The Hauraki Militia

From the Auckland Museum Library.

The Auckland Museum Library strength is in their manuscripts collection.

Call No. MS 96/70 By Alistair Isdale,
Extracts.

• The first Thames equivalents of our armed Constabulary were Maori.
• A later formation 1875 was a body of Native Volunteers, under Captain Taipari, but there was a change here from the earlier bodies of heavily armed Maoris with only two or three police for the Europeans to keep order among themselves.
• Joshua Clifton Firth who had been a friend of the dead Wiremu Temehana, 'the King Maker', and who was laying the foundation of his great Matamata Estate, went out with a couple of Maoris to meet Te Kooti.
• Even in Thames, the Maoris would not allow any improvement to the road up the Kaeuranga.
• Meanwhile both sides of the Maoris were making it clear their quarrel was one they wished the Europeans to keep clear of.