1823: Seizure of Kapiti Island
June 16, 2021
By AHNZ
Te Rauparaha was a great visionary to see which way the wind was blowing for New Zealand. He made a big move down south to be the host to the whalers because by associating with them the Maori could tap in to great wealth and power and the rest of the world. This worked out very well for Rauparaha and his Ngati Toa tribe.
John Niccol was one of the whaler/traders who married a Ngati Toa chief’s daughter. Captain John Blekinsop did the same, meaning to settle the Wairau with his bride O-Ronga, Rauparaha’s daughter. Unfortunately, Blekinsop went overboard and drowned in South Australian waters so the rights to the couple’s land was much contested.
It was European ships that drew Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha to Kapiti Island. His tribe had fared badly in the Musket Wars but he was adaptable, he knew that European ships passing through Cook Strait were the key to getting trade goods such as muskets. In 1823 Ngāti Toa seized Kapiti Island, which they defended next year in the bloody Battle of Waiorua. Kapiti, centre of a canoe-crafted empire, gave Te Rauparaha both a fortress and a trading base. Ships began calling in 1827 and by the time the trade peaked in the mid 1830s, there were five whaling stations on the island: Waiorua, Rangatira, Taepiro, Wharekohu and Te Kahe Te Rau O Te Rangi. – Kapiti Island, NZhistory.govt
Settler Leader Colonel William Wakefield, who owned the Blekinsop Indenture, and the tribe who owned the wife (O-Rongo) arrived at a standoff in the Wairau Affray. It was followed very shortly afterwards by the Wairau Massacre after which both Wakefield and O-Rongo were dead. So who got the Wairau? To the fury of the Cook Straight Settlers, the new Governor Fitzroy makes nice with the Ngati Toa who had withdrawn- anticipating a walloping. Instead, they are given the initiative and sell the Wairau again. Later, Ngai Tahu say it’s theirs, are also believed, so the Wairau is sold once again and for a higher price than ever.
Kapiti is a real historical nexus point for the era, so much history passed through it. Having conquered and expelled the Muaupoko tribe in 1823, the Ngati Toa held it by repelling an attack of some 2000 warriors attempting to re-take the territory at the Battle of Waiorua (1824.) If Rauparaha had stayed at home in Kawhia he would have been destroyed and enslaved like the people he left behind. By fighting his way down the coast and doing the same to another group he had found his power base, Kapiti.
“At Akaroa Ngati Toa either killed or took as prisoners some 200 men and between 300 and 400 women and children. The bodies of the dead were cooked on the beach. There was so much cooked human flesh that it couldn’t all be eaten on the site and so it was packed into about a hundred large flax baskets and taken back to Kapiti Island where a big feast was held, with Te Rauparaha and his Ngati Toa doing a haka (unfortunately the same haka that the All Blacks do before a match).” – The Musket Wars: A History of Inter-iwi Conflict, 1806-1845, Crosby (1999)
“So to say that Te Rauparaha is not well thought of by the Maori tribes local to the Northern South Island, or what’s left of them, is an understatement, akin to saying that Adolf Hitler is not well thought of among Poles.” – Why the All Blacks Will Do Kapa O Pango Against Argentina, VJM (2020)
“In 1822, Te Rauparaha led a migration of Ngāti Toa from Kawhia Harbour to settle on Kapiti Island and Waikanae, securing it from Muaūpoko in 1823.” – Wikipedia (putting it mildly!)
“Prospering from trade, Te Rauparaha accumulated muskets to the point of saturation.” – Landmarks, Cumberland (1981)
Famously, Rauparaha and his nephew Te Rangihaeata launched operation Barracuda Tooth against the Ngai Tahu tribe of the South Island. Many slaves and body parts for eating were brought back to Kapiti from this adventure. From the island as many as five whaling stations were built, fueling the wealth and communications and weapons arsenal of the Ngati Toa. This is not to mention the outlying stations around Cook Straight that were part of the Ngati Toa Maritime Empire.
Captains such as Blekinsop, George Stubbs, etc. were not seen as individual operators by the tribe but rather as human capital, a feudal lord under King Rauparaha. Paperwork or no paperwork (Rauparaha said to have ripped up his own copy of the Blekinsop Indenture,) if a Lord Captain of his died then his estate would go back to the Paramount Chief Rauparaha. It was not something that belonged to the Captain and his estate, his wife, under Common Law or something that could be inherited by or sold to people like Wakefield and his colonists.
Rauparaha’s southern captains also served as a buffer zone between the last Ngai Tahu enemy in the south, the people of Chief Tuhawaiki (Bloody Jack.) When the Ngai Tahu tried to recapture their territory it was the Ngati Toa’s whaling station client fiefdoms that bore the brunt. Bloody Jack’s own maritime domain, of course, was powered by his own Lord Captains such as Weller Brothers and Johnny Jones. If not for this power in the south, the Ngati Toa would have extended their empire all the way to Foveaux Strait.
Truly a great victor of the Musket Wars but I wonder if Rauparaha ever desired to see his old home of Kawhia again? It’s a lovely place and plain to see why it was much fought over. The nearest the old chief ever came was in defeat. On 23 July 1846 he was kidnapped by Governor Grey’s men and held on a prison ship in Auckland until being released in 1848. So, I wonder if, upon being freed, the old man paid his old town a visit or had any desire to?
4 thoughts on "1823: Seizure of Kapiti Island"
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What a load of shit
Te Rauparaha got up to a great deal of shit, yes indeed.
You must be a pakeha. You wouldn’t say shit like this if you were maori
And reducing ideas down to race identity is very popular at the moment with people who identify as Maoris.