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What happened at Mangere in 1863?
Bruce Ringer
This article discusses the expulsion of the Maori residents of Mangere, Ihumatao and Pukaki immediately prior to the outbreak of the Waikato War in July 1863. It questions the accuracy of the writer John Gorst’s influential account of these events, which was first published in 1864 and has been often quoted since. What really happened at Mangere?
Introduction
In 2007 a group of Mangere Bridge residents organized a heritage festival commemorating the sinking of the steam corvette HMS Orpheus, which sank on the Manukau Bar in February 1863 with the loss of 189 lives. The festival was intended to become an annual event. The following year, however, it attracted unfavourable attention from at least one protestor who claimed that, since the Orpheus had been carrying military supplies, it was wrong to commemorate an occasion associated with a military invasion.
According to Ben Corbett, during the Waikato war (which broke out in July 1863): “The Mangere district was invaded by Onehunga based pakeha militia … the area was ransacked. All buildings except the stone church in Church Street were burnt down or demolished. All stock was stolen and all Maori waka were smashed, burnt or blown up …”[1]
The above account seems to have been based on material published in the report of the Waitangi Tribunal on the Manukau claim in 1985, and therefore at one remove on an account published in 1864 by a writer named John Gorst. However, a comparison with other sources suggests that Gorst’s account includes much that is questionable.
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