Ngāpuhi in 1810

"Te Ramaroa titiro ki Whīria, te Paiaka o te riri, te kawa o Rāhiri... Ko te Whare Tapu o Ngāpuhi tenei, tihei mauri ora." / Te Ramaroa looks towards Whīria, the taproot of strife, the sacred custom of Rāhiri... This is the Sacred House of Ngāpuhi, behold the breath of life.

Ngāpuhi in 1810

Taua opens in January 1810 in the north, with news of the Boyd burned at Whangaroa the month before. Ngāpuhi hapū start most of what happens in the game's first twenty years, so this series sets out who they were in 1810 and who led them. This post covers Ngāpuhi as a whole. The next ten each take a hapū and its rangatira, starting with Hongi Hika.

Each post has three parts: the hapū and its history up to 1810, the rangatira and a short look at what came after, and designer's notes on the game system their playthrough leans on most. The kōrero comes from published sources: the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Te Ara, Angela Ballara's Taua (2003), the Waitangi Tribunal's Te Paparahi o Te Raki reports, and the whakapapa files I've built from those and other works.

Hapū/Ngāpuhi

Ngāpuhi trace their origins to Hokianga. Kupe named the harbour, and Nukutawhiti and Ruanui came later on Ngātokimatawhaorua and settled there. The founding ancestor, Rāhiri, descends from Kupe, Nukutawhiti and Puhi. Rāhiri's two sons fought over land, and he made peace between them by flying a kite over the territory. The place it came down marked the boundary between Hokianga and Taumārere.

While the base of Ngāpuhi was the Kaikohe and Hokianga areas, from the very beginning, as the whakatauki (sayings) suggest it was more a confederation based upon individual mana (personal standing). Thus, historians and others who speak in terms of hierarchies of paramount chiefs, subordinate chiefs, military leaders, generals and lieutenants effectively misinterpret reality: Ngāpuhi was always a coalition of equals who as determined by situation, context, need and motivation, worked together co-operatively to achieve either a common aim or a broad collection of aims which encompassed the aspirations of many.

Over the generations Rāhiri's descendants moved east, from Hokianga and Kaikohe across the Taiāmai plains and into the Bay of Islands, marrying into some of the groups already there and driving out others. Ngāpuhi hapū pushed Ngāti Pou off Taiāmai in the late 1700s. The Ngāti Pou saying "Ka kata ngā pūriri o Taiamai", the pūriri of Taiāmai are laughing, gave Sissons, Wi Hongi and Hohepa the title of their political history of the inland Bay. Over time the name Ngāpuhi came to cover the hapū of Hokianga and the Bay of Islands, and Rāwiri Taonui's Te Ara entry sets the rohe from Hokianga to the Bay and south to Maunganui Bluff and Whangārei.

In 1810 Ngāpuhi had no single leader. The Tribunal's words are "each hapū was autonomous and exercised power over its own territories". A hapū held its own lands, gardens, fishing grounds and pā under rangatira whose standing came from whakapapa and grew or shrank with what they did. Hapū also split by place. The game carries Ngāti Manu ki Paihia, Ngāti Manu ki Ōpua and Ngāti Manu ki Kāretu as separate groups that share a name and most of their politics, each with its own seat and rangatira.

The Bay/1810

Historians describe the Bay of Islands hapū of this period as two loose groupings. A northern one sat around Kerikeri, Te Puna and Waimate, with Ngāti Tautahi, Ngāti Rēhia, Te Hikutū and Ngāi Tāwake. A southern one sat around Taumārere, Kawakawa and Kororāreka, with Ngāti Manu, Ngāti Hine and their neighbours. Hokianga hapū such as Ngāti Hao and Te Māhurehure kept to their own politics on the west coast, as did Whangaroa to the north. In the eastern Bay, Ngāre Raumati stood apart from both groupings and fought each of them at times.

Hapū married across these groupings, changed sides and fought inside them. In 1830 northern and southern hapū fought the Girls' War on the beach at Kororāreka, and by the end of the 1820s Ngāpuhi had taken the Ngāre Raumati stronghold at Kahuwera.

Contact/1810

By 1810 the Bay of Islands was one of the main anchorages in the southwest Pacific. Whalers and Sydney traders put in for water, timber, pork and potatoes, and paid in iron, cloth and the odd musket. Te Pahi of Te Hikutū, at Te Puna, had stayed with Governor King in Sydney in 1805 and 1806. Hapū with potatoes and pigs had already changed how they spent their labour.

In December 1809 the Boyd was loading kauri spars at Whangaroa. On the voyage over, the captain had Te Ara, a young rangatira working his passage home, flogged and denied food. His kin took utu and killed most of the people on board. European whalers blamed Te Pahi, although the Whangaroa people said he had no part in it, and destroyed his pā at Te Puna with heavy loss of life. Te Pahi died of wounds later in 1810, in the fighting that followed. Ships stayed away from the north for several years, and Marsden's mission waited until 1814.

