THE First Taranaki War, which began the struggle, ended in March 1861, and was followed by two years of uneasy peace. Colonel C. E. Gold had begun the Taranaki campaign, but he had been superseded by Major-General Sir Thomas Pratt, Commander-in-Chief in Australia, who was replaced by General Duncan Cameron early in 1861. Sir George Grey replaced Sir Thomas Gore Browne as Governor in October 1861, but Grey had  lost his old hold over Maori opinion.

The first conflict had implicated the adherents of the Maori King, and when hostilities began again in 1863 it was plain that the centre of re­sistance would be in the Waikato. Roads had been advanced towards the King’s territory to supply the troops, though the Waikato River was the chief channel of communication. By 1864 the main resistance had been broken in the Waikato by General Cameron’s troops, but he had still to stifle the Ngaiterangi on the east coast, while there was again an outbreak on the west coast of the North Island. In 1864 the religious cult of Pai Marire, or Hau-hauism, gained many adherents among the belligerent tribes and gave a fanatical savagery to the renewed conflict.

General Sir Trevor Chute succeeded Cameron in command in 1865. He conducted the west coast campaign with vigour and success. In 1868 Te Kooti, who had escaped from his imprisonment on the Chatham Islands, raised a new revolt on the east coast. The campaigns against him did not end until 1872. He was the founder of another Maori cult, the Ringatu religion.

The conduct of the war on the outskirts of settled areas had caused a great sense of insecurity, expressed for instance in the evacuation of the civil population of New Plymouth to Nelson in 1860. But apart from the building of roads for military purposes, soldier settlers had been brought into the country to people the ‘frontier’ areas and provide a screen of defence behind which settlement could proceed normally. Such colonies had already been tried in 1847-8 when four settle­ments of British ex-soldiers had been established near Auckland. In the middle sixties the Govern­ment entertained a comprehensive scheme for military settlements to hem in the hostile districts. Although this scheme was never completed, it did result in some settlement in the Taranaki and Auckland provinces. Land was given free to men capable of bearing arms who would be ready to engage in road-making in time of peace. But the men tended to drift away as soon as they had per­formed enough service to get possession of their land and the scheme had only a limited success. In the seventies the Armed Constabulary were engaged in road-making in the Waikato, aided by groups of Maori who had fought with us in the wars. This was part of an extensive scheme for new roads to serve the double purpose of opening up land for settlement and making it easier to quell possible rebellion. For it was realised that good communications were an essential element in the internal defence of New Zealand.