After some little delay the Government took in hand the punishment of those responsible for these murders, the duty being entrusted to Mr. William Mair, Resident Magistrate at Maketu, who was gazetted a Major, and enrolled a number of the friendly Arawa tribe for the purpose.

William Mair, after Orakau, was Resident Magistrate and Government Native Agent in various districts.As an officer in command of Arawa and other Maori contingents he fought the Hauhaus in the Bay of Plenty and the Urewera country, 1865,69.One notable success was his capture of Te Teko pa, on the Rangitaiki River, by means of sap, which forced a surrender (described in Vol.II).For many years after the wars he was Judge of the Native Land Court.The buglers sounded the ,Cease fire,, and two interpreters of the staff, Mr. William G. Mair (afterwards Major Mair), then an ensign in the Colonial Defence Force Cavalry, and Mr. Mainwaring were sent into the sap with a white flag to invite the natives to capitulate.Mair wrote the account in the form of a letter to a relative shortly after the capture of the pa:, ,I got up on the edge of the sap and looked through a gap in the gabions made for the field-piece.Mair reported the interview to General Cameron, who was greatly impressed with the stubborn devotion of the Maoris. Raureti returned to the outer parapet, stood up on the firing-step a few yards from Mair, and delivered this decision, and all the people shouted with one voice, ,Kaore e mau te rongo,ake, ake, ake!, Rewi came out to the north-west angle when the final decision had been made, and stood in the trench a few yards in rear of Raureti. ,As to the reported words, ,Ka whawhai tonu matou, ake, ake, ake!,, says Te Huia, ,I did not hear them uttered.,That is the version of Ngati-Maniapoto.But a different story is given by some of the Ngati-te-Kohera and Ngati-Tuwharetoa.Moetu te Mahia (died 1921), whose home was at Kauriki, near Manunui, on the Main Trunk Railway, declared that it was Hauraki Tonganui who delivered Rewi's reply to Mr. Mair.Moetu fought at Orakau; he was then about twenty years old.He and Hauraki were both of Ngati-Tuwharetoa and Ngati-te-Kohera, and were first cousins.Mair then, after inquiry, came to the conclusion that it was Hauraki who spoke to him from the parapet and delivered the Maori reply to the demand for surrender.No doubt more than one man spoke to Mair.Mr. Mair, rushing in with the stormers, found some Regulars about to bayonet a wounded woman who had scraped away the light layer of earth covering the body of her slain husband for a last look at him, weeping as she brushed the soil from his face.Mair tried to beat the men back with his carbine, and knocked one of them into the ditch; then he turned to attend to the poor woman.She was Hine-i-turama, a high chieftainess of the Arawa people, ninth in direct descent from Hinemoa, and celebrated as a composer of songs; she had been the wife of Hans Tapsel, the trader of Maketu, and on coming to Orakau to visit her daughter, the wife of Dr. Hooper, had been detained by the Kingites, and married another man, Ropata, who fell in the siege.Mr. Mair carried her to an angle, and then went to attend to another wounded woman; but when he returned Hine-i-turama had been bayoneted to death by some brutal soldiers in avengement of fallen comrades.* The splendid devotion and fearlessness displayed by the Maori heroes of that retreat aroused the admiration of their enemies.Colonel Roberts, N.Z.C.,the ,Deerfoot, of Von Tempsky's journal,narrates one poignant episode of the Forest Rangers' chase. ,Most of the troops,, he says, ,abandoned the pursuit at the Puniu River, but several of us Forest Rangers and two or three men of Rait's Artillery crossed the river and went on in chase for a little distance.We caught up on one Maori, who repeatedly turned and deliberately knelt and levelled his single-barrel shot-gun (he was endeavouring to cover the retreat of some

Captain William Mair approached the defences under a flag of truce and, being a fluent Maori speaker, was able to talk with Rewi Maniopoto about the possibility of surrendering the garrison, as they were surrounded and desperately short of food, water and ammunition. There were also a number of grievously wounded people as a result of the intense bombardment. Being rebuffed about surrendering, Mair suggested that at least the non-combatants should be spared, as a number of women and children were in the garrison.

32. Mair St. Captain William Mair was both a Police Magistrate and Inspector of Police, arriving in Ballarat in 1851.Cross Mair St. and continue walking north towards the railway crossing.

During the wars of the 1860s his father, Manuera, after being captured by Captain William Mair, had gone over to the colonial forces and Te Haroto enlisted as a soldier in the local constabulary.In later years Te Haroto was derided by some members of his and Maata's tribes for his allegiance to the government; he was referred to as 'ware' (common).However, through his support of Maata and their welfare work among his own people after the war, he silenced his critics.Although Maata and Te Haroto established themselves at Te Teko, Maata regularly visited her family at Tarawera.