Tītore

Tītore Tākiri took Kororāreka in 1830 as payment for a kinsman's death, led the great taua to Tauranga in the early 1830s, and wrote to King William IV offering timber for his warships. He died in 1837 in the middle of a war over the beach's boundary. In 1810 he was a man of about 35 at Waimate, kin to Hongi through marriage and to Ngāti Rēhia through his mother, with his biggest decisions twenty years away.

Hapū/Ngāi Tāwake and Ngāti Rēhia

Tītore stood in two hapū at once. His father Te Ahi descended from Tāwakehāunga, the founder of Ngāi Tāwake, and the game places him with Ngāi Tāwake ki Okiato. His mother Hapai was a daughter of Toko of Ngāti Rēhia, and her brother Tāreha led Ngāti Rēhia at Kerikeri. Ballara records that Toko's mother Te Perenga, a daughter of Te Wairua, sent him to visit her brothers, and they let him bring Ngāti Rēhia to Whakataha pā north of the upper Waitangi River. Tītore later lived near Whakataha. Ballara calls him Ngāi Tāwake in some places and Ngāti Rēhia in others, and both are right.

That double descent put him at the centre of the northern grouping. Ngāi Tāwake held the Waimate country with Hongi's people and Rewa's Te Patukeha, and Ngāti Rēhia held Kerikeri and the coast to the north. Tītore married Hongi's sister, whose name my sources don't record. Hengi of Ngāti Rēhia stood to him as matua, a kinsman of the senior generation, and that tie would decide the shape of his later life.

My data gives him a son, Te Ngahuru. Kipa Munro's evidence for Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Rēhia says Tītore had no children. I've flagged the son and kept him on the chart for now. Building the chart, I found Hongi's sister twice in my data, once named and once as a placeholder, and merged the two rows.

Rangatira/Tītore Tākiri

In my sources Tītore first appears as a war leader in 1820. In 1820 and 1821 he and Te Wera Hauraki spent about sixteen months fighting at Tolaga Bay and Poverty Bay. Later in 1821 he led his contingent from Waimate in Hongi's great taua against Mauinaina. In 1826 he joined Rewa, Ururoa and the Hokianga chiefs against Ngāre Raumati in the eastern Bay.

The Girls' War of March 1830 changed his position. Tītore came with Ururoa to Kororāreka over Te Urumihia's curse. In the fighting Hihi of Ngāti Manu shot Hengi, Tītore's matua. James Hamlin wrote of a chief, probably Hengi, who fell while he stood watching with only a walking stick in his hand. After the peace of 17 March Tītore took Kororāreka as utu for Hengi. He divided the land among Rewa, Moka, Ururoa and the other Ngāi Tāwake chiefs, and wanted his boundary at a place called Pātara. Ruahine of Ngāre Raumati reminded him of Ngāti Manu's limits, and the boundary went in at Te Ana Mataku.

Hengi's sons thought the peace gave them nothing, since no death of equal rank balanced their father's. They led their own taua south in 1830 and came home with no one of rank. In January 1831 a second Takou party left with the old tohunga Te Haramiti, and in March news came that the whole party had died on Mōtītī. Ballara writes that this left Tītore "no choice" but to seek utu for more than twenty chiefs of his own Ngāti Rēhia.

• December 1831 to November 1832: the first Tauranga taua. Contingents left the Bay in their own canoes under their own chiefs, and Rewa told Henry Williams that each party went where it liked, since every man was his own chief. The fighting ran on in musket volleys and great-gun fire. Tītore stayed out longest and came home on 27 November.
• December 1832 to 1833: Tītore went north to fetch Te Rarawa for a second taua. The missionary Charles Baker told them they could have a missionary only if they stayed home. Tītore answered that missionaries brought death, and Te Rarawa came. The taua besieged Maungatapu at Tauranga in 1833 and fought around Te Tumu and Maketū.
• 24 June 1834: at Whangaroa, after helping HMS Buffalo find a cargo of spars, he wrote to William IV and sent two garments and a greenstone mere.
• 1835: the King sent him a suit of armour, now at Te Papa. On 28 October Tītore signed He Whakaputanga.
• March to June 1837: war with Pōmare II over the Kororāreka boundary. Tītore sent 800 men in 42 canoes against Ōtūihu, and Pōmare held. Tītore died at Kororāreka on 2 June, and the war ended soon after.

