Interior of a Maori Pa, about the year 1840
After a painting shown at the Colonial Indian Exhibition, London
WARS WITH HAURAKI GULF TRIBES
To the south-east were the powerful Hauraki coastal tribes, who, like those of Tamaki, had gone through much the same history. Also descended from the Patu-paiarehe, they had gradually incorporated their pedigrees with those of the Tainui, Arawa and other people. The earliest warfare on record of Tamaki with these people originated (so says the legend) when the Tamaki tribes slew the pet seal belonging to the Hauraki people. Strange to say, this animal (named “Ureia”) was on a visit to Manukau Harbour, at the invitation of the Tamaki people, and there it met its untimely end. Surely the most unusual of Maori casus belli. Maru-tuahu, as the tribes of the Hauraki district were called, then invaded Tamaki. They attacked among other places the Maunga-whau (Mount Eden) pa. After various other successes they returned homewards.
THE MURDER OF KAHURAUTAO
Subsequent to this affair was the warfare resulting from the murder of Kahurautao, his son Kiwi, and other Maru-tuahu chiefs. These people were returning from Waikato by canoe via Manukau and Tamaki. They had visited the Tamaki chiefs at Mount Eden and other places, and on their return to their canoes at the Tamaki River they were waylaid and murdered near where St. John’s College now stands, hence the name of that place, “Paru-tahi”—killed together. The Maru-tuahu tribes, under Kahu’s son Rau-tao, thereupon invaded Tamaki. They attacked with success the riverside pas at Tamaki, also those at Mount Eden, One Tree Hill and Orakei. Crossing to Takapuna, they scoured along the coast as far as Mahurangi. Apparently all those people, being Ngai-Tai, were of one tribal identity. This was not the last time these coastal tribes suffered in this way.
KAPETAWA’S INVASION
Thereafter occurred the affair of Kapetawa. When a mere lad, this chief, while on a visit from Waiheke to his sister, who had married Taramokomoko, a chieftain of Kohimarama, got into several scrapes, as boys were much the same then as ever, but when he, as the ringleader with kindred spirits, plundered the kumara store of his brother-in-law, he got into disfavour with Taramokomoko, who marooned him on the Bean Rock off the shore. Being rescued by his sister, he returned home, where he grew to manhood among his own people, the Ngati-Paoa, at Waiheke. He then organised a war party to avenge the long-remembered insult. Surprising the pas at Kohimarama, Orakei, etc., he crossed to Takapuna, destroying several villages there and along the outer coast, where the erring brother-in-law, the cause of all this trouble, was caught and killed at Raho-para—a pa on the northern headland of the Wairau Creek (Milford).
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Kiwi Tamaki (1720-1750)
We now come to the era of Kiwi Tamaki, the last, and undoubtedly the most notorious, of the olden Tamaki chiefs. He was so called to distinguish him from other men of that name.
His parents, Te Ikamaupoho and Te Tahuri, united in their ancestry all that was aristocratic in lineal descent from the ancient Patu-paiarehe, Nga-Oho (People of Toi), Ngati-Awa, Arawa, Tainui, etc. Despite the many repeated invasions and incessant warfare within their territories, the Tamaki people at this time were apparently in their “golden age.”