Siege of Ngatapa 1868
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 31 December 1868 – 5 January 1869 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1868 | Wikidata P580 (start time) |
| Era | 19th century (1800–1913) | derived from year |
| Location | New Zealand | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Oceania | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | Te Kooti's War | Wikidata P361 |
| Coordinates | -38.5136, 177.5636 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The siege of Ngatapa was an engagement that took place from 31 December 1868 to 5 January 1869 during Te Kooti's War in the East Coast region of New Zealand.
Te Kooti's War was part of the New Zealand Wars, a series of conflicts between the British, the local authorities and their Māori allies on one side, and several Māori iwi (tribes) on the other, that took place from 1843 to 1872. Like some of the later clashes in this period, Te Kooti's War had a religious basis. Te Kooti was the leader of the Ringatū religion and gathered a following of disenfranchised Māori who like himself had been exiled to the Chatham Islands in 1866 by the government. After two years of captivity, they escaped to the mainland, landing on the East Coast in July 1868. Pursued by the local militia, Te Kooti and his followers moved inland. He mounted a raid in November in Poverty Bay which resulted in the murders of several local settlers and a series of skirmishes with Māori aligned with the government—known as kūpapa—followed.
Te Kooti and his 300 followers, along with their families and a number of prisoners, retreated to the hillfort—or pā—at Ngatapa (Māori: Ngātapa). An initial attack made on 4 December by warriors of the Ngāti Porou iwi, led by Ropata Wahawaha, was fended off.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Siege of Ngatapa (revision 1370743976), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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Browse more: battles in New Zealand · Oceania · 19th century battles