(c. 1815–94).

War chief of Ngati Maniapoto and defender of Orakau pa.

A new biography of Maniapoto, Rewi Manga appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Rewi Maniapoto was born about 1815 and was the son of Te Ngohi, a high-born chief of Ngati Maniapoto, and Pareteka. Through his father he claimed descent from Hoturoa. In 1831 Te Ngohi was one of the chiefs of Te Wherowhero's taua (war party) which captured Pukerangiora, and Rewi accompanied his father on this campaign.

In the 1850s Rewi became prominent among the leaders of the “King” movement and, at the meeting at Ngaruawahia in April 1858 when Potatau was installed, he ceremonially hoisted the “King's” flag. On the outbreak of war in Taranaki Rewi led a Ngati Maniapoto taua to Wiremu Kingi's aid. The combined tribes fought with such determination that, on 27 June 1860, they gained a resounding victory over the Imperial troops at Puke-ta-Kauere. On 23 January 1862, however, they were decisively defeated in the attack on the Huirangi (No. 3) Redoubt. Rewi then returned to Kihikihi, where he preached a crusade against the Government. He attracted a good deal of support among the “Kingites”, and his impassioned orations on the subject gradually eclipsed the more moderate counsels of Wiremu Tamihana Te Waharoa. In 1861 Sir George Grey sent John Gorst to Te Awamutu as Magistrate and Civil Commissioner. Although Gorst was treated kindly his authority was not recognised. At the Government's direction Gorst established a trade school and printed a newspaper, Pihoihoi (The sparrow which sitteth alone on the house top) which was intended to counteract the King party's publication Te Hokioi (a mythical bird, never seen but known only by its scream). Gorst's editorial attitude was far from compromising and he incensed the “King” leaders by the vigour of his articles. Rewi raised a war party and, on 23 March 1863, expelled Gorst and his press from the Waikato.

When the Waikato War broke out Rewi took the field as supreme commander of Tawhiao's forces. From the outset he made a determined attempt to take the war into the enemy's territory. His first engagement was fought near Papakura and, afterwards, his forces occupied the densely wooded Hunua Ranges. From this base he carried out a series of raids in the Auckland district. When he was dislodged from the Hunuas, Rewi established his headquarters on Pukekawa Hill at Meremere. There his forces held up General Cameron's advance for three months until newly acquired gunboats enabled the great Meremere pa to be outflanked. Owing to a breach of Maori etiquette by the defenders Rewi did not participate in the defence of Rangiriri pa but occupied a conical hill in the swamp to the south-east. By the time the Imperial troops fought their way to Te Awamutu the “King” tribes had received reinforcements from the Ngati Raukawa and Tuhoe tribes.

Confident of their ability to continue the war, the chiefs insisted upon building a pa at Orakau – about 2 miles east of Kihikihi – where they first met Rewi. Rewi himself had doubts about the strategic value of the Orakau site, but he yielded to their enthusiasm. Early in the morning of 31 March 1864 General Cameron's forces reached Orakau and the siege commenced. By the morning of the second day the Maoris' ammunition was running low, water supplies were exhausted, and the attacking force's siege guns were in action. Early in the afternoon of the third day, because he was impressed by the defenders' courage, Cameron sent William Mair forward with a flag of truce to urge the pa to surrender. Rewi replied, “Kaore e mau te rongo, ake, ake!” (“Peace shall never be made, never, never!”) This was conveyed to Mair by Hauraki Tonganui, a Ngati Tuwharetoa chief who was noted for his stentorian voice, and who had been conversing with Mair while Rewi considered the message. He used Rewi's words which have now passed into legend; and, immediately afterwards, these were also shouted in unison by the defenders. Mair then asked that the women and children be sent out of the pa. While Rewi was considering this, Ahumai Te Paerata, a tall handsome young woman, daughter of the old West Taupo chief Te Paerata, stood up and replied on behalf of the women: “Ki te mate nga tane, me mate ano nga wahine me nga tamariki.” (“If the men die, the women and children must die also.”) Shortly afterwards the battle was renewed, and when Cameron's men captured an outwork flanking the main pa, the survivors made good their escape, hotly pursued by the troops.

