Wiremu Tāmihana had been trying to put an end to the fighting after the battle at Rangiriri and was calling for Governor Grey and government ministers to meet with the Māori King and the other chiefs at Ngāruawāhia to negotiate a peaceful settlement. But Grey prevaricated and did not go to Ngāruawāhia.
“What do you think Grey’s up to?” Kelly asked McCann.
“The cunning old bugger wants to destroy the Kīngitanga completely,” was McCann’s opinion.
No peaceful settlement having been reached, at the end of the year the troops were ordered to push deeper into the Waikato and Maniapoto and establish a frontier line from Raglan on the west coast to Tauranga on the east coast, dipping south in the interior into the economic heartland of Kīngitanga territory. The troops now included many kūpapa, so-called loyalist Māori, fighting on the side of the British. The kūpapa had more disdain for the British officers, than respect, as far as Kelly could see. It was for opportunity to settle scores with tribal enemies, rather than loyalty to the Crown, that they had joined forces with the British Imperial Army. The government was also offering land grants as rewards to loyal Māori.
Ngāruawāhia was a strategic location at the confluence of the Waikato River and the Waipā River, which was the route into the richly cultivated, thriving settlements of Rangiaowhia and Te Awamutu. However, the army’s advance was blocked at Pāterangi by the most formidable fortifications they had ever encountered. There was a chain of at least four large pā extending over an area of six miles with swampland on either side.
General Cameron concluded that he could not storm the pā, much to the relief of all the troops. The advancing army came to a halt and set up camp at Te Rore, which was as far as steamers could go up the Waipā River. Here the troops enjoyed a month’s respite and recreation. Field rations continued to arrive on the steamers Pioneer and Avon, courtesy of the British Treasury. Kelly picked up his ration of a pound of bread and a pound of fish-fed pork. The bread smelled of vinegar and the pork smelled of fish. For two pence he bought an extra ration of four ounces of rice and McCann got a pound of potatoes and half an onion for his two pence. They also received their daily ration of beverages: a sixteenth of an ounce of tea, a third of an ounce of coffee, as well as sugar, salt and pepper, and a gill of rum.
The troops were flush with soldiers’ pay but had little to spend it on and some passed the time gambling at card games. Kelly and McCann joined some of their cohort in a cricket match against the blue-jacketed sailors. It was an improvised game with a roughly hewn bat and a ball of tightly wound leather strapping. After the cricket the players all went for a dip in the river to cool off. It was late January, the height of summer, and Kelly luxuriated in the cool water and rubbed his body vigorously with kumārahou, as the Māori soldiers did, to rid his skin of the lice that had been plaguing him. He felt almost carefree briefly until the pale bodies of the bathers were fired upon by Waikato snipers; after which any excursions into the river were undertaken more cautiously with scouts and armed guards.
Governor Grey arrived by steamer at Te Rore and angrily ordered General Cameron to attack Pāterangi immediately, which the general refused to do. Here were two titans of political and military might facing off against each other, two men of a similar age and similarly lofty bearing, though the general had the greater physical stature. After a brief standoff, Cameron went to his tent, followed by Grey. Grey continued, in rising volume and pitch, to insist on the attack. Kelly and McCann and many others were close enough to the tent to hear Cameron tell the governor to “Go to hell!”
Cameron decided instead to outflank Pāterangi. With the aid of two half-Māori kūpapa who knew the terrain, the army marched by night quietly past the fortifications, skirting the swamp, into the deserted settlement of Te Awamutu and on to the nearly deserted Rangiaowhia. Grey had been very critical of Māori bringing women and children into defensive pā to become victims of warfare and both sides had agreed that non-combatants should go to places of refuge for their own safety. Pāterangi was a fighting pā manned by warriors and Rangiaowhia was a virtually undefended refuge for women, children and the elderly. Under Cameron’s command, the 65th attacked the soft target of Rangiaowhia to draw the warriors out of the impregnable fortress of Pāterangi to defend the settlement. The attack began early on a Sunday morning with a cavalry charge led by Colonel Nixon. The terrified villagers scattered and fled for cover and fired on their attackers. The troops rounded up prisoners and pursued others who had fled into the two churches and thatched raupō whare. Six men and a boy were seen to run into one of the whare, where they lay on the sunken floor below the bullets fired through the thin timber of the walls.
McCann was at the front of a phalanx of soldiers firing at the whare and Colonel Nixon ordered him to get the fugitives out and take them prisoner. Kelly looked on as McCann approached the whare and was felled by a shot fired from a window. Kelly had no appetite for attacking a peaceful village and had, up until this point, not fired a shot. However, he found it easier to kill when his friend had just been killed and he joined the other soldiers firing more volleys into the whare.
More soldiers arrived on the scene, including General Cameron, whereupon Nixon joined in the attack and was shot from the doorway of the whare. Finally the whare was set alight and one elderly Māori walked out with his hands raised. Some of the officers shouted to spare him but this did not prevent some of the men from shooting him. Naturally the remaining occupants of the whare were not then inclined to surrender and perished in the flames. The air was full of smoke and noise: musket fire, women wailing and children screaming, and the smell of burning thatch and burning flesh.
Other whare were also burning and villagers were fleeing, some into the Catholic church and some into the Anglican church, from where they fired at pursuing soldiers through the windows. But the thin wooden cladding of the churches gave no more protection from the musket balls than the thatched walls of the whare and those that survived the attacks on the churches fled into the nearby swamp or escaped on horseback. While surveying the carnage, Kelly found, in another burnt out whare, the charred remains of a portrait of Queen Victoria with Prince Albert and their children. On the reverse of the photo was written a message of thanks to the two chiefs who had sent a gift of bags of flour from their own mill at Rangiaowhia to the royal family.
The Imperial troops withdrew from Rangiaowhia to Te Awamutu and the following day marched with reinforcements on Hairini, where Maniapoto and the defenders of Pāterangi took up position on an old pā site on a ridge to block the way back to Rangiaowhia. General Cameron had succeeded in drawing his enemy out of their fortification and finally had the advantage of fighting on open ground. His army broke through the Hairini defences with the aid of Armstrong guns and cavalry charges and on again to Rangiaowhia and Kihikihi to plunder the farmland, which had been the food supply of ‘the rebels’. From across the Pūniu River the Kingites watched the troops fell their flagstaff and burn their treasured Ngāti Maniapoto meeting house.
The troops marched back to their base camp at Te Awamutu with all the food they could carry for a grand feast. Kelly had his fill of potatoes, kūmara, pumpkin, chicken and pork. At first it satisfied, then it began to cloy and finally he went outside and vomited. He was morose and disgusted with the army and with himself. He’d had his fill of the war and if he had ten pounds he would buy his discharge. Nor was Kelly alone with such sentiments. Some of the regiment were happy to go on killing more ‘savages’ but many others were grumbling and disillusioned. The whole sorry war must surely soon come to an end. The screams of women and children in Rangiaowhia still rang in his ears and in the fading light of dusk, dark clouds glowered on the horizon over the smouldering ruins of the village. He reflected also on the tragic irony of Hairini, where the might of the British Imperial Army had smashed through the Māori making a stand to defend their home turf. Why Hairini? Why that place? Why that name? Hairini, so named as the Māori translation of Ireland. Ireland, which had suffered centuries of conquests and confiscations by British forces. And how like the Irish were the Māori, in their villages, with their crops, their potatoes, their fish, their few farm animals, and their children.