Hori Ngatai

 

Right next to a motorway in the central city is the Tauranga Mission Cemetery aka Otamataha Pa which is known as the Military Cemetery. There are monuments to the Naval Brigade, the 43rd Monmouth Regiment and a mass Maori grave. This particular monument is for a man named Hori Ngatai who was a chief of the Ngaiterangi Tribe and was part of the battles of Gate Pa during the New Zealand wars.

Linking up with Shadow Shot Sunday and Mosaic Monday.

Tauranga Mission Cemetery - Otamataha Pa

After nearly 3 days of rain we decided to venture out into the drizzle, cabin fever was starting to creep in. This morning we had read about a local historical place not far from home, the Tauranga Mission Cemetery. Located in Marsh Street it's apparently the oldest European burial ground in the Bay of Plenty area, and has approximately 100 troops and 14 Maori warriors who perished in while on active duty during the NZ wars.

This place has a lovely outlook through the surrounding trees of Tauranga harbour and is near The Strand. The site was once used by the Ngai Te Rangi Pa of Otamataha.

In the 1820s the Church Missionary Society missionaries visited from the Bay of Islands searching for supplies but left after most of them were killed in 1828 by Ngati Maru raiders from the nearby Coromandel Thames area. 

In 1838/1839 Reverand Afred Brown bought the land and started up the Te Papa Mission Station and the pa site (above) became a cemetery.



In 1908 after the cemetery fell into disrepair, with land erosion playing a major part a trustee contacted the Under Secretary for lands. They decided a type of retaining wall needed to be built, concrete slabs were made to replace the wooden headboards on most of the graves which were then in time replaced by memorial plaques on the ground surface - some of which we saw today.

On 20th May 1884 a notice was issued in the Bay of Plenty Times that no more burials were to be allowed here.

37 men have been commemorated with name plaques but the names of 11 were not found on casualty lists. The cemetery also contains graves of 7 British soldiers who died between 1864 and 1870.

As you can see these are the fences and railings are still in fairly good condition, although moss has grown in places they are not falling apart.

Although Mission Cemetery was officially closed in 1881, some of the early settlers and their families were also buried here. In May 2014, one month after the 150th commemoration of the Battle of Gate Pa, the cemetery was part of a 7863 square metre site transferred from the New Zealand Mission Trust to the Otamataha Trust - the Hapu of Ngati Tapu and Ngaitamarawaho.

More information at Papers Past, Tauranga Memories, NZ History and this post at Timespanner is alot more well researched than what i have done :-)