Joseph Coates Wallis

https://www.kaipaki.com/people-from-our-past.html
Youngster survived tomahawk attack - July 1863
In a graveyard somewhere near Kaipaki, between Cambridge and Te Awamutu, there was a headstone marked Joseph Coates Wallis 1849-1933.
Joe Wallis was born into a pioneer farming family at Wairoa, South Auckland, at place now known as Clevedon at a time when only few small farms had been carved out of the heavy native forest.While his mother and younger sister managed the little house and garden, Joe joined his father on the farm, milking a few cows, raising pigs and clearing the land.
None of the settlers or the militia groups were aware that a fighting force of Ngati Maru from Hauraki had answered the call for assistance against the Pakeha invaders from Rewi Maniapoto and had occupied a disused pa called Rawatiroa. They were led by Matiu and Te Taka who were armed with relatively new percussion cap carbines instead of the usual Maori flintlock shotguns. Their objective was to disrupt the flow of munitions and supplies to Cameron’s army and, if the opportunity arose, to kill any Pakeha men they found in the district.The lumbering dray and the two Pakeha with it were legitimate targets and the first volley killed Hamlin. Joe attempted to wheel his horse and gallop to safety but the ageing hack refused to move amid the noise and confusion, Joe jumped down and made a run for safety but was caught and felled with several tomahawk blows. The muskets shots had been heard by farmers about a mile away who assumed it was militia men out shooting pigeons and the scene of the attack was not discovered for several hours.
The abandoned dray and the body of the bullock driver was discovered by Joshua Goulding, who was searching for some missing dairy cows. He raised the alarm. A party of armed men returned to the scene and found Joe with the side of his skull an exposed mess of mangled flesh, congealed blood and bone chips but still breathing. The still conscious boy and the dead bullock driver were loaded on to the dray which bumped and thumped along the rough track for several hours before reaching Papakura. There, Alexander Thompson, a surgeon with the Royal Irish Regiment, spent the rest of the night cutting away torn tissue, removing bone fragments and stitching skin across the huge open wound. Joe survived.
In his later years Joe Wallis moved even further south to a farm at Kaipaki, where he died in 1933, aged 84.

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZ18650620.2.13?items_...
New Zealander, Vol XXII, Issue 2460, 20 June 1865

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH19330704.2.116?item...
Poverty Bay Herald, 4 July 1933
Maori War Incident
Death of Survivor
A tragic incident which happened at Henderson’s farm, Clevedon, in the course of the Maori War in 1863, is recalled by the death at Kaipaki, Waikato, on Friday of Mr. Joseph Coates Wallis, at the age of 80 years.
Mr. Wallis was born in Auckland, and later he lived at Clevedon.

When Mr. Wallis was 10 years of age, hostile Maoris carried out a raid on Henderson’s farm. The boy Wallis was with Mr. Job Hamlin, who was killed in the attack, and the lad was tomahawked in the head and left for dead. By a miracle he recovered, and at the age of 19 years he began farming on his own account at Tuakau. He remained at. Tuakau for 20 years, and was later at Papatoetoe and Waiuku.