After Orakau, Rewi retreated into the King Country, where all pursuit ceased. In later years this forbearance paid dividends, for he became a useful friend in the complicated Maori-Pakeha relations in the 1870s and 1880s. In 1869 Rewi welcomed Sir Donald McLean on his visit to the Waikato. And in the same year, when Te Kooti sought Tawhiao's help, Rewi was sent as an observer to accompany him to Taupo. He remained with Te Kooti until his defeat at Te Porere when he returned to the King Country and advised the “King” against intervention. In 1873 he intervened to save the life of James Mackay, whose investigations into Timothy Sullivan's murder brought him into disfavour with the “Kingites”. In 1879, at the invitation of John Sheehan, the Native Minister, Rewi visited Auckland, where he received a hero's welcome. He returned to the Waikato in the train of Governor Sir Hercules Robinson. In 1883 Rewi supported Wahanui in his campaign to prevent land selling, the sale of liquor, and the spread of immorality in the King Country. In 1889 he was one of the older chiefs who were influenced by Te Mahuki's Messianic prophecies. He visited Auckland for the provincial jubilee celebrations in 1890, and thereafter lived quietly at Kihikihi. In his last years he had indifferent health. Seddon visited him in March 1894. A month later a public monument was unveiled at Kihikihi in Rewi's honour. He died two months later, on 21 June 1894.

Although short and slender in stature, Rewi excelled as a military tactician, and in battle forswore the traditional Maori practices, choosing rather to abide by the Pakeha rules of war. Writing of Rewi in 1888 E. W. Payton said that he was “the most courteous and dignified old gentleman he had ever met of a so called savage tribe”.

by Walter Hugh Ross, Journalist, Taupo and Bernard John Foster, M.A., Research Officer, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington.

• The New Zealand Wars, Cowan, J. (1955)
• The Maori King, Gorst, J. E. (1959)
• New Zealand Herald, 23 Jun 1894 (Obit).

Two of the most famous manhunts of recent times were those organised to search for the elusive George Wilder. On the night of 17 May 1962 Wilder, who was in New Plymouth Gaol serving a term of imprisonment for convictions of burglary, shopbreaking, and theft, scaled a high prison wall and escaped. He was not seen again until 10 July, when he was recognised at Ongarue, near Taumarunui. From then until his capture on 21 July, near Tutukau Mill, Whakamaru, Wilder's amazing evasion of large parties of police caught the public imagination and lent a certain romance to his exploits. At the time of his capture he had been at large for 65 days.

On 29 January 1963 Wilder made his second gaol break, when, in company with three others, he escaped from Mount Eden Gaol. As on the previous occasion, the manhunt attracted widespread public attention. Although police parties sighted him in the Waitakere Ranges on 9 April, they were unable to catch up with him. Wilder was recaptured on 17 July 1963, when he was found in a hut at Rununga Bush, near Rangitaiki, 2 miles off the Napier-Taupo road and 35 miles from Taupo. He had been free for 172 days, during which time he had travelled 1,620 miles and committed 40 crimes.

On 4 February 1964 Wilder escaped from Mount Eden Gaol with two companions. Armed with a sawn-off shotgun, they kidnapped a warder and took refuge in a private home in Horeka Avenue, Mount Eden. After three hours of liberty, during which time they held the householders as hostages, they surrendered in response to a police threat to use tear gas. Wilder's sentence was again increased as a result of this exploit. In July 1965 Wilder took part in the Mount Eden prison riot.

In the case of Trevor Edward Nash, central figure in a £20,000 payroll robbery in Auckland in November 1956, who escaped from Mount Eden Prison in February 1961 after serving less than four years of a 10-year sentence, it took the police six months to recapture him, and then only as a result of the astuteness of an Australian detective who recognised him, despite a disguise, in a Melbourne street. The police search in New Zealand extended from Auckland to the Bluff, and at least one innocent man was apprehended for questioning. But all the while Nash was out of the country, and, when arrested in July, he was found to be in possession of a substantial amount of the proceeds of the robbery. How he managed to leave New Zealand has never been determined. When he was finally arrested and locked up in a Melbourne cell, his laconic reaction was, “God, you wouldn't read about it”.

by Ronald Jones, Journalist and Script Writer, New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, Wellington.

In December 1955 a fugitive from prison in Auckland made history by the circumstances of his escape, and although he enjoyed only two and a half days of freedom, he had the distinction of provoking an official investigation at Cabinet level, and a drastic revision of the precautions in prison discipline designed to keep life-term prisoners under control. He was Edward Raymond Horton, serving a life sentence for a most revolting murder. He was one of a prison party taken out of gaol at Mount Eden for a recreational programme at Mount Albert, Auckland. The occasion was an indoor bowls tournament and, despite the presence of a strong security guard, Horton simply walked out of the hall and disappeared. Public indignation was widespread when the full facts were made known, and when, after 60 hours of search, a force of over 200 police finally rounded up the escaped man and returned him to his cell, there was a general demand for an inquiry. The then Minister of Justice admitted that the position was entirely unsatisfactory and said that the Justice Department must take full blame for what had happened. The most amazing thing about the escape was that, of 17 prisoners who took part in this extra-mural recreation, no fewer than 12 were life-term men. As a result of Horton's escape, the whole system of the treatment of “lifers” was overhauled.

