The daily journal of Magistrate William Thomas, recently discovered in a post-quake cleanout of the Court basements in Christchurch, provides first-hand evidence of the dramatic escape of Te Kooti and nearly 300 followers after two years of captivity on Chatham Island/Rekohui. On Saturday 4 July 1868 Te Kooti captured his captors and seized control of the schooner Rifleman.

The images show the badly damaged journal kept by William Thomas from 1866 to 1869.

The journal account, presumably begun very shortly after the escape, details over nine pages how the ‘Hauhaus’ took over the redoubt and the magazine, and seized the schooner. These hurried notes were later written up as a formal report and sent to the Colonial Secretary, and the letter books containing copies of the magistrate’s reports have also recently been transferred to Archives New Zealand’s Christchurch Office.

“I was seized around the waist and thrown heavily on the ground by about a dozen as far as I could judge” writes Thomas, “I lay on the ground struggling and calling for help, begging of them not to kill me and my wife and children and the female settlers”. In fact, none of the settlers was harmed although one of the guards was killed; Te Kooti had given orders that no one was to be hurt.

“In this unexpected turn of affairs one hardly knows which most to be astonished at,” continues Thomas, “the comparative mild treatment we received at the hands of the fanatics who had us entirely at their mercy, or the precise cunning and rapid way in which the whole affair was so well managed.”

The journal is currently undergoing preservation treatment in Archives New Zealand’s Christchurch Office and will be digitised to prevent further deterioration and allow the contents to be available online. For updates on our On This Day series and news from Archives New Zealand, follow us on Twitter twitter.com/ArchivesNZ