Völkner Incident
The Völkner Incident is the murder of the Protestant missionary Carl Sylvius Völkner in New Zealand in 1865 and the subsequent reactions by the government.
background
The Battle of Te Ranga on June 21, 1864 was the last major conflict of the Tauranga campaign in the New Zealand Wars . There was an uncertain peace for several months, during which two important changes occurred among the warring parties.
British troops fought their final campaign in New Zealand before being transferred to garrison service and eventually withdrawn from New Zealand. The colonial militia was reorganized and re-armed to replace it.
Meanwhile, among the Māori, the syncretistic religion that emerged in 1862 from elements of Christianity and the traditional religion of the Māori Pai Marire (and their extremist branch, the Hauhau ) gained ground. It gained increasing followers in the Gisborne District on the east coast. The Hauhau as an extreme and militant branch of this religion turned against the Pākehā (European settlers).
Völkner's murder
Pai Marire missionaries arrived in the Opotiki area on the Bay of Plenty in February 1865 . There was a mission station of the Church Missionary Society under the direction of Völkner. He learned on March 2nd, when he was not in Opotiki, that his congregation from Māori had converted from Iwi Te Whakatohea to Pai Marire. He was therefore warned to return.
Like many other Europeans, Völkner had sent reports to the government of anti-government activities by the natives.
Völkner ignored the warning and returned with the missionary Thomas Grace on March 1, 1865. Both were captured and Völkner was tried and hanged by his own Whakatohea congregation. An hour later he was taken down and beheaded.
Kereopa Te Rau , a “prophet” of the Pai Marire, entered the church of Opotiki with Völkner's head and celebrated a “service” with his head on the pulpit, tearing out the dead man's eyes and swallowing them with the words, one of the Eyes is Parliament, the other the Queen and British law.
Grace was also captured, but escaped a few days later.
Government response
Nothing happened for several months. Then in August 1865, with the fall of Weraroa Pā, the siege of Pipiriki was lifted, ending this phase of the Second Taranaki War . This releases the forces bound there.
In September 1865, the forces available to the New Zealand government of just over 500 men were transported by ship from Wanganui through Cook Strait , around the East Cape to Opotiki. The force consisted of four companies of militia, a troop of cavalry and a contingent of Ngāti Hau warriors led by Te Keepa Te Rangihiwinui . They had already fought together in the Taranaki War and had a history of successful cooperation and mutual respect.
Landing in Opotiki turned out to be difficult. A ship ran aground and came under fire from the coast. Eventually it was given up; The militia and crew waded ashore. Only a day later could the other ships land their men and supplies.
After settling in and driving off the snipers, the militia occupied the church where Völkner had been murdered. Some militiamen fortified the church, while Te Keepa and his Ngāti practiced scorched earth tactics in the area , cutting off food supplies for opponents by taking what they needed and destroying the rest. Except for a few muskets , the Hauhau on the east coast had no modern weapons. It was made clear to them that the military action would continue until those responsible for the murder of Völkner were captured or surrendered. However, Kereopa, the man they sought most, had retired to the Tuhoe lands in the Urewera Mountains and had no intention of surrendering.
consequences
At the end of October, the situation of the local Māori was desperate and just over 20 of their chiefs surrendered and were shipped to Auckland for trial . Five of them received the death penalty and were hanged the following year. Large lands were confiscated and sold to settlers under the New Zealand Settlements Act of 1863 .
In the early 1870s, the Ureweras were attacked by government forces looking for Te Kooti and the Tuhoe were subdued. We were forced to hand over Kereopa to Ropata Wahawaha . He was convicted of the murder and hanged on January 5, 1872. Some key witnesses were given immunity in exchange for testifying, and Kereopa had no defense witnesses as the Crown refused to pay for their transportation from Napier. The jury only needed 15 minutes for their verdict. Kereopa's Iwi Ngati Rangiwewehi saw this as a preconceived judgment and a misjudgment.
In 1993 Attorney General Doug Graham apologized to the Te Whakatōhea and rehabilitated Mokomoko, one of the hanged chiefs. In 1996 the government signed a severance payment agreement. In this she recognized the guilt of the government for the illegal invasion and confiscation of the land of the Te Whakatōhea and the resulting severe economic and cultural consequences for the Iwi and apologized for it. In 1998 the government offered the Whakatōhea NZ $ 40 million as compensation for all claims, including those arising from the Völkner Incident . This offer was rejected. The Te Whakatōhea continue to negotiate with the government. As part of the compensation paid to neighboring Iwi Ngāti Awa in 2003, the Völkner Rocks at Whakaari / White Island were renamed “ Te Paepae Aotea (Völkner Rocks)”.
Kereopa was posthumously pardoned in 2014 as part of negotiations over claims under the Waitangi Treaty.
literature
- Michael Barthorp : To face the daring Māori. Hodder and Stoughton 1979
- Belich, James : The New Zealand wars. Penguin 1988
- James Belich: Making peoples. Penguin Press 1996
- J. Cowan, PD Hasselberg: The New Zealand wars. New Zealand Government Printer. 1983 (original edition 1922)
- AC Lyall: Whakatohea of Opotiki. AH & AW Reed. 1979
- Peter Maxwell: Frontier, the battle for the North Island of New Zealand. Celebrity Books 2000
- Tony Simpson: Te Riri Pakeha. Hodder and Stoughton 1979.
- Keith Sinclair (Ed.): The Oxford illustrated history of New Zealand. Wellington: Oxford University Press. 2nd edition 1996
- Dom Felici Vaggioli: History of New Zealand and its inhabitants. Dunedin: University of Otago Press 2000 (Italian original edition 1896)
- Ranginui Walker : Ōpōtiki-Mai-Tawhiti, Capital of Whakatōhea. Penguin 2007. ISBN 978-0-14-300649-7 .
- Peter Wells: Journey to a Hanging. Random House / Vintage 2014. ISBN 978-1-77553-390-0 .
- The people of many peaks: The Māori biographies in Dictionary of New Zealand Biography , Vol. 1, 1769–1869 . Bridget Williams Books, 1990.
Web links
- NZhistory.net.nz: Pai Marire and the death of Carl Völkner . (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Evelyn Stokes : Völkner, Carl Sylvius . In: Dictionary of New Zealand Biography . Volume I . Allen & Unwin , Wellington 1990 (English, online [accessed September 22, 2018]).
- ^ A b Andrew Stone: Pardoned at last: Chief cleared of 1865 murder . In: The New Zealand Herald , June 21, 2014. Retrieved April 28, 2015.
- ↑ Ranginui Walker Mokomoko's pardon, 1993 , 'Te Whakatōhea', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. As of 2007.
- ^ Margaret Wilson, Deed of Settlement Between the Crown and Ngati Awa , Government Press Release March 27, 2003.