Ngāti Toa, Te Rauparaha and Pukerua Bay

Kia ora tātou.

It is incumbent on us to take an interest in our local history with a view to continuing the nation-building begun by our ancestors with the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in 1840.

My focus today as I stand here is not going to be to provide you with a comprehensive history of Māori associations with this place – that would be too much.

There is a really extensive Māori history associated with Pukerua Bay that extends back hundreds of years before Ngāti Toa’s arrival here in the early 1820’s. As a descendant of Ngāti Toa and Ngāti Mutunga (from northern Taranaki) my focus today will be primarily on Ngāti Toa’s association with Pukerua Bay. I think for those who understand the complexity and depth of that history it is really important to contextualise it in terms of the broader social, political and economic situation at the time.

Ngāti Toa originated in Kawhia on the west coast of the North Island in the Waikato region, where descendants of the Tainui waka, which was captained by the famous Hoturoa, settled. The Tainui made landfall at the entrance to Kawhia harbour where Ngāti Toa were domiciled for literally centuries, living in relative peace, on land between the Aotea and Kawhia harbours before we even contemplated relocating to this part of the world.

But what emerged after several centuries of living in close harmony with our relations from the Tainui waka was an increase in population and competition for much-coveted resources that were located in the environs of Kawhia harbour. This was much like Pāuatahanui inlet and the Porirua harbour were back in the 1820’s.

Growing tensions and hostilities began between Ngāti Toa and the Maniapoto and Waikato iwi that eventually culminated in a huge battle towards the end of the 18th century. This battle was called Hingakaka and refers to the fall of the kaka bird which was highly prized and treasured by Māori people. The red feathers from under the wings were likened to the mana of chiefs, as paramount chiefs in those days were distinguished by their prestige kaka feather cloaks. The battle was given the name Hingakaka because Ngāti Toa lost a whole generation of leading chiefs, including my tupuna, Maui and his twin brother, Te Rakaherea. Their deaths as a result of this significant battle signalled a period of absolute devastation and decline for Ngāti Toa, leaving the iwi bereft of traditional leadership.

It was around this was the time that Te Rauparaha was born. There was a prophecy then, not necessarily that prophesied his birth, but prophesied the birth of the next great leader who would lead Ngāti Toa out of the imperilled situation we found ourselves in and on to a new journey towards a future of prosperity. So, Te Rauparaha was the sixth child of a whakapapa that wasn’t of the paramount lines of Ngāti Toa but nevertheless he had good breeding, good enough for that prophecy to extend as far as his whakapapa lines did. When he was born with six toes, naturally the tohunga of the day realised that this was the tohu, the sign, that indicated that this person was going to lead Ngāti Toa to a prosperous future. There was a lot of investment made in grooming him, preparing him for that leadership role at a very tumultuous time with a lot of changes occurring.

Pākehā colonisation and settlement had not quite occurred by then but there were interactions happening on a global scale that involved Ngāti Toa as well as iwi throughout the country. This new leader had to be aggressive, able to traverse the traditional world of the Māori but also push the boundaries of our ancient traditions and customs to a point where we were able to bring about the changes that would lead us to transition into the modern world. That got him into a lot of trouble but we haven’t time to traverse all that today!

The upshot was that Te Rauparaha emerged as a great leader. He realised, because of Ngāti Toa’s small size and our imperilled position back in Kawhia, that he was going to need to focus on establishing good relationships and alliances with other more powerful iwi around the country.

He set about doing this. He formed close connections with the north, with Ngāpuhi in particular, and in about 1819 Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Toa came together to carry out an expedition that was known as the Amiowhenua taua. Taua is a war party and there was quite a bit of fighting along the way out of necessity but really the purpose of this expedition was a “look and see.” They wanted to come down to Raukawa Moana to have a look. They’d heard about the opportunities that lay here in terms of the wealth of resources and trade and so Ngāpuhi accompanied Ngāti Toa on that expedition along with the chiefs of Ngāti Mutunga of Taranaki.