When Eric Stanley Graham, a 40-year-old farmer, allowed his antipathy to his fellow men to take the form of threatening them with firearms, he attracted the attention of the police. A constable visited his farm, but received such a hostile welcome that he returned to headquarters for reinforcements. Three constables under Sergeant Cooper returned to the farmstead with the idea of taking Graham into the station for questioning. Graham reacted calmly enough at first and asked to be allowed to “go to the shed”. The next thing that happened was a rifle shot from a farm outhouse and Sergeant Cooper, the only armed member of the party, discovered he had been shot in the wrist. Graham was then seen to dash for the house, and within a few minutes a fusillade of shots rang out. The police rushed the house, but the man who was credited with being able to shoot a stag between the eyes at 500 paces accounted for all of them. He killed the sergeant and two constables outright and gravely wounded another man. Help arrived in the form of three local volunteers, one of them a 54-year-old agricultural inspector who carried a rifle. Graham turned his attention to this new attack, shot the armed leader, and drove off the other two. He then issued from the house and dispatched the wounded constable with a final shot.

From that moment the hunt was on, and before it was concluded more than 300 police, Army personnel, Home Guardsmen, and civilian volunteers had joined the search for Graham who, an expert woodsman, had taken refuge in the bush. When he left home the fugitive took with him firearms, 1,700 rounds of ammunition, and food. With the local Police Force practically wiped out, the manhunt paused momentarily until search parties could be re-formed. Police were flown in from all parts of New Zealand, troops were dispatched from Burnham Military Camp armed with machine guns and Tommy guns, and armed Home Guardsmen and civilians were also in the hunt. The tiny bush settlement of Kowhitirangi was completely besieged. Although Graham had taken to the bush, he never at any time moved far from his homestead, and in the first few days returned home on several occasions. His house was invested by police and Home Guardsmen, and on each occasion there were sharp shooting engagements, generally in the darkness. One Home Guardsman in the house was shot, and died in hospital the following morning, and another who rushed from the other side of the road to help was shot from ambush and killed instantly. This brought the death roll to six, with another man gravely wounded in hospital at Hokitika. The news of the second batch of killings raised local feeling to fever pitch and a virtual reign of terror began. Women and children were evacuated, and the Air Force flew in further reinforcements as well as a bomber. The order was “Get Graham, dead or alive”.

The searchers were never far behind Graham in his movement through the bush. He left many signs of his presence, including evidence that he had himself been wounded in the shooting exchanges. Finally, on the twelfth day of the hunt, Sergeant Quirke, of Auckland, by means of high-powered binoculars, discovered him a mile away. He stalked the fugitive carefully and then shot him at a range of 25 yards. Graham was not killed outright. He was captured and taken to hospital but died within 12 hours of admission. Thus ended the strangest and most tragic manhunt in New Zealand history.

From time to time in the history of Police Force operations in New Zealand, manhunts have played their part, though fortunately such cases have been comparatively rare. Among the earliest was that of the escapee John Joseph Pawelka who in April 1910 brought alarm to the town of Palmerston North. Unquestionably the most tragic case was that of the hunt in the West Coast bush in October 1941 for a crazed Kowhitirangi farmer who had permitted a persecution complex in respect of his neighbours so to unhinge his mind that, before he himself was mortally wounded, he had killed six men and so injured a seventh that he died in hospital 17 months later. The casualties included practically the whole resident police strength of the town of Hokitika, a sergeant and three constables, and two Home Guardsmen. The seventh victim was an agricultural inspector stationed at Hokitika.

(Avicennia resinifera).

Mangroves grow on coastal and tidal mud flats throughout many tropical and subtropical parts of the world. In some places they form forests which yield important quantities of firewood. The family contains only the one genus, Avicennia, in which there are about 10 species. The New Zealand species is endemic and forms the dominant vegetation found on coastal mud flats north of latitude 38° S. It is a low shrub or small tree usually growing to little more than 20 ft under favourable conditions. Branchlets and leaves, which grow to a length of 2–3 in., are opposite and are clothed in closely appressed white or buff hairs. The leaf shape is elliptical

One of the characteristics which seems to enable mangrove to grow in such a seemingly inhospitable habitat as tidal mud flats is the presence of “breathing-roots”. These are erect, stout growths arising from the lateral roots and are exposed at low tide. They are composed of a spongy tissue and their function is to absorb air – hence the common name of breathing root.

