KIRIKIRIROA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19798, 19 November 1927, Page 1 (Supplement)

KIRIKIRIROA.

HAMILTON'S BEGINNING.

BY MATANGA

Hamilton's agricultural and pastoral show, on the evo of the town's jubilee as a borough, sends thought back to the time of the Waikato's first occupation by white settlers, in a day of courageous and romantic adventure. It was a troubled time. The native chiefs of the region were nursing resentment against the Government. The disturbances of the sixties, beginning at VVaitara over a matter of land purchase, spread to the Waikato, and on July 11, 1863, a rebel Waikato force, in two columns, was despatched to attack Auckland and make good the Maori threat to drive all the Europeans into the sea. It did not succeed, but its setting out precipitated a crisis.

On the very day that its march began, the Government issued a notification to the Waikato chiefs. Sir George Grey's words to them were frank and determined. The notification opened:

Europeans quietly living on their own lands in Waikato have been driven away; their property has been plundered; their wives and children have been taken from them. By the instigation of some of you, officers and soldiers were murdered at Tara naki. Others of you have since expressed approval of these murders. Crimes have been committed in other parts of the island, and the criminals have been rescued, or sheltered, under the colour of your authority You are now assembling in armed bands: you are constantly threatening to come down the river to ravage the settlement of Auckland, and to murder peaceful settlers. Some of you offered a safe passage through your territories to armed parties contemplating such outrages.

It proceeded to offer clemency to the well-disposed, but threatened others with confiscation of their lands, " which lands will be occupied by a population capable of protecting, in the future, tiie quiet and unoffending from the violence with which they are now so constantly threatened." The 4th Waikato Location. The notification was unavailing, and repressive measures were necessary On July 17, the rebels were defeated in the Koheroa ranges; on November 20 there was another success, despite severe British losses; and in April of the next year, by the capture of Orakau Pa, in spite of Rewi's expressed determination to " fight oil for ever and ever and ever," the Waikato campaign was ended. But there was still need to preserve an armed occupation of the district. So the threatened confiscation of Maori lands was carried into effect, and settlements of military, naval and militia men, as well as of others accepting military obligations, were located in the Waikato.

There was a protracted difference of opinion between Governor Grey and his advisers concerning the line the outposts were to take —he insisting on a thorough occupation of the Lower Waikato first as a base for ultimate extension, and they urging with equal stubbornness that the only practicable scheme for protecting the settled districts involved a line of military posts " from Raglan or Kawhia to Tauranga." Their argument triumphed, and the 4th Waikatos, enlisted in Sydney by Captain William Steele and accommodated temporarily at Onehunga, were detailed for service at a point to be selected on the river. Their precise location was chosen by Colonel Haultain, In a letter dated Auckland, July 11, 1864, and sent to the Colonial Defence Minister, he tells the story of the choice. " I have also, in compliance with my telegraphic message of the 24t.h June," he writes, " visited the native village of Kirikiriroa, which I consider a favourable position for another military settlement. The landing places are good on both banks, and there would be a sufficiency of good land for 500 or 600 men but two or three miles further down the river. The soil on both sides is more sandy, and continues generally inferior as far as Ngaruawahia. There is plenty of wood on the left bank at Kirikiriroa. I have directed the surveyors to proceed with their work." A week or two later the Hon. T. Russell, in a memorandum of advice to the Governor, says that " the men of the 4th Regiment at various parts about Auckland (except those that it may be considered necessary to maintain) are to proceed to join their settlement at Kirikiriroa."

A Hazardous Expedition. These communications are in furtherance of a Ministerial Memorandum of June 6, 1864: " the 4th Regiment to be located on the Waikato River, between Pukerimu and Kirikiriroa." Iho maps accompanying these communications indicate the locations of each of the Waikato regiments, and that one dealing with the 4th shows the projected settlement extending from side to side of the river at Kirikiriroa.

The 4th Regiment certainly did " proceed to join their settlement at Kirikiriroa." How tho advance party made their way to the chosen sito has been put on record. "We left Wairoa over 100 strong, single and married men about equally numbered, with a' good drum and fife band. On, or about, 21st August, 1864, we reached Maungatawhiri Creek, on the Saturday. On Monday we boarded barges with our baggage, and were towed up the river to Ngaruawahia, where we camped, and started again before daybreak on the 24th, on a bitter frosty morning, for the promised land of Kirikiriroa, where we landed about mid-day."

The journey of these pioneers was no picnic. The way they took led past scenes of desperate conflict, and there was no little likelihood that at some bend or othei in the river the rebel Maoris might attack them from ambush. They were bound for a destination known to them in name only, and had to make a home in the wild. Yet the expedition was undertaken in good heart, and the landing at the appointed spot is remembered as achieved in a spirit of adventure rather than of misgiving. But the actual landing was onlv the beginning of furthei adventure, full of tests calculated to try the hardihood of the bravest.

Tests of Courage. At first, in their homes near the river s brink, these earliest settlers lived in dread of attack. The alarm might at any moment sound from the redoubt on the hill above, and then, calling to their children, the women would gather up the clothes they had been washing in the stream, or the food prepared in their little dwellings, and rush pell-mell to the stockade's shelter, while the men stood to arms. Out on the farm sections it was often deemed perilous to stay. Happilv, although in the heart of a hostile country, the early settlers were spared fierce mortal combat; but ceaseless dread is a grim test of courage, and even false alarms tax endurance. So Hamilton, as it was afterwards to be named officially, after Captain John Fane Charles Hamilton, ih© gallant commanrler of H.M.S. Esk, who felj at G.ite Pa, began as a tiny oasis of- civilisation in the wilds, with'little thought of the dignity and strength it was afterwards to achieve.