Māori allies arrived from the Urewera and other parts of the North Island eager to support Maniapoto and the Kīngitanga and fight the British. Perhaps they also feared an invasion of their own territory. The British observed the combined forces of Māori resistance hastily constructing a pā only three miles from Kihikihi, at Ōrākau. They observed also that it was not a strong defensive position, being quite exposed, lacking a water supply and notably lacking the usual escape route for retreat. When Brigadier General Carey was informed of the pā being fortified he decided to attack the unfinished garrison without delay, and preferably before General Cameron could arrive from Pukerimu. The lie of the land made it possible to completely surround the pā and Carey divided his force of 1,100 troops accordingly. However, the pā was not as weak as it first appeared and the initial assaults were easily repulsed. Kelly was ordered to the front of the third assault and he advanced without any regard for cover. A shot from a rifle pit struck him on the arm and, inspecting his wound, he noted that the bullet was a carved peach stone, which was not as destructive as a lead ball but it gave him a nasty wound nevertheless, which required binding. He did not regret being sidelined with the wounded.
It became evident that the pā could not be taken in a rush and the tactics changed to siege warfare, artillery fire and sapping. The siege began to bite after a couple of days as the defenders were running out of food, water and ammunition. On the third day the British commanders called on the Māoris to surrender but the response from within the pā was that they would fight against the Pākehā forever. “E hoa, ka whawhai tonu mātou, Āke! Āke! Āke!” (Friends, we will fight on forever.) Even the request to send the women and children out of the pā so that they at least might be spared was defied. A woman’s voice shouted, “Ki te mate ngā tane, me mate ano ngā wāhine me ngā tamariki. (If the men die, the women and children will die with them.) Evidently no one wanted to be taken to Auckland as prisoners like the defenders of Rangiriri. Or perhaps they suspected a worse fate if they surrendered, like the victims of Rangiaowhia.
In the late afternoon the defenders emerged from the pā in one group, with Rewi Maniapoto and women and children in the centre, and advanced calmly toward the cordon of dumbfounded British troops. There were fewer defenders of the pā than they had supposed, and certainly fewer men, as many of the women had put on the clothing of men who had been killed.
The troops recovered from the shock of the sudden appearance of the enemy as they dashed toward the Pūniu River. Soldiers gave chase and fired at the fugitives from behind and on either side to prevent their escape. Many of the men, women and children were shot and some fell to the swords of the pursuing cavalry. Some of the pursuing soldiers were killed by rear-guard defenders and by the crossfire of their own flank attacks. One of the warriors held off pursuing soldiers for a time by kneeling and taking aim with his rifle but he never fired a shot, having run out of ammunition.
One zealous foot soldier ran about bayoneting the wounded men and women as they lay on the ground until he was berated and struck by Captain Mair, who ordered that the wounded women be spared. The soldier protested that if they survived they would breed sons to continue to fight. A few Forest Rangers protected most of the women from the slaughter but one lay dead on the ground clutching a Bible to her breast. Thirty-three prisoners were taken, nearly all of them wounded. None of them was Rewi Maniapoto. The ‘obstinate rebel’ and the remnants of the Kīngitanga retreated south of the Pūniu River, much to the chagrin of Governor Grey as he had still not succeeded in destroying the movement.
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Emissaries reported to Grey that Rewi Maniapoto and all the Kīngitanga were anxious to make peace but they would not surrender their arms lest they all be taken prisoner and lose their liberty forever. The Pūniu River became the new Rubicon and General Cameron would not prosecute the war beyond it. The morale of the troops was so low that it was unlikely that they would have responded to such a call in any case. Grey and the government ministers argued over the extent of the land to be confiscated from the rebels, which in the end was virtually all of the Waikato as far as the Pūniu River.
The ministers were keen to expand the area of confiscation beyond Waikato and Taranaki and meanwhile conflict erupted to the east at Tauranga, where General Cameron had landed a garrison of troops on the Te Papa Peninsula, which was occupied by the Church Missionary Society, as part of the logistics of the war in the Waikato. Tauranga Māori, the Ngāi Te Rangi, led by Chief Rāwiri Puhiraki, had built a pā less than three miles from the British garrison and goaded the British troops into a battle, even offering to build a road to the pā for the convenience of the troops. General Cameron responded by landing 1,700 troops mostly from the Waikato and seventeen cannon at the port. The heavy artillery included an enormous Armstrong gun that fired 110-pound shells. The big guns fired over the pā initially as the gunners took their range from the flagpole, which the defenders had moved some distance beyond the pā.
News of the conflict in Tauranga was reported by a correspondent for the New Zealander and as Kelly, still in Te Awamutu, read the description of the Battle of Pukehinahina, also reported as the battle of Gate Pā, he marvelled that the British Army had learnt so little from their experiences of Māori garrison warfare. It was all so familiar and predictable. The British troops attacked the pā at dawn with an unprecedented bombardment of heavy artillery, each of the big guns firing off a hundred rounds. At four o’clock in the afternoon, Colonel Greer was satisfied that they had “blown the pā to the devil” and sent in a storming party. The advancing soldiers met with only light fire, as expected, and easily made their way into the main part of the pā.
All of the above ground defences were blasted away but most of the 230 Māori within the pā had survived the bombardment by sheltering in deep underground bunkers and emerged through tunnels into concealed rifle pits to fire on the British troops at close quarters with muskets and shotguns. Some of the soldiers were killed with blows of tomahawks and mere, flat clubs with honed edges like tomahawks. That the mere were beautifully carved whale bone and greenstone artifacts was of no consolation to the victims who had their skulls split open with the lethal weapons. At least one had the top of his skull removed like a boiled egg, when the mere sliced into it and prised off the dome. The hapless soldiers had rushed into a maze of trenches like sheep into an abattoir and those that survived “ran away howling”. Thirty-five were killed, including ten officers, and a further eighty-three wounded. The Māori defenders suffered relatively few casualties from the shelling and storming of the pā and they evacuated during the night, taking a hundred British rifles with them. The British Imperial Troops suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of “half naked, half armed savages.” An additional note of interest in the report recounted the actions of Hēni Te Kiri Karamū, who risked her own life in going out of the pā to give water to Colonel H. J. P. Booth and two other wounded soldiers. Rāwiri Puhirake and Hēnare Taratoa had drawn up a code of conduct before the battle in accordance with Christian principles. If your enemy thirsts, give him water.
General Cameron finally concluded that “it is not generally desirable to attack such positions” and he returned to Auckland, leaving Colonel Greer to hold onto the Tauranga territory. Colonel Greer received intelligence that Puhiraka and his warriors had retreated further inland and begun constructing another pā at Te Ranga with reinforcements from other tribes. Greer seized the opportunity to storm the unfinished defences and the 43rd and 68th regiments under his command killed a great many of the unprepared Māori defenders. General Cameron was at least partly avenged for the ignominious defeat at Gate Pā.