Shots fired in Taranaki in 1860 sparked decades of conflict and the country's longest running war. The rapidly growing settler population is desperate for more land while local iwi are more reluctant to sell. In part three, we look at the New Zealand Company's dodgy deals and resulting battles, Ngāti Maru's fight to reclaim the land and one settler family's dreams as they arrive amidst the years of conflict.

Watch the video documentary here.

By Tim Watkin

The first shots were fired at Waitara on March 17, 1860. Shots that rang out around Taranaki 160 years ago and started armed conflict and Māori-settler tensions in the province that continued on and off until the raid on Parihaka in 1881.

Following what historians call The Waitara Dispute, Māori lost 1.2 million acres of land to "creeping confiscation" and in the midst of that three brothers arrived from Wales to follow their hopes and dreams in a new land. One of those brothers was Arthur Roger Watkin, my great-grandfather.

This podcast marks the anniversary of those first shots, drawing on the documentary produced by Great Southern Television for RNZ - NZ Wars: Stories of Waitara, and digging into my own family history to discover whether my ancestors bought confiscated land and what that means for both me and local iwi today.

Taranaki's fertile land had been fought over even before Pākehā arrived in any significant numbers. During the musket wars raids from iwi to the north, led by the likes of Te Rauparaha, sparked battles and eventually migration, as many Te Āti Awa moved south to the Kapiti Coast. This migration was later used against Taranaki iwi, as Crown officials argued they had lost mana whenua to their ancestral lands in in Taranaki. But some iwi members always remained and the invading tribes never inhabited the land, so today those arguments are largely seen as excuses for a land grab.

Settlers arrived in serious numbers from 1840, when the New Zealand Company set up the new settlement of New Plymouth. The Company claimed to have bought 60,000 acres, but Māori disputed this.

Historian Vincent O'Malley says "the New Zealand Company deeds were hugely problematic and really not worth the paper they were written on".

Governor William Hobson sides with the company, his replacement Robert FitzRoy sides with Māori, then George Grey authorises attempts to re-purchase that land. But through it all the highest ranking rangatira in the region, Wiremu Kīngi Te Rangitāke, had a single message: No sale…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details