NZ Wars: Taranaki Mounted Volunteers 1860 - 1866, Certificate signed by FJ Mace

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 Katie Cooper.

In 1858 the colonial government passed a new Militia Act which, among other things, provided for the raising of Volunteer companies. These companies could be called out for military or naval service within their militia districts, and although they were similar to other civilian organisations in being run by management committees, they also adopted conventional military command structures.1

The Taranaki Volunteer Rifle Corps was established in September 1858 with a strength of just over 100. Following the hostilities provoked by the occupation of the Waitara block, in early 1860 the corps increased to 180 Volunteers, who were divided into two companies. A small mounted unit was raised.2

This commemorative certificate, produced in 1902, records a brief history of the mounted corps and the battles in which the Volunteers were involved. As well as taking part in the major battles of the Taranaki wars, the troop manned military outposts, carried despatches to and from headquarters, and escorted General Chute on his march back to Whanganui in 1866, ‘destroying all Native pas and villages along the coast’ as they went (see pages 247–249). The Volunteers received land grants at Pātea in recognition of ‘the excellent and meritorious services they had performed throughout the war’.3

Created almost 40 years after General Chute’s march, the certificate tells us as much as about the social and economic situation in Taranaki in the early twentieth century as it does about the wars of the 1860s. The mounted unit disbanded in 1866, but the persecution of Māori in Taranaki continued for decades through direct military action, discriminatory legislation and land alienation.4 The men of the Taranaki Mounted Volunteers made livings on land confiscated from Māori, and were able to laud their ‘meritorious services’ from a position of relative prosperity and political dominance.

1 ‘He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tirene: the Declaration of the Independence of the United Tribes of New Zealand’, signed by 34 Ngāpuhi rangatira at Waitangi on 28 October 1835. 
2 Translation provided in Te Aho Claims Alliance, p. 316. 
3 Te Aho Claims Alliance, p. 311. 
4 Arapeta Hamilton, interview, Waka Huia, Matauwhi, 1998; translated transcript p. 7, cited in Te Aho Claims report, p. 64.