The first encounter with Pukerua occurred during that Taua. They were able to make their way down the west coast, fighting as they went, and successfully overcoming resistance along the way. When they got to Pukerua they found themselves at an impasse. Suddenly before them was an impregnable fortress or pā which we now know as Waimapihi. That pā was occupied by the descendants of ancient peoples who’d been here for centuries. Muaūpoko and Ngāti Ira were here at that time.

Ngāti Toa found themselves in a situation of having to try and overcome a level of resistance that they’d never really encountered before. This had nothing to do with the fact that the home people had guns – they didn’t. They didn’t have the weapons that Ngāti Toa were hoping to acquire. What they did have was a strategic advantage. And that strategic advantage we all know about, being familiar with the landscape here in Pukerua Bay.

Waimapihi Pā was built in a strategic location that controlled access from the north into the Wellington region and that signalled to Ngāti Toa right there and then that this was a very, very important strategic node in this part of the country.  Any iwi that wanted to take control and have the dominant position in this part of the world needed to be able to take control of access into the region.

Eventually Ngāti Toa, with Te Rauparaha’s leadership and with the help of others including Tungia another chief who ended up living here, devised a strategy which was able to overcome Waimapihi. Some might say it was by deception but Ngāti Toa would say by good stratagem and the ability to outwit an opponent.

Ngāti Toa did not remain at Pukerua in 1819 but carried on down the coast and ended up on the south-west coast of Wellington. Near Makara they saw the Russian ship Vostok with Bellingshausen sailing through Cook Strait. A Ngāpuhi chief pointed out the strategic benefits for Ngāti Toa of relocating to take advantage of the unlimited resources here and the trading opportunities to come.

Te Rauparaha determined that he would go back to Kawhia and prepare his people for migration to the south and the opportunities to come. Although Pukerua was not settled by Ngāti Toa at that time the ground was laid, the foundations were laid for the iwi when they came back a year or two later.

When Te Rauparaha got back from the Amiowhenua Taua his wife (he had many wives but this was his primary wife), had been killed by Ngāti Maniapoto in a peaceful situation that was regarded as kohuru or murder. There was only one way to deal with this and that was by seeking satisfaction or utu to balance up that hara. Ngāti Toa of course were in a situation of having to do that which left them even more imperilled because Ngāti Maniapoto were gaining in power. This resulted in Ngāti Toa being besieged at Te Arawi Pā not long after we were forced to flee, to flee our homeland where we had lived for centuries. We took refuge in northern Taranaki with our close relations and allies. Many of us from Ngāti Toa have equally strong connections with northern Taranaki and those people came with us on Te Heke Mai-i-raro, the great migration down to Cook Strait.

We migrated south and settled here under the leadership of Te Rauparaha. We didn’t come back to Pukerua immediately. We needed to secure our place here in Raukawa Moana and that required that we overcome any resistance and there was quite a lot as you can imagine and as you would expect. That took a couple of years and in the meantime we needed sanctuary, we needed to be able to regroup and we needed to be able to strategize. Kapiti Island was the obvious place to do that.

We took Kapiti Island in about 1822 and then a couple of years later in a last-ditch effort by the original inhabitants of this land there was a massive coalescence of opposing iwi who came together from the North and the South Islands. They closed in like a net being tightened around the northern end of Kapiti Island which was where Ngāti Toa’s primary and most authoritative pa and base had been established.

Prior to the waka descending on Kapiti Island, my tupuna Kahe Te Rau-o-te-rangi’s, mokai, (some might say a slave but she was known very affectionately and treated very affectionately by Kahe), had dreamed about this impending attack. She had grave concerns for the safety of my tupuna and her whole family for a lot of reasons, mainly because Kahe’s father Te Matoha, who was a very close and important part of Te Rauparaha’s leading warrior chiefly crew, had been solely responsible for the deaths of a couple of Maniapoto chiefs on the way down. There was an expectation that Ngāti Toa would feel the wrath of retaliation at some point and that Kahe and her family would be held responsible for.

At the point that the armada of waka were discovered heading for Kapiti Island their identity wasn’t known and it was determined that Kahe, in order to preserve her legacy, her whakapapa, would swim across from Kapiti Island to the mainland with her baby on her back. This was to both warn the rest of her family and hapū, who were on the mainland cultivating and gathering kai at the time, and to seek reinforcements. She was known as the strongest and most capable swimmer and diver at the time. She didn’t do a lot of recreational swimming – it was for the gathering of kai and survival purposes mainly and she could out swim and out dive anybody, man or woman at any time.

