Our History

According to local history, it was at Taipa that Kupe first landed. He is credited with discovering the country but it is not certain that he did so. Recent archaeological evidence indicates that Maori were clearing the Northland forests as early as AD 500.  He called the Taipa River Ikatiritiri (to apportion fish) because of the abundant fish life to be found. At the adjoining Otengi headland, he made a place for his daughter to stay while he explored the country. It was from Taipa that Kupe returned to Hawaiiki, according to Ngati Kahu history.

In Hawaiiki, Kupe gave instructions on how to reach here and on the places to be found. Those descriptions, it seems, were passed down over some generations as Kupe's descendants set sail.

Whatever navigational aids were used they appear to have been accurate for Tumoana was to bring his canoe, Tinana, to the very places that Kupe had described. His people, including his daughter Kahutianui, were to dwell at Tauroa near Ahipara, but Tumoana journeyed back to Hawaiiki, promising to send his nephew Parata, as a husband for Kahutianui, and prophesying that certain signs would announce Parata's arrival at Taipa.

At Hawaiiki, the Tinana canoe, re-adzed and enlarged, was relaunched under the new name of Mamaru, under Parata's command. Landfall was made at the Otengi headland at Taipa, amidst a gathering storm. The lightning, we were told, alerted Kahutianui who knew the time had come to journey to the Bay. She was a woman of great lineage, courage and leadership and it is from her that Ngati Kahu take their name.

The coast was explored by Mamaru and at Karikari peninsula, or Rangiawhia as they called it, the first pa was erected to stand sentinel over the bay. Eventually however the canoe was beached at Otengi, where Kupe's daughter had stayed, and it was there that Parata and Kahutianui made their home. It was to be the birthplace of Ngati Kahu.

Thus was the tribal pepeha raised

Ko Mamaru te waka                Mamaru was the canoe

Ko Parata te tangata                Parata was the man

Ko Kahutianui te wahine        Kahutianui was the woman

Ko Ngati Kahu te iwi                And Ngati Kahu began.

Two logs or skids, carried from the homeland to beach the canoe, were then planted there. Two tawapou trees are there to this day. From cuttings, others have been established on the lands of related tribes.

At Taipa an abundance of fish was found, and shellfish of great variety - toheroa, tipa (scallops), kokota (pipi), huai (cockles), karahu (periwinkles), kutai (mussels), tio (oysters), kina, pupu and koramarama (rock periwinkles), paua, patiotio (limpets), ngakihikihi (small mussels) and kotoremoana (shell-less paua). The kokota beds at the Taipa river mouth exceed five acres; there are large huai beds a little upstream and karahu are found on the nearby mangrove mudflats.

Fresh water was available by digging holes in the Taipa sands, a practice that continued to modern times.

At Otengi headland a defensive Pa was built, called Mamangi, after the daughter of Parata and Kahutianui. Parata and Kahutianui lived alternately at three important headlands of the Bay, at Karikari to the north, Otengi at the centre and at Taemaro on the east. But Otengi at Taipa was the main base, where there were direct lines of sight to the other headlands and to promontories inland. As the descendants settled the whole of the Doubtless Bay lands, signal fires were used to maintain contact between them.

In the course of time the people multiplied and grew, supplemented from marriages with other Maori from the many other canoes that came. Originally there were three hapu or clans on the Mamaru canoe, Te Rorohuri, Patu Koraha and Te Whanau Moana. Those names have always been maintained but in later years numerous sub-tribal groups adopted additional tribal names that came to apply to different localities. For convenience, we refer to the sub-tribes collectively as Ngati Kahu, although the name was not revived until the 1920's, and although for the greater period of the time described, different groups of the same people preferred their separate hapu names.

By the eighteenth century the main settlements were broadly in three areas, at the eastern peninsula leading to Mangonui Harbour and in the surrounding valley and hills; in the central area inland from Taipa and nearby coastal places; and at the Karikari peninsula on the northern extremity of the Bay. In all these places, pa were built, but villages were everywhere.

It is likely that for every coastal headland there was a pa, and many were built inland, on well drained hills, at strategic spots on communication lines, and at places with ready access to the resources of the dense forests and the open seas. On carefully chosen sites, extensive gardens were established.

Taipa, and the Oruru valley behind it, remained the most popular of the places, though few Maori live there today. Hikurangi became the main Ngati Kahu pa, and was located at Taipa on what became the Adamson's farm. Most of the people however, had spread up the Oruru Valley, where the river provided an easy pathway to the sea, extending as far as the fertile Peria valley, where Kauhanga pa was maintained. Dr Susan Bulmer, regional archaeologist for the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, provided this description.

The Oruru was an extraordinary valley, one of the longest in Northland (22km) and it had excellent garden land. It possibly supported one of the densest concentrations of population in the country; a late 18th century map recorded a fighting force of 2,000 men, suggesting there may have been around 8,000 people in the Oruru Valley at that time. This population was gone by the early 19th century and Leigh Johnson concluded from his studies that this was likely to have been a consequence of a devastating epidemic of disease about 1794. There were 57 pa along the ridges of Oruru valley, and each had many associated pit and terrace sites of undefended settlement. Altogether this adds up to one of the most spectacular archaeological landscapes in the country.

We were advised that the area was so densely settled that news and messages could be shouted from Taipa to Kauhanga, from one pa to the next.

The northern Maori were keen to trade with the whalers and traders who arrived from the early 1790s. The provisioning of their boats brought trade and the introduction of new kinds of clothes, articles and food. Some new resources came by other means. Tuki Tuhia of Taipa for example was kidnapped and taken to Norfolk Island, because he was presumed to have knowledge of flax planting and preparation. He was restored to Taipa by Governor King, in 1793, with a range of exotic plants and animals.

Mangonui became a significant provisioning area, although never rivalling the Bay of Islands or Hokianga. Through the whalers, Maori were to export the produce of their labours and gain new materials and experiences. Unfortunately, the visitors brought diseases, to which Maori were unaccustomed, and even the common cold had catastrophic consequences for them. By the end of the eighteenth century, local populations are thought to have been reduced by well over a half (Johnson oral evidence 21.10.86).

The ravages of disease exacted their most terrible toll where Maori settlements were thickest, and few were as dense as those in the Oruru valley where whole pa were wiped out. A secondary consequence, as dreadful as the first, was that disparity in population losses altered the earlier balance of tribal power, and exposed Ngati Kahu to the pretensions of neighbouring tribes against whom they had once held their own.

The remnants of Ngati Kahu were caught between the powerful tribal coalitions of Te Rarawa on the west and Ngapuhi to the immediate south east. Both became major contenders for the Ngati Kahu lands. Taipa-Oruru lay midway between the rivals' home bases, and inland valley routes put Oruru within easy reach.

It assisted Ngati Kahu a little that Te Rarawa and Ngapuhi were both their blood relations. They were conquered but not driven from their lands. The main question was whether they should acknowledge Te Rarawa or Ngapuhi as holding an authority in the Bay, or whether they could maintain an independence of their own.

From at least the 1810s, members of both Te Rarawa and Ngapuhi occupied different parts of the Ngati Kahu lands. In the crucial Taipa Oruru area, Ngati Kahu were joined by Te Rarawa towards the coast and by Ngapuhi further inland. The position was uncertain when the European settlers came, and as shall be seen, the control of the Taipa-Oruru area, the choicest part of the Ngati Kahu lands, was to be crucial in the subsequent contentions.