Muskets were few, and the north had paid for that lesson. At Moremonui, in 1807 or 1808, Ngāti Whātua caught a Ngāpuhi taua while its musketeers reloaded and killed many of its leaders. Through the 1810s and 1820s Ngāpuhi hapū armed in numbers and carried the guns south.

Rangatira of note

Some of these leaders held power in 1810. Others were children who grew into it.

• Hongi Hika, Ngāti Tautahi and Te Uri o Hua: war leader after Moremonui, inland from Kerikeri, and the man who armed the north.
• Te Pahi, Ruatara and Waikato, Te Hikutū: the Te Puna and Rangihoua rangatira at the centre of the Boyd's aftermath, the mission's arrival and the first journeys to Sydney and England.
• Patuone and Tāmati Wāka Nene, Ngāti Hao: Hokianga brothers who became go-betweens with Pākehā and the Crown.
• Pōmare I and Pōmare II, Ngā Uri o Pōmare and Ngāti Manu: the southern grouping's war leader through the 1810s and 1820s, and the nephew who took his mana on his passing.
• Te Morenga, Ngāti Rangi: the Taiāmai rangatira who led his own expeditions south alongside Hongi's.
• Hōne Heke Pōkai, Ngāti Rāhiri and Matarahurahu: a small child in 1810, by the signing of the treaty he had inherited much of Hongi’s mana.
• Te Whareumu and Kiwikiwi, Ngāti Manu: rangatira of Kororāreka, the beach that became the busiest anchorage in the country.
• Tītore, Ngāi Tāwake: a northern war leader until his death in 1837.
• Korokoro, Ngāre Raumati: the eastern Bay rangatira outside the Ngāpuhi groupings.
• Te Ruki Kawiti, Ngāti Hine: the rangatira inland of Kawakawa who built Ruapekapeka.

Playthrough/Designer's notes

I don't run Ngāpuhi as one faction. Each hapū on that map runs on the same systems as the player's hapū, with its own rangatira, stores, utu ledger and kin ties. I give each seat a grouping for 1810, and it sets where the hapū starts with its neighbours. Kin closeness from the whakapapa data then decides how disputes between them play out, so a northern hapū and a southern hapū with close kin ties handle a quarrel as kin. The groupings shift as marriages, deaths and grievances build up, and the Girls' War can happen, or not, without a script.

Out of 55 Ngāpuhi seats, 12 sit in the northern grouping, 13 in the southern, 7 in Hokianga, 2 in Whangaroa and 3 with Ngāre Raumati. I've left the other 18 unassigned as of yet.

The north holds the deepest data in the project. Mission journals, Native Land Court minutes and Tribunal evidence cover the Bay of Islands and Whangaroa closer than anywhere else in the period, so the roster there names people in most hapū, with dated deaths and recorded grievances behind them. I open the game there for that reason.

Each post in the series centres on the system its playthrough leans on most:

• Hongi Hika: the musket trade, and the utu bill each expedition runs up.
• Te Hikutū: mission contact, the Boyd's fallout and travel overseas.
• Patuone and Nene: peace-making, and dealing with the Crown.
• Pōmare: control of anchorages, and the trade rivalry with the northern grouping.
• Te Morenga: haerenga taua, and the utu that sends them out.
• Hōne Heke: the Treaty, and resistance.
• Te Whareumu and Kiwikiwi: Kororāreka and Pākehā contact on the beach.
• Tītore: alliances and the Girls' War.
• Korokoro: keeping a hapū alive under pressure.
• Kawiti: pā engineering.

Image credits

• Augustus Earle, War Speech, published 1838. Alexander Turnbull Library, PUBL-0015-09. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
• Walter Wright, The Burning of the Boyd, 1908. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
• Map and whakapapa chart: Taua data and base map.

Sources

• Rāwiri Taonui, "Ngāpuhi", Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, 2012, updated 2017.
• Waitangi Tribunal, He Whakaputanga me te Tiriti: The Declaration and the Treaty, Report on Stage 1 of the Te Paparahi o Te Raki Inquiry (Wai 1040), 2014.
• Angela Ballara, Taua: "Musket Wars", "Land Wars" or Tikanga? Warfare in Māori Society in the Early Nineteenth Century, 2003.
• Angela Ballara, "Hongi Hika", Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, 1990.
• Jeffrey Sissons, Wiremu Wi Hongi and Pat Hohepa, Ngā Pūriri o Taiamai: A Political History of Ngā Puhi in the Inland Bay of Islands, 1987.
• "The Boyd incident", NZHistory, Manatū Taonga.
• Hōne Sadler, Ko Tautoro, Te Pito o Tōku Ao, 2014.
• Henare, Petrie and Puckey, "Ko Te Tino o Taiamai", Wai 1040 #E033, 2009.