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Overview
Map of the West Coast between the Rivers Waingongoro and Wanganui.
This extract originally appeared in Te Ata o Tū The Shadow of Tūmatauenga: The New Zealand Wars Collections of Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2024) on pages 268-269.
This extract was authored by Michael Fitzgerald.
Late in 1868, after Tītokowaru had begun armed resistance and his victories had brought even the town of Whanganui into apparently serious danger, Barnard & Allen inserted a series of advertisements in the Chronicle announcing that ‘[s]hortly will be published a map of the Wanganui District and adjacent Native Land, compiled from Government maps and recent surveys. Subscribers’ copies (coloured) £3 3s’.1
The Wanganui Chronicle gave the map a good review:
The map of this district, on which Messrs Barnard, Allen and Monro have been engaged for a long while, is now published, and supplies a desideratum which has been often felt. A really good map of Wanganui, to which reference can be made, will be gratifying to many of our settlers, and we are fully warranted in thus describing the map before us. It is founded upon accurate surveys taken by the publishers themselves, who have devoted a large amount of care and time to its production. Every section and every notable point in the district are set down, and the whole is lithographed in a style which is exceedingly creditable to that art in Wanganui. We hope that in spite of the present dull times the undertaking may be so appreciated as to remunerate the enterprising publishers.2
Despite the optimistic tone of this review, the map is clearly a depiction of a war zone, intended for settlement by soldiers and their families after the final victory. The map’s legend shows this clearly: ‘Roads, Road lines not in use, Tracks, Native Villages, Old Positions of Houses or Redoubts now Destroyed, Native Reserves, Redoubts, Pahs burnt’.
The map was in fact publicised more honestly as a war map in the Chronicle’s issue of 14 January 1869, as a ‘Map of the War District, from the Wanganui to the Waingaroro rivers, showing the native pas, camps, settlers’ houses, etc in the District of Patea, showing Military Posts, Native Clearings, &c., &c’.3
1 Wanganui Chronicle, 12, 14, 17, 19, 21, 24, 26 November, 17 December 1868.
2 Wanganui Chronicle, 24 November 1868, p. 2.
3 Wanganui Chronicle, 14 January 1869, p. 2.