Ngatapa, Te Kooti's Pa

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 Rebecca Rice.

London-born James Crowe Richmond arrived in New Zealand in 1851, initially establishing himself as a settler-farmer in Taranaki before finding respite from the tough farming life in journalism and politics, and in his love of painting. Richmond entered the House of Representatives as the member for Ōmata in 1860, before settling in Nelson, where he became editor of the Nelson Examiner and provincial secretary for Nelson Provincial Council from 1863 to 1865.1

In 1866, he joined Edward Stafford’s colonial administration as commissioner of customs and stamp duties. Stafford believed that the ‘state of Native affairs had so much improved’ that there was no need for a special minister to deal with them, and that if the need arose, some other minister would take responsibility. That ‘other minister’ was Richmond, who, following the renewal of engagements against Tītokowaru and Te Kooti, became fully occupied as de facto minister of native affairs from 1866 to 1869.2 . . .

Richmond’s paintbox was always by his side as he travelled around New Zealand in his official capacity. Duty often curtailed his penchant for painting, but in stolen moments he made delicate watercolour sketches of the local scenery, works that have been described by curator Tim Walker as having a ‘distinctive “still” sense of atmosphere . . . a careful draughtsman-like concern for topographical correctness’.3 These sketches, later worked up into paintings, earned him a reputation as one of New Zealand’s leading colonial landscape painters. But tellingly, these views largely eschew any reference to the political reasons for his presence at various sites.

The exception is this view of Ngātapa, the old pā north-west of Tūranga which Te Kooti and his followers, along with about 300 prisoners, occupied in December 1868 as they travelled inland. Richmond joined the military forces – nearly 700 men including a Ngāti Porou contingent led by Rāpata Wahawaha – that gathered under Colonel Whitmore to attack the pā. Ngātapa appears as an ancient fortress in the distance of Richmond’s painting, timeless and otherworldly. Indeed, its strength lay in its strategic position: constructed on top of the hill, it was almost impossible to take by direct assault.4

However, the water supply was weak and the pā could, apart from the ‘nearly perpendicular’ north side, be virtually encircled.5 By New Year’s Day 1869 Whitmore’s men had located the water supply and had the pā surrounded, believing there was no possible retreat for Te Kooti. But on 5 January, a female voice from within the pā declared it abandoned; Te Kooti and his followers had escaped on flax ladders down the steep cliff s on the unguarded north side of the hill.6 Ngāti Porou and a small group of Te Arawa troops gave chase, hunting down the fugitives for two days and nights, before taking about 135 women and children and 140 men prisoner.7 Between one third and one half of the prisoners were lined up and shot.

Richmond’s calm view of Ngātapa records no trace of conflict, nor of the horrors that would take place on this site.8 This representation mirrors the summary of Richmond’s character provided by his biographers, who describe him to have found ‘all occupations, apart from painting, eventually distasteful’.9

1 WH Oliver and Frances Porter, ‘Richmond, James Crowe, 1822–1898’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography [1990], Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand (teara.govt.nz/en/ biographies/1r10/richmond-james-crowe, accessed 8 January 2021). 
2 Francis Porter, ‘James Crowe Richmond 1822–1898’, in James Crowe Richmond, exhibition catalogue (National Art Gallery, Wellington, 1991), p. 17. 
3 Tim Walker, ‘James Crowe Richmond’s artistic career’, in James Crowe Richmond, exhibition catalogue, p. 26. 
4 Belich, The New Zealand Wars, p. 261. 
5 Ibid. 
6 See O’Malley, The New Zealand Wars. 
7 Belich, The New Zealand Wars, p. 266; O’Malley, The New Zealand Wars, p. 223. 
8 Richmond also made a pencil sketch of Ngātapa which was reproduced as a lithograph for James Cowan’s New Zealand Wars. See Richmond, Ngatapa from the East, 1869, pencil, 260 x 360mm. Gift of EA Atkinson, 1935, on behalf of the artist’s daughter, DK Richmond (1935-0005-2). 
9 ‘Ngatapa’, New Zealand History (nzhistory.govt.nz/war/te-kootis-war/ngatapa, accessed 21 July 2021).