Beginning of the Flagstaff War

Date: March 11, 1845 • Location: Paihia, New Zealand

This milestone marked the outbreak and beginning of this historic period, which spanned 1845–1846.

Māori forces, led by chiefs Te Ruki Kawiti and Hōne Heke, attacked the British settlement of Kororāreka, New Zealand, beginning the Flagstaff War.

Māori are the indigenous Polynesian people of mainland New Zealand. Māori are descended from East Polynesian settlers who arrived in New Zealand in several waves of canoe voyages between roughly 1320 and 1350. Over several centuries in isolation, these settlers developed a distinct culture, whose language, mythology, crafts, and performing arts evolved independently from those of other eastern Polynesian cultures. In the 15th century some of them moved to the Chatham Islands, where their descendants became New Zealand's other indigenous Polynesian ethnic group, the Moriori.