'Our Old Friends and Recent Foes': James Cowan, Rudall Hayward and Memories of Natural Affections in the New Zealand Wars

Abstract

When the first Taranaki War ended in 1861, a young settler and engineer called George Robinson celebrated the apparent end of interracial hostilities by venturing out with his fellow volunteers to rediscover a peach orchard that war had made inaccessible. Appetites satisfied, he and his friends were exploring further into the lately contested territory, when they met a 'lad' they knew from one of the resistant Maori settlements. The boy invited them home where his people wer enow living: after some hesitation, they accompanied him.