Tuwharetoa) to allow him to stay there while visiting the area, and he paid for repairs to the building and ensured the grave and monument were cared for. After Te Heuheu’s occupation ended, the police again became concerned about those using the house. A photograph taken in around 1910 shows the memorial inside an iron railing fence, with two carved figures in front of the memorial. It is unclear when these were added. One was of Ahumai - sister of the Raukawa leader, Hitiri Te Paerata - who is credited with saying during the battle of Orakau in 1864, ‘Ki te mate nga tane, me mate ano nga wāhine me nga tamariki’ – ‘If the men die, the women and children must die also.’ The other is labeled Tamatea.
The legal status of the property remained unclear. In 1911, legislation was passed to cancel the original Crown Grant for the land and vest it in the Maniapoto-Tuwharetoa Maori Land Board ‘for such purposes as the Governor may from time to time decide, the interest of the Ngati Maniapoto Tribe and the Native Race generally being paramount’.
Ngati Maniapoto continued to be concerned about the ownership of the land and house, regularly petitioning the government to vest the land in the hands of those more closely related to Rewi Maniapoto, and wanting the house to be returned to its former state so that it could continue to be a meeting house. At times, the iwi stated that Rewi Manaiapoto’s remains may have to be removed if this didn’t occur. In 1919, the Rewi Maniapoto Memorial Committee was established under the authority of the Waikato Maniapoto Land Board ‘for the purposes of managing and effecting improvements to the House, stone fences and the land.’ The following year James Cowan wrote to the Department of Internal Affairs about the state of the house. He said that while the tomb was being looked after by relatives, the house itself was ‘very neglected’, and noted the continued concern of Ngati Maniapoto about the ownership of the land. Despite interventions from Judge MacCormick of the Native Land Court, nothing was done to improve the condition of the house and in 1923, the house was taken down, and the timber reused elsewhere in Kihikihi: ‘by the removal of the house another link with the past is broken.’
The Maori Purposes Act 1931 vested Lot 112 in a Rewi Maniapoto Memorial Committee, whose purpose was to protect and maintain the memorial, and other purposes to the benefit of Ngati Maniapoto. The members of the committee were to be all Ngati Maniapoto, and appointed by the Maori Land Court. In the years that followed, some queried the inaction of the committee in looking after the memorial, and in 1936, the iron fence around the memorial was taken down and replaced with a ponga fence, disturbing the area around the grave and causing further upset; this was quickly replaced again with an iron fence. In the 1940s and 1950s, Rehe Te Amohanga and others attempted to care for the site. In 1964, a wall was constructed around the memorial. At various times the local town council advocated that something be done with the reserve, being an acre in size on the main street in the town, and in 1968 was still an open paddock. It was suggested that it be made into a ‘Memorial Park’, but at the same time the memorial committee asked the Maori Land Court for permission to lease some of the site for shops. Others in Ngati Maniapoto, supported by Heritage New Zealand (then known as the New Zealand Historic Places Trust), opposed the suggestion, and the application was declined by the Court.
In January 1990, the Maori Land Court issued an order declaring the status of the land to be Maori freehold land. In 1990, a large-scale renovation of the area was organised as a community project. This involved the installation of benches, planter boxes and carvings. In 1991, an impressive carved gateway was erected. Further work was completed in 2012 in preparation for the 150-year anniversary of the battle of Orakau in 2014. The reserve is currently (2016) maintained by the Waipa District Council, in conjunction with the memorial committee.
Holding especial importance as the only land returned to Ngati Maniapoto within the area confiscated by the government after the Waikato War, the place continues to be a focal point for important events and celebrations within the community, particularly for tangata whenua.
