Rangiaowhia (or Rangiawhia, or Rangiaohia)[1] was, for over 20 years, a thriving village on a ridge between two streams in the Waikato region, about 4 km (2.5 mi) east of Te Awamutu.

cultivating and rendering fruitful the wild wastes of their district,— accumulating guarantees for the continuance of peace, — in all ways setting an example to their countrymen .

I sincerely trust that many Rangiaowhias,— such remarkable instances of the progress of the Maori race,— may soon be found throughout New Zealand.

[5] Immediately prior to invasion in 1864, magistrate, John Eldon Gorst, wrote, "The land around Rangiaowhia and Te Awamutu, extending to and including part of Kihikihi, belongs to natives of the great Waikato tribe.

Besides the great villages of Rangiaowhia, Kihikihi, and Kuakotari, numerous little hamlets are dotted about the country, consisting of three or four native houses surrounded by their patches of cultivated land.

Even those parts of the country which appear to be only a barren waste of heavy fern land would be found, on enquiry, to have been once under cultivation, and to be now used as a pasturage for horses, cattle, or pigs .

Rangiaowhia, for instance, is surrounded by a fence many miles in circuit; roads are made in various directions; bridges have been thrown over impassible swamps; and a good many mill-dams have been constructed.

A considerable part of the land was covered, a generation ago, with ancient forest, which the industry of the Waikatos has cleared.

It and the slightly earlier St John's, Te Awamutu are the oldest surviving Waikato buildings.

[9] The Catholic Holy Angels[10] mission station was about 400 metres north of St Paul's.

John Morgan ran an Anglican school with over 40 pupils, charging £5 a year for board and tuition in English, singing, industry and religion.

[17] Shortly after Rev Morgan took over Otawhao (Te Awamutu) mission station in 1841, wheat was grown there and, next year, also at Rangiaowhia.

Other crops were barley, oats, potatoes, peach, apple, pear, plum, quince, gooseberry and almond.

[19] In March 1846 a £200 contract (excluding carriage of timber and building the dam and leat)[18] with Stewart McMullen[20] to erect a mill was started.

[24] Governor Grey visited the mill in 1849 and was presented with 2 bags of flour for Queen Victoria.

[28] Bishop George Selwyn, the head of the Anglican Church in New Zealand, who had been "controversially accompanying the Crown forces as official army chaplain", was told nine days before the February attack that women, children and elderly would be taking refuge at unfortified and undefended Rangiaowhia, and had been asked to "consult with Cameron and ensure that the people there would not be harmed".

[30] As the village was largely occupied by women, children and older men, the deaths have been regarded as murder, rather than an act of war.

[36] Later that day, the men of Rangiaowhia abandoned Paterangi, Pikopiko, and Rangiatea pā to defend their families, digging a rifle-trench with a narrow opening to block the road from Te Awamutu on the crest of the ridge at Hairini.

[36] The troops then looted the village,[33] though it has been suggested that the Hairini defence was a diversionary tactic, to allow more time to move more goods and animals south to safety.

Colonel Marmaduke Nixon, who had led the Rangiaowhia cavalry charge, was mortally wounded.

[30][33] In 2021 a documentary about the Rangiaowhia attack called NZ Wars: Stories of Tainui was released by Great Southern Television and Aotearoa Media Collective for RNZ.

[47][48] In September 2023, members of the Anglican Church Te Haahi Mihingare and Ngāti Apakura met in St Paul's church and acknowledged their original association in the mid-nineteenth century, as well as the inability of Bishop Selwyn to protect Ngāti Apakura non-combatants in the 1864 attack.