The Wairau Affray of 17 June 1843, also called the Wairau Massacre and the Wairau Incident, was the first serious clash of arms between British settlers and Māori in New Zealand after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi and the only one to take place in the South Island. The incident was sparked when a magistrate and a representative of the New Zealand Company, who held a deed to land in the Wairau Valley in the Nelson Province in the north of the South Island, led a group of European settlers to attempt to arrest Ngāti Toa chiefs Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata. Fighting broke out and 22 British settlers were killed, nine after their surrender. Four Māori were killed, including Te Rongo, who was Te Rangihaeata's wife.
The incident heightened fears among settlers of an armed Māori insurrection. It created the first major challenge for Governor Robert FitzRoy, who took up his posting in New Zealand six months later. FitzRoy investigated the incident and exonerated Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata, for which he was strongly criticised by settlers and the New Zealand Company. In 1944 a land claims commission investigation determined that the Wairau Valley had not been legally sold. The government was to pay compensation to the Rangitāne iwi, determined to be the original owners (until the early 1830s, when Te Rauparaha had driven them from the area).
The New Zealand Company established a settlement at Nelson in the north of the South Island in 1841. It had planned to occupy 200,000 acres (810 km2), but, even as allotments were being sold in England, the company's agents in New Zealand were having difficulty in identifying available land to form the settlement, let alone buying it from local Māori.
Captain Arthur Wakefield had been dispatched by the New Zealand Company to lead the first group of settlers to Nelson. He was the younger brother of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, one of the principal officers of the company, and Colonel William Wakefield. Arthur wrote to Edward that he had located the required amount of land at Wairau. William Wakefield had bought a deed to the land in 1839 from Heni Te Huahua, a widow of whaling captain John William Dundas Blenkinsop. Blenkinsop had also been married to Te Rongo.
Arthur Wakefield wrote to the company in March 1843, "I rather anticipate some difficulty with the natives." The source of the likely difficulty was simple: the chiefs Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata, along with their kinsmen of Ngāti Toa, believed that they owned the land and had not been paid for it. They had controlled the area since the early 1830s, after they defeated the previous occupants, the Rangitāne iwi. Ngāti Toa believed that under British law they were the rightful owners and had not sold the land. They had asked for the surveying to stop until the investigation into the Blenkinsop Indenture (the deed) by Land Commissioner William Spain was concluded.
In January 1843, Nohorua, the older brother of Te Rauparaha, led a delegation of chiefs to Nelson to protest about British activity in the Wairau Plains. Two months later Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata arrived in Nelson, urging that the issue of the land ownership be left to William Spain. Based in Wellington, he had begun investigating all the claimed purchases of the New Zealand Company. Spain later wrote that during that visit, Arthur Wakefield "wished to make them a payment for the Wairau, but they positively refused to sell it, and told him they would never consent to part from it."
Arthur Wakefield rejected the request to wait for Spain's enquiry, informing Te Rauparaha that if local Māori interfered with company surveyors on the land, he would lead 300 constables to arrest him. Wakefield duly despatched three parties of surveyors to the land. They were promptly warned off by local Māori, who damaged the surveyors' tools but left the men unharmed.
Te Rauparaha and Nohorua wrote to Spain on 12 May, urgently asking him to travel to the South Island to settle the company's claim to Wairau. Spain replied that he would do so when his business in Wellington was complete. A month later, with still no sign of Spain, Te Rauparaha led a party to Wairau, where they destroyed all the surveyors' equipment and shelters that had been made with products of the land. They burned down roughly built thatched huts that contained surveying equipment. The surveyors were rounded up and sent unharmed back to Nelson.
Bolstered by a report in the Nelson Examiner newspaper of "Outrages by the Maori at Wairoo", Wakefield assembled a party of men, including Police Magistrate and Native Protector Henry Augustus Thompson, magistrate Captain R. England, Crown prosecutor and newspaper editor G.R. Richardson and about 50 men press-ganged into service, swearing them in as special constables. Thompson issued a warrant for the arrest of Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata for arson. Wakefield referred to the chiefs in a letter as a pair of "travelling bullies".
Thompson commandeered the government brig, which was in Nelson at the time. On the morning of 17 June the party, its size swelled to between 49 and 60 men, including chief surveyor Frederick Tuckett and others who had joined the party after landing, approached the Māori camp. The New Zealand Company's storekeeper James Howard issued the British men with cutlasses, bayonets, pistols and muskets. At the path on the other side of a stream, Te Rauparaha stood surrounded by about 90 warriors, as well as by women and children. He allowed Thompson and five other men to approach him, but requested the rest of the British party to remain on their side of the stream.
Thompson refused to shake hands with Te Rauparaha and said that he had come to arrest him, not over the land issue but for burning the huts. Te Rauparaha replied that the huts had been made from rushes grown on his own land, and thus he had burnt his own property. Thompson insisted on arresting Te Rauparaha, produced a pair of handcuffs, and called out to the men on the far side of the stream, ordering them to fix bayonets and advance. As they began to cross, one of the British fired a shot (apparently by accident). Te Rangihaeata's wife Te Rongo was killed in one of the first volleys, sparking gunfire from both sides. The British retreated across the stream, scrambling up the hill under fire from the Ngāti Toa. Several people from both sides were killed.
Te Rauparaha ordered the Ngāti Toa warriors to cross the stream in pursuit. Those British who had not escaped were quickly overtaken. Wakefield called for a ceasefire and surrendered, along with Thompson, Richardson and ten others. The Maori killed two of the British immediately. Te Rangihaeata demanded utu (revenge) for the death of his wife Te Rongo. The Maori killed all the remaining captives, including Thompson, Samuel Cottrell, a member of the original survey team; interpreter John Brooks, and Captain Wakefield. Four Māori died and three were wounded in the incident. The British lost 22 dead and five wounded.
Te Rongo is sometimes stated to also be Te Rauparaha's daughter but was probably his relation in a different way, she was a chief 'in her own right' and Ngāti Mutunga on her father's side. Her first husband was Captain John Blenkinsop, the man who created the deed that Wakefield purchased and that gave rise to the fighting.
Some survivors fled to Nelson to raise the alarm and a search party, including Wellington magistrates and a group of sailors, returned to Wairau and buried the bodies where they were found. Thirteen were put in one grave and the rest were buried in smaller groups.
Historian Michael Belgrave described the British attempt to survey the land as illegal, inopportune and ultimately disastrous.
Reverberations of a reported massacre were felt as far away as England, where the New Zealand Company was almost ruined by the news of "British citizens being murdered by barbarous natives". Land sales almost halted, and it became obvious the company was being less than honest in its land purchasing tactics, and reports on the events in local newspapers were far from accurate.