Te Ruru Mā Heke 1848 and Tuku Rākau

The following year, on 16 May 1840, approximately 22 northern Taranaki chiefs sign the Treaty of Waitangi in Waikanae, as witnessed by both Henry Williams and Octavius Hadfield.

Octavius Hadfield had carried on from the work done by Ripahau, and worked closely with Riwai Te Ahu of Te Ātiawa in consolidating Christian philosophies into the community.

This led to the building of the Kenakena Church within the Kenakena pā site confines. This church was located along Mazengarb Road around the entrance to Te Ātiawa Park. It was here in 1843 that Bishop Selwyn confirmed 120 Māori Christians.

However, Te Ātiawa’s attention was returning back to their lands in Taranaki. Colonial settlers had acquired blocks of land which met with strong disapproval of the Te Ātiawa people based in Kāpiti. Their opposition was weakened in the eyes of the settlers due to a large proportion of Te Ātiawa living in the southern parts of the North Island.

Wiremu Kingi Te Rangitaake, the son of paramount chief of Te Ātiawa Reretawhangawhanga, wrote letters to Governor Robert Fitzroy outlining his opposition to further sale of ancestral lands.

With the passing of Reretawhangawhanga on 26 May 1845 at Kenakena pā, Wiremu Kingi Te Rangitaake upheld his father’s mantle as paramount chief of Te Ātiawa and prepared a large contingent of his people for a return migration to their ancestral lands in Taranaki.

This migration took place in 1848, and was called ‘Te Ruru Mā Heke’.

Because of the concerns that the migrating party had for their deceased who had fallen during their tenure in Kāpiti, a number of bodies were exhumed and their bones were transported with them back to Taranaki. This process occurred over a period of time as there were a number of journeys back and forth between Kāpiti and Taranaki.

As a result of this migration, the landscape around the Waikanae river also changed.

Kenakena pā site had dropped drastically in terms of population size, but still had families occupying parts of the pā site. An internal shift in population took place as more Te Ātiawa whānau moved to the northern side of the Waikanae river to occupy the pā sites of Kaitoenga, Kaiwarehou, Taewapirau and Upoko-te-Kaia.

It was also during this steady shift that Wi Tako Ngatata-i-te-Rangi, a chief of Ngāti Kura, Ngāti Tawhirikura, Ngāti Hamua and Te Matehou, built a house named ‘Pukumahi Tamariki’ on land just east of the Takamore cemetery. This land is called Tukurākau.

Unfortunately large parts of Kenakena pā site were becoming dilapidated due to large parts of the communal area being vacated. Strong sand drifts were now covering substantial parts of the pā site’s landscape. The church itself had sand level to the windows in 1849. By 1851, Kenakena pā was largely overrun. However, families still remained at parts of Kenakena, aswell as Te Uruhi and Arapawaiti pā sites.

As a result of Māori discontent and frustration with the purchase of ancestral lands by both the Crown and colonial settlers, the movement of national importance, called the Kīngitanga, began to take shape in Otaki in 1855.

Wi Tako became a strong supporter of the Kīngitanga movement, as he saw an opportunity for unifying the Māori people.

The original intention of the house, Pukumahi Tamariki, was to serve as an assembly house for the Kīngitanga if the movement was to travel through the Waikanae area. Wi Tako also had one of seven ‘pillars of the Kīngitanga’ built at his home named ‘Te Mako’ in Naenae. This was again another symbol of his strong allegiance to the movement.

As tensions between Māori and colonial settlers reached boiling point in Taranaki, further migrations took place which saw more of our whannau return to Taranaki. Prior to the onset of the Taranaki Land Wars in 1860, Wi Tako had become disillusioned with the Kīngitanga movement, and his hapū moved into the Wellington region.

Tukurākau was now under the leadership of Wi Te Kakakura Parata of Kaitangata hapū.

The mouth of the Waikanae River and Kenakena Pā (1845-1915).