The fruit is a large capsule with a single seed, and germination and root growth begin before it drops from the plant. When, therefore, the seed does drop, it quickly becomes established in the mud and is not subject to constant movement by tides.

by Alec Lindsay Poole, M.SC., B.FOR.SC., F.R.S.N.Z., Director-General of Forests, Wellington.

(1877–1949).

Novelist.

A new biography of Mander, Mary Jane appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Mary Jane Mander, who wrote as Jane Mander, was the eldest daughter of the Hon. Francis Mander, a pioneer sawmiller of the kauri forests and politician for 27 years, 20 as member of Parliament for Marsden and seven as a Legislative Councillor. Jane was born on 9 April 1877 at Ramarama, south of Auckland. Her childhood, a period of constant change, was a commentary on conditions which were overcome only by determination and initiative in an age before grants from the State so generously eased the path of advancement. She never spent more than two or three years in any one of the more isolated forest regions where her father established his sawmill, but Mrs Mander, a wise, deeply religious woman gifted with a sense of humour, schooled her daughter and encouraged her gift for storytelling which found an outlet in entertaining the younger members of the family. At the age of eight Jane trudged 5 miles to school at Kaiwaka from a sawmill home at Pukekaroro, on an arm of the Kaipara Harbour. Seven years later, against some family opposition, she decided to become a pupil teacher, principally because the family purse was insufficient to meet her expenses at Auckland University College.

Jane's teaching career began at Port Albert, where she helped with the family tasks before walking to school, and again when she returned home. Here, too, she joined a debating society, taking part in discussions with all the radical enthusiasm of her young, inquiring mind. Later she taught at the Devonport, Newton West, and Otahuhu Schools, returning with her family to Whangarei in 1900 where she began work on her first and best novel, The Story of a New Zealand River. When her father bought the two Whangarei newspapers in 1902 she abandoned teaching for journalism. From Whangarei she moved to Dargaville for three years to work on the North Auckland Times, also re-writing her novel, and making copious notes for two others as she encountered characters and incidents on which to build. The desire for further study was encouraged by W. R. Holman, Labour Premier of New South Wales, whom she met in 1909, and in 1912, at the age of 35, Jane Mander sailed for the United States to take a course at Columbia University, New York. She went via London, taking a completed draft of her novel which, on arrival, she submitted to John Lane. Though impressed, he refused publication unless certain passages were re-written, as he considered them too frank for the public of that day; but this revision could not be done in the time available in London.

By 1913 Jane Mander was making history at Columbia where she gained top marks in journalism, history, and philosophy, and continued to do so each year. In order to supplement her father's small allowance she drained her strength by taking on outside work – addressing meetings in the campaign for women's franchise, lecturing, doing research work at Sing Sing Prison for prison reformers, coaching junior students, writing magazine articles, managing a hostel for workers and teachers during vacation periods, and, when opportunity offered, rewriting parts of The Story of a New Zealand River, and working on drafts of two other novels. Late in the First World War she was employed for a time by the American Red Cross, managing a warehouse with characteristic energy and zeal. Money thus earned enabled her to recover her strength, for she was often ill. After irritating delays, because of the war, The Story of a New Zealand River was published in New York early in 1920 and in London a few months later. Critics, without exception, gave her novel a warm welcome, describing it as a vivid, human, and realistic tale, words which they applied to almost all her novels.

In 1922 she sailed for London to see the publication of her second novel, The Passionate Puritan. Her third, The Strange Attraction, appeared in 1923; Allan Adair followed in 1925; The Beseiging City in 1926; and Pins and Pinnacles in 1928. But Jane Mander could not live on her royalties in the days before mass publicity and film contracts. Only 2,000 copies of The Story of a New Zealand River were sold in England and a like number in the United States. She read manuscripts for publishers and, from 1927 to 1930, worked for the Harrison Press in Paris under Glenway Westcott and Munroe Wheeler, two brilliant young Americans. She was under contract to John Lane to write another novel and her reminiscences when she returned to New Zealand in October 1932 to keep house for her father. She wrote little after her return, mostly articles and literary reviews. Failing health finally forced her back to Whangarei to be near members of her family, and there she died on 20 December 1949.