There wasn’t much concern for her safety. The concern was more for the baby but she was oiled down with red ochre combined with shark oil to repel the sharks and also to keep them warm, as warm as you can be in those conditions. She slipped into the water and made it across to the other side and hence we commemorate the name of that channel between the mainland and Kapiti Island now with her name Kahe Te Rau-o-te-rangi.

I mention her for a number of reasons partly because the battle of Waiorua turned out to be the most definitive battle in the series of battles that established Ngāti Toa’s mana in the Cook Strait region. We were actually outnumbered twenty to one but as a result of that battle we were able to overcome and defeat the original inhabitants of this area. Ngāti Toa was able to establish unquestioned mana throughout the region. It was not just Ngāti Toa but Ngāti Toa with the help of our close relations and allies from Taranaki. It really quashed any major resistance from the original people that were domiciled here. There were still skirmishes and there was still the need to be able to penetrate the top of the South Island for access to pounamu and other resources and mana, but that was still to come.

As a result of the battle of Waiorua and Ngāti Toa’s victory there, Ngāti Toa were able to move off the island with relative freedom without being molested and we were able to settle along the Kapiti Coast, in Pukerua Bay here and into Te Whanganui-a-Tara – Wellington Harbour.

Kahe was amongst those who came and settled at Pukerua and from that point on Pukerua really became a kainga, a settlement and later on a stronghold of a certain section or hapū of Ngāti Toa, the Ngāti Te Maunu people. The Ngāti Te Maunu hapū are not Te Rauparaha’s hapū – he was from Ngāti Kimihia. The Ngāti Te Maunu people were from the first, the paramount lines of Ngāti Toa from Pikau Te Rangi whose hereditary chief at that time was Te Pēhi Kupe. He became famous when he went to England and became a bit of a celebrity over there. He drew from memory his ta moko which became replicated everywhere. He went over there to acquire guns to seek revenge on Muaūpoko mainly for the killing of his wife and children at Waikanae – but that’s another story.

It wasn’t until about 1831 after the ransacking if you like of Ngai Tahu at Kaiapohia and Ōnawe on Banks Peninsula that Ngāti Toa came back with quite a few prisoners and also the expectation that we would be attacked at some point and utu would be sought for those raids into Ngai Tahu territory in 1831.

Ngāti Toa had undertaken that mission in response to Te Pehi’s death. Te Pehi was killed by Ngai Tahu down there not long after he returned with the guns from Britain. They were used at Kaikoura and then on that one mission that he was back for he went to visit his friend Tamaiharanui, a chief of Ngai Tahu who was based at Kaiapohia. They ended up in a bit of a squabble over some greenstone and he and a number of other leading Ngāti Toa chiefs were killed, hence Ngāti Toa’s retaliation in 1831.

When Ngāti Toa came back north the Ngāti Te Maunu section returned to Pukerua under the leadership of Tungia the son of Pikauterangi, leading paramount chief of Ngāti Toa and the grandson of Te Maunu himself. Tungia was a person of great mana who led the Ngāti Te Maunu people back here to Pukerua and built and fortified Pukerua Pā. There weren’t many pā along this coast at any point because there was no need before Ngāti Toa arrived. When we were here there was really no need as we didn’t have any known enemy or major resistance – until the British came and then you see Taupō Pā getting fortified and Matai-taua. That all happened really in response to the British. Pukerua Pā was built in expectation of Ngai Tahu retaliation which actually never occurred.

In the 1830’s you start to see this incredible ramping-up of economic and commercial opportunities throughout the Cook Strait region. Whaling stations were established on Kapiti Island. Kahe Te-Rau-o-te-rangi established one of the first whaling stations at the northern end of Kapiti Island with her Scottish husband John Nicol, known as Scotch Jock. They and others of that ilk became the heart and soul if you like of Ngāti Toa’s emerging maritime empire. By 1840 Ngāti Toa had an absolute monopoly of commercial activity and trade throughout the Cook Strait region.

