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Overview
Sketch map of North Island of New Zealand showing approximately the Loyal and Rebel districts. From the Commencement of the Taranaki War to May 1869. Also the proportion of Natives [sic] in each district who have joined us in the rebellion.
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).
This extract was authored by Michael Fitzgerald.
On 23 June 1869, New Zealand’s House of Representatives ordered that a map of the North Island be produced to show a mass of information which would help the government’s war eff ort and its hopes for economic development. Its specifications were so stringent they would have daunted the most diligent cartographer. It was to show:
. . . the distribution of the various Tribes; the nature of the country, whether covered with bush or open; what lands are known or supposed to be auriferous [gold-bearing]; names of places where our Forces are stationed. Showing also the several blocks of Confiscated Land within each Province; the total area of the same; the quantities sold, and purchase moneys received, to the present date; the portions appropriated in each case for the Natives (loyal or otherwise), for Military Settlers, for future sale, or as Reserves for Public Purposes. Also, as far as may be practicable, the present numbers and distribution of Military or other Settlers on the Confiscated Lands, and of the Native Tribes to which such lands originally belonged. That the Map referred to do also contain, if possible, a sketch of the main geographical and topographical features of the Waikare-Moana country, and its connection with the East and West Coasts.1
It would have been impossible to fit all this information onto a single map, and in fact two maps were produced. One showed ‘Native Tribal Boundaries, Topographical Features, Confiscated Lands, Military & Police Stations, etc.’.2 The other, shown [here], gives a colour-coded depiction of ‘approximately the loyal and rebel districts – from the commencement of the Taranaki War to May 1869. Also the proportion of Natives in each district who have joined in the rebellion.’ Both maps were drawn by Thomas William Palin, a draughtsman in the Colonial Defence Off ice, from information compiled by James Mackay, the government’s civil commissioner, who would have had access to recent intelligence regarding the political sympathies of iwi and hapū from military off icers, resident magistrates, missionaries and press reports.3 Both maps were praised as ‘extremely accurate’ when they were published in late 1870. The quality of their lithographic printing in colour was also lauded – as one widely published newspaper report stated, ‘no similar [printing] work that we have seen executed in the Colony can bear comparison with them’.4
1 ‘Return to an Order of the House of Representatives, No. 29, 23rd June 1869. For a Map of the North Island’, Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1870, Session 1, D-23.
2 Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives (atojs.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/imageserver/imageserver.pl?oid=AJHR1870-I.1.1710&ext=pngm, accessed 31 July 2023).
3 Harry C Evison, ‘Mackay, James’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography [1990], Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand (teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1m29/mackay-james, accessed 26 February 2021).
4 Taranaki Herald, 7 December 1870, p. 2.