Jane Mander was a woman of strong character and vigorous mind, and those qualities are expressed in the more unconventional characters in her novels. Her enthusiasm for new political climates, whether good or bad, was never quite abandoned though much modified by time and circumstance. Her novels, though not great, are landmarks in the New Zealand literary landscape, for her characters are normal human beings concerned with their destiny at a time of great social change, and she made the New Zealand landscape acceptable to the world without being trite and obvious. Although the novels have no place for eccentrics or decadents, there is often a disregard for convention which so shocked the conservative mother of the day that daughters were forbidden to read them. She was a little too enthusiastic about new social and political movements without assessing their impact on the future, a fault she attributed to an undigested diet of Bernard Shaw and Nietzsche. Most of her novels end on a note of hope and renewed endeavour in a wider field, and this was characteristic of the woman herself.

by Oliver Arthur Gillespie, M.B.E., M.M. (1895–1960), Author.

(There is a general impression that The Story of a New Zealand River is associated with the northern Wairoa. A later novel certainly is, but the “New Zealand River” is the Otamatea. The logging operations at Pukekaroro and the descriptions of the Otamatea River make the novel a historical document of considerable interest. Ed.

• Centennial of Kaiwaka 1859–1959, Kaiwaka Centennial Association (1959)
• New Zealand Listener, p. 12, 5 May 1961
• New Zealand Literature – A Survey, McCormick, E. H. (1959).

The Manawatu River (catchment area, 2,296 square miles) drains the central east coast of the North Island, rising in the eastern Ruahine Range to the north of Norsewood. It flows eastwards to the axis of the east coast inland lowlands where it turns a right angle to flow south-south-west towards Woodville for nearly 30 miles. It then turns abruptly westwards to flow through the Manawatu Gorge and thence south-westwards to the sea in the south Taranaki Bight. Between the town of Woodville and the Manawatu Gorge there is a confluence of the major tributaries Mangatainoka (171 square miles), Tiraumea (364 square miles), and Mangahao (125 square miles) Rivers which drain the southern part of the east coast inland lowlands, the west flank of the east coast highlands, and the east flank of the northern Tararua Range. The Manawatu River proper and its tributaries to the north-east of the gorge are deeply entrenched in terraces formed during the Pleistocene glaciations. At Ashhurst on the western side of the gorge the Manawatu is joined by the Pohangina River (211 square miles) and, near Rangiotu, by the Oroua (320 square miles). From approximately half way between Palmerston North and Rangiotu the Manawatu meanders over a coastal plain some 17 miles wide.

The Pohangina and Oroua rise in the eastern Ruahine Range in an area with a rainfall of up to 200 in. per annum. The upper part of the Manawatu, rising to the east of the axial range, is subject to periodic torrential rain. The largest recorded floods occurred in 1880, 1897, 1902, and 1953, with peak discharges of about 160,000 cu. ft. per second. Flooding to depths of between 4 and 24 ft resulted and there were river rises of up to 60 ft at the upper gorge bridge. Floods of over 100,000 cusecs occurred in 1906 and 1941, while flows of 50,000 cusecs have been common. The lowest measured flow was 430 cusecs in 1939. Extensive flood-control works have been established between Rangiotu and Foxton. These consist of a diversion channel and a massive flood-gate system. The river is tidal for a distance of about 4 miles to beyond the State highway bridge at Foxton.

Important towns on or near the river are Dannevirke and Woodville east of the gorge and Palmerston North and Foxton to the west. The port of Foxton, once important, is now but little used.

The gorge through the axial range, which affords an important road and rail link between east and west, is a feature of prime interest. Young marine sedimentary strata above the gorge show the former existence of a strait connecting the sea that lay both east and west of the axial range, which then existed as a series of islands. During the first Pleistocene, glaciation lowered the sea level with the emergence of the ridge and the development of a river which drained the area previously occupied by the sea. During the subsequent rise of the land, the river has cut its gorge in the hard rocks of the axial ridge.

The origin of the name Manawatu is obscure.

by Thomas Ludovic Grant-Taylor, M.SC., New Zealand Geological Survey, Lower Hutt.

• The Pioneering Days in Palmerston North, Peterson, G. C. (1952)
• Introducing the Manawatu, Anderson, G., and Saunders, B. G. R. (Jt. eds.) (1963)
• New Zealand Geographer, Vol. 15 (1959), “The Element of Change in Palmerston North”, Anderson, G.
• Ib., Vol. 9 (1955), “The Villages of the Manawatu”, Anderson, G., and Franklin, S. H.
• Ib., Vol. 7 (1953), “Town and Region – a Comparison of Palmerston North, Wanganui, and New Plymouth”, Pownall, L. L.
• Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. 1 (1960), “The Village and the Bush – the Evolution of the Village Community, Wellington Province, New Zealand”, Franklin, S. H.