This drew a lot of attention from other places as well. The British we know about as they were regular visitors anyway and there was a much greater focus now on Pākehā settlement. Then the New Zealand Company got involved. They turned up in 1839 on the Tory, went to Wellington first and then to Kapiti Island with the intention of buying up huge swathes of land throughout the country to enable European settlement and colonisation. Ngāti Toa got caught up in all of that.

From the mid 1830’s on there was an increasing pressure on Ngāti Toa to sell land, to make land available for European settlement and this escalated tension between the iwi and the British. By 1843 you have a situation where Ngāti Toa are not complying with the expectation of the authorities that land should be given up for settlement. There was huge resistance from the iwi to do that although there was always a willingness and a generosity to allow the use of resources and use of land for certain purposes. Certainly not to give it up permanently and that was not a concept that Māori understood anyway.

The Crown got involved and eventually force had to be used to compel Ngāti Toa to comply and in 1843 there was an escalation of tension over the land at Wairau. Ngāti Toa maintained that we had never sold it and the New Zealand Company maintained that we had.

At the heart of this conflict, it’s really interesting because, and it’s not very well-known, is a woman by the name of Te Rongo who happens to be my great-great-great grandmother. She had been previously married to a whaler by the name of Blenkinsopp. He devised a plan to acquire the Wairau from Te Rauparaha in 1831 and he had come up with a deed. He’d written the deed and he got Te Rauparaha to sign it, not just Te Rauparaha, there were a number of other chiefs as well, Atiawa chiefs too including Pomare Ngatata who had signed that deed believing that they were providing Blenkinsopp and his whaling crews with access to the waters and obviously in exchange for benefits, as Ngāti Toa would get benefits from that.

Te Rauparaha and none of the others were literate, so they had signed it and then years later the New Zealand Company arrived. In the meantime Blenkinsopp died in Australia, he drowned over there on an expedition. Prior to that he sold the deed – he sold the Blenkinsopp deed on to the New Zealand Company who then turned up in 1839 at Kapiti Island with the deed and they showed it to Te Rauparaha. They said: “Well, we own the Wairau because, you see, you signed it and we bought the deed.” And of course Te Rauparaha just ripped it up into shreds and threw it on the ground and was absolutely irate at having been taken advantage of in that way.

That is really at the root of this misunderstanding over the Wairau. At that point Ngāti Toa tried to get Commissioner Spain who was doing all the enquiries into the New Zealand Company land transactions to speed up his enquiry over the Wairau but he was taking a very long time. Then the surveyors from Nelson went in there and we all know the history.

Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata removed the surveyors peacefully, transported them back to Nelson but at the same time burnt down their raupo whare that they had established temporarily to enable them to do their survey. The Police Magistrate drew up some warrants for the arrests of Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata on the basis of arson. They went to the Wairau and on 17 June 1843 tried to arrest them for arson.

Te Rangihaeata and Te Rauparaha naturally were not willing to be handcuffed and taken away under these circumstances and in the increasing hostility of those circumstances and remembering that most of the people on the Pākehā side who were involved in that posse were not proper military, they had no military background and a lot of them were Quakers. They had been given guns as part of their mission to arrest these barbarous chiefs and they were scared out of their wits. They had no idea what they were getting themselves into; they had never even encountered Māori before, let alone chiefs of this stature.

And so in all of the tension a bullet was accidentally fired. I believe that it was accidental even though it happened to hit my tupuna right between the eyes and killed her on the spot. That’s what started, that’s what triggered the Wairau Affray and of course from then on Ngāti Toa retaliated.

But Ngāti Toa lost people during the initial exchange of fire and the battle that ensued. When Arthur Wakefield surrendered and round about 10 or 11 people with him including the Police Magistrate, Te Rauparaha was willing to spare their lives and the other Ngāti Toa chiefs were willing to do that because they understood the consequences and ramifications of not doing that. But under Māori custom it was Te Rangihaeata’s prerogative, and he was determined to seek utu, to avenge and if you like to balance up the death of his wife Te Rongo and the deaths of the other Ngāti Toa who had died needlessly that day.