In his letter to the King, Tītore read the wider world with a clear eye. "Should you and the French quarrel," he wrote, "here are some trees for your battle ships." HMS Rattlesnake fired a salute when he died, and Captain Hobson's report on the 1837 war helped push Britain toward annexation.

Playthrough/Alliances and the Girls' War

Of the game's systems, I lean on alliances hardest here. Tītore spent his career in the politics between hapū: who stood with whom, who stayed out, and what a death on one beach cost a hundred miles away.

The start

In January 1810 Tītore is about 35. His parents Te Ahi and Hapai, his brothers Rapu and Tohitapu, his wife and his uncle Tāreha all sit on the roster. Ngāi Tāwake and Ngāti Rēhia both start in the northern grouping.

My data puts him in too many places. It gives his home as Kerikeri, seats him at Rangitane among Ngāti Rēhia, and puts two Ngāi Tāwake households under him on the beach at Kororāreka, twenty years before he took it. Meanwhile the seat at Okiato, home of his own hapū, sits empty. Ballara places him at Waimate in 1821, and I'd like to settle the 1810 picture before this start is playable.

The groupings

I give each hapū a grouping for 1810, and kin closeness from the whakapapa decides how disputes run between them. The groupings shift as marriages, deaths and grievances build up. Nothing in the game scripts the Girls' War. By 1810 the pieces are on the board: Ngāti Manu on the busiest beach, Ngāi Tāwake and Ngāti Rēhia eyeing it, and chiefly women on both sides with kin who will answer for them.

At Kororāreka many chiefs stayed out because they were "held fast by their relations". The kin rules let a hapū with close ties to both sides abstain, and only such a hapū can mediate. Ballara thinks Ururoa might have settled for firing his guns into the ground. The symbolic settlement rules allow for that, and one shot at a woman on his side turned a gesture into a war.

Land as utu

Under the utu rules land on its own is no proper take, but it can change hands as payment for a death. Kororāreka in 1830 is the clearest case in the north. Tītore took the beach to balance Hengi's death, and then had to argue its boundaries with the neighbours who knew them better.

The cascade

The 1830 peace closed the war on the beach and opened three more. The rules weigh balance by rank, and each paramount chief has to consent to a peace. Kin with an open quarrel can still break it, and their chiefs may be powerless to stop them. Hengi's sons broke it. Their taua died at Mōtītī, and the debt passed up to Tītore. I want the player to watch a settled account turn into a chain of new ones.

Running a confederate taua

Kin answer when fetched, and Tītore fetched Te Rarawa with a threat and paid them with a feast at Kororāreka. Each contingent then travelled, camped and fought under its own chief. In the game an alliance taua moves as a set of contingents, each with its own aims, and each chief can take his people home. The player who called the muster leads by mana and gifts, and gets no right to give orders.

Image credits

• LadyRabbit, Okiato Point Historic Reserve, Bay of Islands, 2025. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
• Letter to a King, poster printed for the Pioneer Press exhibition, 1958 (detail). Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
• Map and whakapapa chart: Taua data and base map.

Sources

• Angela Ballara, Taua: "Musket Wars", "Land Wars" or Tikanga?, 2003.
• Angela Ballara, "Pōmare II", Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, 1990.
• "Tītore", He Whakaputanga signatories, NZHistory, Manatū Taonga.
• "Tītore", Wikipedia, for the East Coast campaign, the letter and the armour.
• Kipa Munro, brief of evidence for Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Rēhia, 2021.