Ngati hotu
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ngati Hotu is the name of a tribe of people who are sometimes described as "pre fleet" or pre Māori who reportedly lived in the central north island of New Zealand in the area surrounding Lake Taupo, where the modern day Tuwharetoa iwi now resides. Māori oral tradition has passed down descriptions of the appearance of these people who have survived to the present day; these include ones made by chief Te Heuheu Tukino IV in the late 19th century, which used such words as "Urukehu" (meaning "reddish/golden hair") and "Kiriwhero" ("reddish skin"). Such physical characteristics are not typical of the Māori people, who are of Polynesian ancestry, and sound strikingly caucasian in nature, which has led some to believe that a migration far off in the distant past may have brought another very different race of people to Aotearoa before the Māori arrived.
[edit] The fate of the Ngati Hotu and the Battle of the five forts
Originally the Ngati Hotu were supposed to have been discovered living around the shores of lakes Taupo and Rotoaira by members of the Te Arawa iwi (tribe), which today occupies the Rotorua lakes district and the central Bay of Plenty coastline. They were soon after defeated at the battle of Pukekaikiore (Puke : Hill ; Kai : To eat ; Kiore : Rats) mountain to the south west of the main lake where the iwi was decimated and their remnants scattered.
Apparently some of the survivors gathered and settled around the village now known as Kakahi ("freshwater mussels") which lies 30 kilometres due west from the southwestern most point of Lake Taupo. They were discovered there by a party of Whanganui Māori journeying up the river of the same name, who soon called up reinforcements to attack the settlement. The Ngati Hotu set up a ring of 5 forts around Kakahi which the Whanganui Māori attacked and took one by one until finally the last two, Otu Taarua and Ariki Pakewa, fell. The final, brutal episode of the battle was played out on the flats between Kakahi and the Whanganui river when the now, effectively victorious Whanganui Māori hung the legs of fallen Ngati Hotu warriors from poles mounted in the forks of trees - a gesture at which their remaining enemies broke and fled off into the depths of the King country to vanish from history.
The battle is estimated to have occurred circa 1450 and its story has since been handed down through 15 generations to the Whanganui Kaumatua Takiwa Tauarua, who related it to prominent New Zealand artist Peter Mcintyre in the 1960s.
[edit] References
- "Kakahi, New Zealand" by Peter Mcintyre, reed publishing, 1972
- A review of the book "TUWHARETOA by John Te H. Grace A. H. & A. W. Reed" by Margaret Orbell, June 1966 (no. 55) of Te Ao Hou.
