In the 1860s Te Arawa had aligned themselves with the Crown, as they shared common enemies in the tribes of Waikato and the East Coast, and the leader Te Kooti. In the final campaigns against Te Kooti from 1870 to 1872, Captain Gilbert Mair (to the left of the man on the roof, next to the shovels) trained and commanded a guerrilla unit of 100 young Te Arawa men, known as the Arawa Flying Column. They made incursions into the Urewera searching for Te Kooti, for whom the government had posted a £5,000 reward.
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