Te Rongo happened to be his wife who had previously been married to Blenkinsopp so Te Rongo was actually both the cause and the final kind of ultimate reason if you like for the extreme events at Wairau that day, that fateful day that we still feel the consequences of. The Wairau Affray was really, I think, the key event in the history of Aotearoa in terms of being the catalyst for the New Zealand Wars that were to follow. Even though that battle wasn’t between Ngāti Toa and the Crown it was still the catalyst for the New Zealand Wars.

Ngāti Toa was forced to retreat from the Wairau immediately and where did they come back to? They came back to our strongholds that at that time were regarded as being here. But more importantly then the centre and heart of Ngāti Toa’s empire was Taupō Pa and Plimmerton, Mana Island where Te Rangihaeata was based (but  that was becoming more imperilled because of the battleships, the war ships that the Crown was starting to use) and Pukerua.

Pukerua was regarded as one of the strongholds and so after the Wairau incident we retreated here. An enquiry held by Governor Fitzroy vindicated Ngāti Toa from any wrongdoing in causing the Wairau Affray. It made a big point about how wrong it was of Te Rangihaeata to take justice into his own hands in the way that he did but there was no blame put on Ngāti Toa for having caused the incident. Of course that went down like a cup of sick amongst the European settlers in Wellington and in Nelson who wanted “justice.” Fitzroy was very quickly removed from his post and replaced by Grey and then there was an escalation of military activity and a military presence here in Pukerua, barracks built at Paremata and all those things.

Ngāti Toa quickly responded by fortifying themselves and that’s where you see Taupō Pā becoming fortified and Motukaraka. Te Rangihaeata moved there momentarily, and then built Matai-taua Pā in preparation for the military attack that was sure to follow – and it did.

There are consequences of the Wairau Affray for Ngāti Toa that are still felt today. Grey devised a double-pronged military campaign against Ngāti Toa that resulted firstly in Te Rauparaha’s kidnapping and capture from Taupō Pā in 1846 and his military attack on Te Rangihaeata and his allies in the Hutt Valley. This resulted in Ngāti Toa and Te Rangihaeata making their last stand at Battle Hill in 1846 and then having to be forced into exile from there to Poroutawhao near Levin.

With those two chiefs taken out of contention Ngāti Toa’s mana diminished significantly. The ability for Ngāti Toa to exercise any kind of authority over resources, over the economy here and over the political situation diminished to virtually nothing. Te Rauparaha was held captive for 18 months during which time Grey promised to release him only on Ngāti Toa’s agreement to give up our land in Porirua and the Wairau. The price we paid for the death of Te Rongo was the land in the Wairau, all of it: 605,000 acres went to the Crown. The Crown demanded utu for deaths at Wairau, so you begin to see the use of tikanga Māori, Māori custom being used by the Crown against us.

On this side of the Cook Strait, Porirua was given up to the Crown in exchange for 10,000 acres of land that was supposed to be set aside as a Ngāti Toa reserve in perpetuity, as an endowment to provide for the future needs and survival of the iwi.

Pukerua was included within one of those reserves. It was part of the northern reserve that extended from Tawhitikuri just north of Ngātitoa Domain, the peninsula that juts out there by the gas station. That’s a very, very significant cultural site from Ngāti Toa’s point of view for lots of reasons. Tawhitikuri was where that northern reserve began and it followed the hills, the ridge line all the way up to Wainui and then the coast all the way up and met up with the northern slope of Wainui there. It included Hongoeka of course, Pukerua, Paekakariki and Wainui Pa which was another really critical strategic area of settlement for Ngāti Toa. The other two reserves had already been completely alienated and very early on the CBD was established. Whitireia went very early on and the Aotea block also encompassed the second reserve which was taken under the Public Works Act. Ngāti Toa unfortunately never really had the opportunity to re-acquire that land the way that it should have happened when it became surplus a century later.

The only remaining remnant of that northern Ngāti Toa reserve is now Hongoeka. There are only 554 acres left of the Ngāti Toa reserves still in the possession of Ngāti Toa descendants today. That is partly because of the strategic importance of Pukerua that enabled us to be able to hold on to that small remnant of land at Hongoeka.

