Seeking unity through kingship
The Māori King Movement, or Kīngitanga, arose among central North Island tribes during the 1850s. Supporters hoped that a shared monarch would strengthen unity, help halt the sale of Māori land, and provide a basis for dealing with the colonial authorities. They chose Pōtatau Te Wherowhero as their first king in 1858. The movement's authority depended on the participation and allegiance of Māori communities; it was not a branch of the colonial government, and not every iwi supported it. The ambition to unite communities under a king developed amid rapid settler population growth and increasing pressure on land.
The movement sought to establish a monarch who could claim status similar to that of Queen Victoria and thus provide a way for Māori to deal with Pākehā (Europeans) on equal footing.
Background
From the early 1850s, North Island Māori came under increasing pressure to satisfy the demand of European settler farmers for arable land. While Māori cultivated small areas, relying on extensive forests for berry, birds and roots, settlers expanded their production capacity by burning forest and fern and planting grass seed in the ashes. Some influential chiefs including Te Rauparaha opposed land sales in the 1840s (culminating in the 1843 Wairau Affray), and the view became more widespread in the following decade, when the Pākehā (European) population grew to outnumber Māori and the colonial government's Native Land Purchase Department adopted unscrupulous methods to take ownership, which included offers to chiefs or small groups of owners.
Deals with individual Māori or groups that did not represent majority interests also dragged Māori into disputes with one another. As the white frontier encroached further on their land, many became concerned that their land, and race, would soon be overrun. Around 1853 Māori revived the ancient tribal runanga or chiefly war councils where land issues were raised and in May 1854 a large meeting—attracting as many as 2000 Māori leaders—was held at Manawapou in south Taranaki where speakers urged concerted opposition to selling land.
Pōtatau Te Wherowhero
Several North Island candidates who were asked to put themselves forward declined; in February 1857, a few weeks after a key intertribal meeting in Taupō, Wiremu Tamihana, a chief of the Ngāti Hauā iwi in eastern Waikato, circulated a proposal to appoint as king the elderly and high-ranking Waikato chief Te Wherowhero, and a major meeting to deal with it was organised to be held at Rangiriri in April.
After initially declining—he was unwilling to undertake new ventures at his age and was described by a European visitor as blind and decrepit, "on the very brink of his grave"—Te Wherowhero agreed in September 1857 to accept the kingship and in June 1858 he was crowned at Ngāruawāhia, later adopting the name Pōtatau Te Wherowhero or simply Pōtatau. Pōtatau proclaimed the boundary separating his authority from that of the Governor, saying: "Let Maungatautari be our boundary. Do not encroach on this side. Likewise I am not to set foot on that side." The King envisaged a conjoint administration in which he ruled in territory still under Māori customary title while the Governor ruled in areas acquired by the Crown.
On 10 April 1860, three weeks after the start of the Taranaki wars, deputations from west coast iwi Te Āti Awa and Ngā Ruanui attended a gathering of Waikato Māori at Ngāruawāhia and tendered their formal allegiance to the king.
Matutaera Tāwhiao
Pōtatau died in 1860, and his son Tāwhiao succeeded him. Tāwhiao's succession to the position of King coincided with a period of increasing friction between Māori and the Auckland-based settler government over issues of land ownership and sovereignty. Hostilities surrounding land purchases in Taranaki spread, erupting into a series of conflicts that became known as the New Zealand Wars. At a runanga of 100 people near Kawhia in May 1861, Hone Wetere and others expressed opposition to the Kingitanga movement and the war in Taranaki. Browne's successor, Sir George Grey, told a large Māori gathering at Taupari near the mouth of the Waikato River in December 1861 that the King movement was bad and should be abandoned.
On 9 July 1863 Grey issued an ultimatum that all Māori living between Auckland and the Waikato take an oath of allegiance to Queen Victoria or be expelled south of the Waikato River. Troops invaded Waikato territory three days later. Kīngitanga forces were forced to fight a defensive war based on frustrating and slowing down their enemy but were unable to prevail over a full-time professional army with almost unlimited manpower and firepower. Tāwhiao and his close followers fled into the bush and steep limestone valleys of Maniapoto territory, which was subsequently known as the King Country, declaring that Europeans risked death if they crossed the aukati or boundary of the confiscated land.