Aotea Harbour Traditional History
According to traditional history the Aotea canoe arrived in Aotea harbour about 1300 AD, and stayed for several years before continuing on down the west coast to Taranaki.
The people are said to have lived on the south head of Aotea harbour, where they grew the taro they had brought with them from Hawaiiki in a swamp which they called Hawaiiki.
The Tainui canoe is said to have arrived in Kawhia harbour about 1350, when they established their first kumara plantations on Aotea south head.
Over the next several generations the Tainui people became established around the shores of Kawhia. About 1500 a period of expansion took place, when Turongo moved inland to the Otorohanga area while his brother Whatihua settled at Manuaitu, about 1.5 km north of the reserve.
Tradition does not record whether other people were already living in the area, although archaeological evidence suggests they were.
Manuaitu was attacked by Tonganui of the Ngati Mahanga, an inland Tainui tribe, about 1600. The attack was repulsed. After 1600 AD, tensions deepened between the Tainui people still living in Kawhia and those on the north shore of Aotea harbour, apparently through the usual sequence of escalatory provocations and counter-provocations.
A Kawhia chief was killed while gathering whau wood for fishing floats on the south side of Aotea harbour.
The Kawhia people under Karewarewa twice attacked pahs near Oioroa in retaliation, then, with assistance of Te Ati Awa from TaranakI successfully took Rau 0 te Huia on the east boundary of the Oioroa block and other pahs.
About 1700, after a several exchanges of hostilities in various pahs around where Kawhia town is now located, one of the protagonists, Tautinimoke, fearing retaliation, shifted away and rebuilt Rau 0 te Huia.
Recommended Book
Maori: a Photographic and Social History
Renowned historian Michael King (1945-2004) presents a comprehensive and searching documentary of Maori culture and society, and Maori-Pakeha contact, conflict and co-operation. From the earliest daguerreotype around 1852 to the strong protest images of the 1990s, King records and analyses changes and upheaval in the commentary that is always intelligent and objective. This book leaves the reader with not only a better understanding of the past but a challenge for the future.
Te Wehi, a son of one of the chiefs killed by Tautinimoke, obtained assistance from Ngati Mahuta and other tribes from the Taupiri district, took Rau 0 te Huia and killed Tautinimoke.
Te Wehi ‘s people, whose descendants were later known as Ngati Te Wehi then settled on the inner shores of Aotea harbour, in those lands which later became the Moerangi block.
Around 1800 the district started coming under attack from Waikato (ie inland Tainui) tribes from the lower Waipa and Waikato areas centred on Taupiri. The invaders started at Raglan and worked their way south. A battle against the chief Waitapu at Parawai resulted in the Ngati Koata abandoning the northern part of the Manuaitu-Aotea block.
Ngati Mahuta settled initially on the south shore of Oioroa, at Korua Bay, and there suffered a successful counterattack by Te Rauparaha. In the next round of battles the invaders took the main pahs in the vicinity of Oioroa, namely Manuaitu, Koreromaiwaho and Rau 0 te Huia.
The Ngati Te Wehi on the inner shores of Aotea harbour were their allies in several of these battles.
The crucial battle was against the chief Rangipotiki and Horoure pa on the south head of Aotea (ie the pah in the Historic Reserve mis-named Puraho).
When Rangipotiki was killed and the pah taken all the remaining local people fled southwards to the pahs controlled by Te Rauparaha and the Ngati Toa, in particular Te Totara, Te Arawi and Whenuapo.
Ngati Mahuta and their inland allies then attacked these pahs and in 1820 Te Rauparaha was finally decisively beaten at the Te Kakara battle beside Taharoa lake, and most of the original people from the Manuaitu area migrated south with him to Taranaki and then Kapiti.
One of the conquerors, Muriwhenua, for reasons hard to fathom, did take some of the vanquished from Whenuapo and resettle them in the northern part of the Manuaitu-Aotea block.
The conquerors did not initially settle in Aotea, and for a few years the district was more or less unpopulated. After the defeat of Waikato and Ngati Maniapoto by Nga Puhi at Matakitaki in 1822, however, the inland tribes decided to settle in the Manuaitu-Aotea lands, as part of a forward-defence policy devised by Potatau against any further Nga Puhi attack.
The attack came in 1826 when Pomare led a small war party up the Waipa, only to be easily and decisively beaten at Te Rore.
The actual occupation of Manuaitu-Aotea happened about the same time as Pomare’s raid. The newcomers did not build any new pahs, but instead re-occupied old ones.
Meanwhile people living in Kawhia had decided to emulate the Nga Puhi peoples by acquiring firearms and Christianity, and with Nga Puhi assistance persuaded traders and missionaries, to establish at Kawhia.
Because of its dangerous bar it was harder to get Pakehas to settle in the Aotea, but the first trader on the north side of the harbour, Abraham Mair, arrived probably in the early 1830s and was settled by the Ngati Naho at Oioroa.
His establishment was later taken over by Joe Graham. A Wesleyan missionary, Hansen Turton, was established by Ngati Te Wehi in 1840 at Raoraokauere, on the harbour side of the Manuaitu-Aotea block.
When Dieffenbach passed through in 1841 he recorded 1200 people gathered at the mission. About 200 people actually lived at Raoraokauere. The Ngati Naho were largely Church of England, and had their own church at Manuaitu.
John Douglas, a trader, built a ship at Raoraokauere some time after 1843. From 1850 onwards Captain James Swann ran a shipping service into Aotea. His vessel Mathilda carried Aotea wheat to Auckland.
As late as 1887 ballast dumps from the Mathilda could still be seen at low tide on the mudflats at Rauiri. Another trader, Nazer, across the harbour at Pourewa (near the present Aotea village) also had a trading vessel.
At the time of the mission’s establishment Ngati Naho were occupying the south western half of the Manuaitu-Aotea peninsula, including Oioroa. Ngati Te Wehi had expanded their territory into the south-eastern part, including Raoraokauere. The boundary passed through Manuaitu pah.
North of Manuaitu pah were the Ngati Mahanga and Ngati Hourua. On the south side of the harbour were the Ngati Patupo. Around Raoraokauere were people from a variety of hapus, all living there to be associated with the mission, but mostly without land rights there.
In 1863 when the British began their invasion of the Waikato, Wiremu Nero Awaitaia of the Ruapuke block refused Governor George Grey’s request to allow Raglan and Aotea harbours to be used for the passage of troops into the Waikato.