This isn’t what our tupuna had anticipated, it wasn’t what they signed up for when they agreed to sign Te Tiriti o Waitangi in 1840. There was a very strong contingent of Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Te Maunu representatives, chiefs from Pukerua Bay who were still living here up until about 1846 who signed the Treaty. They didn’t sign Te Tiriti here, they went into Wellington, to Pipitea to sign and that was Tungia who I’ve mentioned before.  He was one of the leading Ngāti Toa chiefs on the heke, the migration from Kawhia, and he was also pivotal in the initial conquest of Waimapihi Pa during the 1819 Amiowhenua Taua. When people talk about deception this was largely as a result of actions Tungia took which resulted in Ngāti Toa taking the pa.

Kahe Te Rau-o-te-rangi, whom I’ve also mentioned, was a signatory of the Treaty. She was one of very few women who signed and even though she is probably more famous for her epic swim from Kapiti Island to the mainland with her baby on her back, the reality is that she was a rangātira in her own right. She had to force her way up to the table on that day to get her signature on to the Treaty to ensure the Crown would live up to its promises in guaranteeing Ngāti Toa continued possession of our lands and resources for the benefit of future generations.

Today I’m wearing her tiki. This is Kahe Te Rau-o-te-rangi’s tiki that she wore on that day when she signed the Treaty in 1840. And for me it’s a perpetual reminder of not just the symbolism but of the honour and the integrity with which our tupuna undertook that transaction, that agreement and the way in which they have continued to try to honour it, despite the loss of land, culture, language and in many cases the ability literally to survive. When I wear this tiki, I think of that day and of how things could have been different.

Kahe was advised by her Scottish husband Scotch Jock not to sign the Treaty because he had experienced first-hand the impact of British imperialism and colonisation back in his own country and he feared that the same would occur here. She didn’t believe him because she believed that the Crown had honour and that the Crown would abide by its word and work in partnership with Ngāti Toa to ensure all of the partners would be able to prosper and grow together in one of the most beautiful countries in the entire world. And I hold to that, and I wear her tiki today as a symbol of the past but also of my hope for the future that the deeds of our ancestors on both sides, can serve as a foundation for us to move forward together as a community, as a country and continue the nation-building enterprise that was begun in 1840 through the signing of the Treaty.

This community of Pukerua Bay has always been a very important place and contributed to that history not just on a local level but on a national level as well.

Nga rera, kia ora koutou.

Where is Waimapihi Pā?

Waimapihi Pā was below the ridge right on the coast here. You can see it better when you’re down on the beach. From the beach there looking up towards the valley you can see where it would have been though it’s hard to see anything that is left of this pā. The beauty of Waimapihi was that it was built into the landscape, so it was very much a camouflaged site, although Māori would be very much aware that it was absolutely the right place for a pa because of the strategic location by the sheer nature of the cliffs.

There’s a valley that separates Waimapihi Pā from the other site where Pukerua Pā was built so there were two pā flanking the stream with access out to the sea down on the beach there which means this was probably the best place to build. The other really important strategic role of Waimapihi Pa both before Ngāti Toa came and after, was that it linked a very important network of tracks, access routes into key parts of the region. Once Ngāti Toa were established here and Taupō Pā became the centre of Ngāti Toa’s political and commercial hub in the Cook Strait, Waimapihi Pa linked with Taupō Pā via the Taua Tapu track and there are remnants of that track still in existence today and an opportunity to re-establish this in the future.

There is a famous waiata or lament called Moe Hurihuri (Restless Sleep) that was sung by Te Ua Torikiriki, a daughter of Nohorua and niece of Te Rauparaha, who was abandoned by her husband, a whaler by the name of Joseph Thoms. He lived in various places: Hongoeka, Paremata, across in Wairau and on Ararapwa Island. When Joseph Thoms left her for another woman in Australia, she was so distraught that she composed this waiata. She sang it with ethos and passion from a hill in Pukerua looking out to sea in the hope that this would somehow reach him telepathically and he would reappear and all would be forgiven. It never happened. Waiata are a very important way in which we remember our history and Ngāti Toa still sing this waiata today.

Transcribed by Dorothy Ibrahim in March 2023 from a video by Paul FitzGerald on 30 October 2021.