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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 1 (May 1, 1929)

Spoils to the Victors

Spoils to the Victors.

Most of the invaders got clean away in their big canoes, paddling for life along the creeks and lagoons to Whakatane. Some of those warrior crews had come from as far away as the East Cape. The Arawa had a glorious time looting Matata, and some of them permanently settled there. The Government ratified their conquest and rewarded their loyalty to the Queen, and so the Matata native lands are occupied to-day by the Ngati-Rangitihi clan of the Arawa.

So ends our battle story of 'Sixty-four, as told to me by some of the men who shared in the fight, Queenites and Kingites. A very few still survive at Rotorua and Maketu.

The rebels never ventured along the Kaokaoroa beach again. But the Long Rib was the war-path for the Government forces many a time after that day. Armed Constabulary from Tauranga marched by way of Matata on the long trail to the Urewera mountains. They marched shawl-kilted like the Maoris; they cursed the gruelling job of carrying back-breaking swags over heavy sand and along fern tracks. They compared themselves with “blanky packhorses,” as many a New Zealand soldier has done in another place since their day.