and Hauraki generally. Ngati-Whatua came to assist Ngati-Paoa, and the Ngapuhi attack on Mauinaina was repulsed. Then Te Koperu was invited into the fortress to make peace. There he was treacherously murdered by Te Paraoa-rahi, a Ngati-Paoa chief.
This event was followed almost immediately by Te Koperu’s brother, Te Morenga, attacking the Tamaki pas, and he severely punished Ngati-Paoa, amply revenging Te Koperu’s death.
HONGI’S INVASION
The following year (1821) saw yet another attack on the people of Tamaki. Hongi Ika himself first then came on the scene. He had just returned from England, and had met Te Hinaki in Sydney, whence they both returned to New Zealand. Te Hinaki had been warned in Sydney by Hongi as to his intentions; he therefore prepared his fortifications at Mokoia and Mauinaina for the storm about to break upon his people. The Ngapuhi duly arrived and began a blockade of the Tamaki forts. After a long siege, accompanied by much skirmishing, the Mokoia fort was captured. Te Hinaki himself was slain, with a great number of his people. After the incidents usual to such affairs had been fully enacted, the Ngapuhi departed, to carry on the war in the districts of Hauraki and the south.
For some years after the Ngapuhi invasion, the Tamaki Isthmus appears to have been altogether abandoned as a permanent residential area. It was during this time a kind of “no man’s land.” Ngati-Whatua retreated to the forest wilderness of Waitakerei and Kaipara, or into the recesses of the Waikato.
D’URVILLE’S VISIT
In 1827 D’Urville visited the Waitemata. He ascended Takarunga (Mount Victoria, Devonport). Looking westward towards the Tamaki, he says there were no signs whatever of any inhabitants. Crossing the harbour, he found a deserted village (perhaps Orakei). He also attempted to ascend what was probably Mount Eden, but had to abandon the attempt. The denseness of growth of fern and scrub since the time of the Ngati-Whatua conquest of the last century had obliterated all the old native tracks. The greater area of the Isthmus had become little better than a jungle of vegetation.
D’Urville also describes his visit to the villages at Tamaki, where a namesake of the late ill-fated Hinaki was then head man.
NGAPUHI DEFEATED AT TAMAKI HEADS
In this year (1827) was fought the last tribal battle in Tamaki. The Manukau and Ngati-Whatua people in alliance came in canoes down the Tamaki River to give combat to Ngapuhi. That people, crossing from Waiheke, “captured” the apparently abandoned canoes of the local people at the West Tamaki Head. While Ngapuhi were quarrelling over the supposed “spoils of war,” the allies returned and surprised them, with such success that only one small Ngapuhi party of twenty men returned home to tell the tale.
THE COMING OF CHRISTIANITY
Christianity was now beginning to show its influence among the war-weary tribes of New Zealand, and from now on until 1835 much inter-tribal peacemaking was the order of the day.
In that year Ngati-Whatua began to return to the Isthmus, but none of the old hill forts were re-occupied. The decrease in population, the introduction of firearms, and the general change in the modes of life had made those elevated places of abode impracticable under the new conditions which arose.
Okahu (Orakei Bay) became the headquarters of the Ngati-Whatua; they had also a large village at Mangere, where also lived Kati, younger brother of Te Wherowhero,[3] the paramount Waikato chief. His wife—Matere Toha—was a Ngapuhi chieftainess of high rank, being a niece of the great Hongi Ika.[4] Apihai Te Kawau, head chief of Ngati-Whatua, took up his residence at Orakei, and other villages were established and occupied on the shores of the Waitemata and Manukau.
This was the position in 1840.
The days of local inter-tribal warfare had now passed away for ever. In this year the purchase of the site of Auckland City took place, and the British Flag was unfurled at Fort Britomart. Thus closed the long and troublous history of Tamaki-Makau-Rau.
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