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The Wairau Affray〔("Wairau Affray" ), 10 August 1844, Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 69, Page 2〕 (called the Wairau Massacre in many older texts), on 17 June 1843, was the first serious clash of arms between Māori and the British settlers in New Zealand after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi and the only one to take place on the South Island. The incident was sparked when a magistrate and a representative of the New Zealand Company, who held a possibly fraudulent deed to land in the Wairau Valley in the north of the South Island, led a group of European settlers to attempt to clear Māori off the land and arrest Ngāti Toa chiefs Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata. Fighting broke out and 22 British settlers were killed, several after their surrender. Four Māori were killed, including the wife of Te Rangihaeata and the wife of Te Rauparaha. 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 1844 a land claims commission investigation determined that the Wairau Valley had not been legally sold. The government was to pay compensation to the Rangitane ''iwi'', determined to be the original owners. ==Background== The New Zealand Company had built a settlement around Nelson in the north of the South Island in 1840. It had planned to occupy , but by the end of the year, even as allotments were being sold in England, the company's agents in New Zealand were having difficulty in identifying available land, let alone buying it from local Māori, to form the settlement. The settlers began to purchase large areas of land directly from Māori, without consulting the newly established colonial government and often without establishing vendors' rights to sell the land. The situation led to tension and caused disputes between the two parties. In January 1843 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 Colonel Edward Gibbon Wakefield, one of the principal officers of the company, and William Wakefield. Arthur wrote to Edward that he had located the required amount of land at Wairau, a distance of about 25 km from Nelson. He said he held a deed to the land, having bought it from the widow of a whaling Captain John Blenkinsopp, who had bought it from Te Rauparaha of the Ngāti Toa ''iwi'' at Tuamarina. 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, owned the land and had not been paid for it. But similar disputes had been previously settled through negotiation, and Te Rauparaha was willing to negotiate on the Wairau land. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Wairau Affray」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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