Waitara River were driven from their farms. A year later 100 men, women and children sat in a surveyors' path to disrupt the surveying of land for sale. Between March and November 1848 Wiremu Kīngi, a Te Āti Awa chief who staunchly opposed the sale of land in the Waitara area, returned to the district from Waikanae with almost 600 men, women and children and some livestock to retake possession of the land. They established substantial cultivations of wheat, oats, maize and potatoes, selling it to settlers and also for export; his followers also laboured on settler farms. The Waitangi Tribunal noted that the group allegedly eventually owned 150 horses and up to 300 head of cattle. Despite Kingi's opposition however, payments were made by government agents secretly to Maori individuals for prospective sales of land in the Waitara area, prompting spates of violence between those supporting and opposing land sales. In 1857 the issue came to a head with the offer for sale of land at Waitara and at Turangi, further to the north, by two individuals, Ihaia Te Kirikumara and a minor chief, Pokikake Te Teira. Teira's 600-acre (240 hectare) Waitara block, located on the west side of the Waitara River and known as the Pekapeka block, became the focal point of a dispute between the colonial government (chiefly representing settlers) and Māori over the right of individuals to sell land that Māori custom regarded as owned by the community. The dispute ultimately led to the outbreak of war in Waitara on 17 March 1860, when 500 troops began a bombardment of Kingi's Te Kohia pā, which had been built two days' prior. By the end of March, of the four kāinga in the Pekapeka block (Te Whanga, Kuikui, Hurirapa and Wherohia), only Hurirapa, the community led by Ihaia and Teira, remained. Imperial troops established Camp Waitara to the south of the Pekapeka block, at the former location of Pukekohe pā, which became the base of the 40th Regiment, and was one of the largest redoubts in the country. The war, in which 2,300 Imperial troops fought about 1,400 Māori, ran for 12 months before a ceasefire was negotiated. Later campaigns during the war included the major British defeat in the Battle of Puketakauere, close to Te Kohia pā, on 27 June 1860 which cost the lives of 32 Imperial troops and of five Māori. A major British