1889: Te Kooti’s Homecoming

February 25, 2020

By AHNZ

Te Kooti’s 1868 Matawhero Massacre of 30 defenceless New Zealanders at Poverty Bay (aka Gisbourne) was remembered in 1889 when he tried to go back there twenty years later.

Today in New Zealand history, 24 February, 1889, Premier Harry Atkinson put an end to “Te Kooti’s Little Spree” by having him arrested and jailed in Auckland.

Atkinson concluded “everyone here..seem to have lost their heads” and ordered Te Kooti’s arrest for unlawful assembly. Te Kooti, distressed and drinking heavily, had already turned back for Waikato. Ropata (Te Kooti’s old foe, some 80yo!?) with his Settler/Maori force acting on Atkinson’s instructions caught up and arrested Te Kooti. £1500 required of him as surity to keep the peace. Not having it, he was jailed in Auckland for 2 days but Pakeha sympathisers paid it for him. Lawyers for both sides bat the matter back and forth as to Te Kooti’s right to visit; Ref. Ward (1973)

The drunken old warlord mystic with a large cavalcade behind him trying to return to the scene of his jail break.

The people of Gisbourne did not want the killer of their kin back in their town. Would you?

In 2018, Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux were not even allowed to speak about freedom. They were turned away from Auckland. Unlike Te Kooti they were sober and never killed anybody! That’s one comparison to measure this event.

I think Te Kooti going back to the place of his birth this way would be like David Malcolm Gray alive and a free man going back to Aramoana 20 years after the massacre.

Or like William Dwane Bell, high on drugs and with a convoy of roadies and groupies, going back to the scene of the Panmure RSA murders in 2001….wouldn’t that still sting 20 years later? How impotent and galling..

Or, as we may now add, Te Kooti’s going back to the scene of his crime would be like Brenton Tarrant visiting the Al Noor Mosque twenty years after the Christchurch Massacre.

Of course it was a big stir in 1889!

All the more so because Premier Atkinson found pretence to blow the entire thing out of all proportion and create a side-show. Instead of calming matters, this gave the affair oxygen and the fiasco was taken to Auckland and the Supreme Court. It made national headlines. Probably to the benefit of the Premier’s legislative schemes, as the Observer observes…

“It really sounds as though the Major — beg pardon, the Premier— trembliug for the fate of his beloved Property Tax, had borrowed a leaf from the book of the Romans, and in order to draw public attention from his pet tax, got up the Te Kooti scare. The hoary-headed old reprobate has been the Major’s red-herring.”- The New Zealand Observer

Being in the thick of Kate Shepherd Victimhood Culture (c.1886-1893) there would be plenty of sympathy for Te Kooti’s plight during March. Society ladies fell over themselves signalling their support! But that is another story for another post. Ref. 1889: Te Kooti- Sainted Old Santa?

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Ref. A Show of Justice, Alan Ward (1973)

Image ref. Te Kooti sketch; AHNZ original

Image ref. Te Kooti and his rabble ride the range; Extract from Blomfield, J; New Zealand Observer (9 March, 1889); Papers Past

Image ref. Drunken old warlord confronted by the Premier; Supplement to the Evening Press, March 13th 1889; Alexander Turnbull Library

Ref. The New Zealand Observer, 9 March, 1889; Papers Past

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