The War in New Zealand: Maori prisoners from Rangariri waiting to be placed on board H.M.S. Pioneer, 1864. View of ...the marching down of the prisoners, about 180 in number... [after] General Camerons victory on the 20th of November. The Invasion of the Waikato became the largest and most important campaign of the 19th-century New Zealand Wars. Hostilities took place in the North Island between the military forces of the (British) colonial government and a federation of M?ori tribes known as the Kingitanga Movement. The invasion was aimed at crushing Kingite power (which European settlers saw as a threat to colonial authority) and also at driving Waikato M?ori from their territory in readiness for occupation and settlement by European colonists. The campaign was fought by a peak of about 14,000 Imperial and colonial troops and about 4,000 M?ori warriors drawn from more than half the major North Island tribal groups. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.