East Cape War

East Cape War
Part of New Zealand Wars
Date 13 April 1865 to 12 October 1866 Location New Zealand Result Government victory
Belligerents
United Kingdom: Colony of New Zealand	Whakatohea Māori  Urewera Māori  Ngai Tama Māori
Commanders and leaders
Willoughby Brassey  Thomas McDonnell  Charles Stapp  James Fraser  Mokena Kohere  Ropata Wahawaha  Henare Tomoana  Renata Kawepo	Kereopa Te Rau  Anaru Matete
Units involved
Colonial Taranaki Military Settlers Patea Rangers Wanganui Rangers Wanganui Yeomanry Cavalry Wanganui Native Contingent 1st Waikato Militia Forest Rangers Hawke's Bay Militia   Māori Arawa Ngāti Porou Ngāti Kahungunu

The East Cape War, sometimes also called the East Coast War, was a series of conflicts fought in the North Island of New Zealand from April 1865 to October 1866 between colonial and Māori military forces. At least five separate campaigns were fought in the area during a period of relative peace in the long-running 19th century New Zealand Wars.

The east coast hostilities came at the close of the Waikato wars and before the outbreak of Te Kooti's War, both fought nearby, but sprang from causes more closely related to the Second Taranaki War—namely, Māori resentment of punitive government land confiscation coupled with the rise of the so-called Hauhau movement, an extremist part of the Pai Marire religion (also called the Hauhau), which was strongly opposed to the alienation of Māori land and eager to strengthen Māori identity.^[1]

Pai Mārire arrived on the east coast from Taranaki about 1865. The subsequent ritual killing of missionary Carl Volkner by Pai Mārire followers at Opotiki on 2 March 1865 sparked settler fears of an outbreak of violence and later that year the New Zealand government launched a lengthy expedition to hunt for Volkner's killers and neutralise the movement's influence. Rising tensions between Pai Mārire followers and conservative Māori led to a number of wars between and within Māori iwi, with kūpapa or "loyal" Māori armed by the government in a bid to exterminate the movement.

Major conflicts within the campaign included the cavalry and artillery attack on Te Tarata pā near Opotiki in October 1865 in which about 35 Māori were killed and the seven-day siege of Waerenga-a-Hika in November 1865. The government, claiming that one of Volkner's killers was being given sanctuary by Māori in the remote Urewera region, confiscated northern parts of the Urewera land in January 1866 in a bid to break down Māori resistance and confiscated additional land in Hawke's Bay a year later after a rout of a Māori party it deemed to pose a threat to the settlement of Napier. In 2013 the Crown paid $23 million in financial redress and expressed "profound regret" over the "unjust attacks" in Hawke's Bay in 1866 and apologised for subsequent land confiscations.