MAORI WARS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 102, 3 May 1933, Page 11

MAORI WARS

THE WAIRAU AMBUSH

ANNIVERSARY TOMORROW

Seventy years .ago tomorrow the first shot in the second Taranaki war between the Maoris and tho pakehas was iired. Tho Taranaki Maoris and the Ngati-Buanui tribe planned ambuscades to cut off communications between Tataraimaka and New Plymouth, and warning of tliesc intended ambush tactics had been sent to the authorities in !N rew Plymouth by friendly Natives, but were lightly regarded. Sir George Grey w:is in the habit of riding out to tho military ppst at Tataraimaka (fifteen miles from New Plymouth), and ou Ihe morning of May i a, party of thirty or forty warriors lay in ambush near I he Wai ran and Waimoukau streams waiting for the Governor and his party to pass. Tho Governor, however, did not pass that day, but a military party of ten men did, and all but on© were killed. Sergeant-Major E. Bezar, of Wellington, who celebrated his ninty-fifth birthday ill February, was in charge of a party of about thirty soldiers who were working on the road not many miles from where tho ambush took place. He clearly remembers the military party passing, and was present at the outpost when the bodies of the unf ortunato men wero brought in. Three weeks later, a small party of Natives attacked a mounted officer about eight miles from New Plymouth. The officer was not injured and he managed to capture a young half-caste (Hori Toira), who was identified as one of the Natives who had attacked tho military party. He was charged with' murder —although in Maori eyes this ambush was thoroughly in aecordanc.owith the'rules of war—was tried and found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged. lie j was taken to Auckland for execution, but his sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life. He' was released after serving four years, however, and ho went no more upon j tho warpath. % I Forty-five years later, in 1908, j Sergeant-Major Bezar met Hori Teira in | Wellington. i Hori told Sergeant-Major I Bezar that the ambush in 1863 was in-' tended for Sir George Grey and General Cameron, whom the Maoris had planned' to kill. |