Tainui
Encyclopedia
Tainui is a tribal waka
confederation of New Zealand
Māori iwi
. The Tainui confederation comprises four principal related Māori iwi of the central North Island
of New Zealand: Hauraki, Ngāti Maniapoto
, Ngāti Raukawa
and Waikato
. These iwi share a common ancestry from Polynesian migrants who arrived in New Zealand on the Tainui waka
, which voyaged across the Pacific Ocean
from Hawaiki
to Aotearoa
(North Island) approximately 800 years ago. According to Pei Te Hurinui -Jones, the noted Taini historian,Tainui first entered the Waikato about 1400 bringing with them Kumara plants. By about 1450 they had conquered the last of the indigenous people in a battle at Atiamuri.
. Tainui, who had conquered much Taranaki land, sent warriors to help fight the settlers and British soldiers in Taranaki to prevent minor chiefs selling land to the government. Missionaries at Te Awamutu
told the Kīngitanga they would be considered rebels by the government after they refused to take an oath of allegiance to the crown. Te Awamutu was a missionary settlement built by the missionaries and Māori Christians in July 1839 after they observed Tainui cannibals who had been fighting at Rotorua
, return with 60 backpacks of human remains and proceed to cook and eat them in the Otawhao Pa.
. Some parts of the mill are still visible.Later in the 1850s 6 others were built in the general area. During this time large numbers of new migrants came to Auckland and Te Wherowhero established a house in Mangere so he could oversee trade and get advice from the government. For a brief period until the mid 1850s Tainui made a good return from selling food to the new settlers but this all came to a sudden end when traders realised they could get food-especially flour, much cheaper from New South Wales
.Tainui set up a bank at Cambridge to take the deposits of Maori traders but this was burnt down by the people when it was found that chiefs were using the money as their own. Tainui people were expelled from the Auckland
area in 1863 because of their refusal to take the oath of allegiance to the crown and hand in their weapons which the governor thought posed a threat to Auckland and the new settlers as it had done in Taranaki.
the kingmaker,who was considered a moderate, wrote a series of threatening letters to Governor Grey. He was an educated Christian who had lived with Governor Grey as a youth,and tried to stop Tainui fighting. At Rangiriri
he went to the defensive line and tried 12 times to persuade the warriors to leave but they refused. After their defeat in 18 battles at the hands of the British and the loyal kupapa Māori, who fought alongside the troops, the remaining rebel Tainui retreated south of the Punui River and set up a quasi-autonomous community based around the Kīngitanga.
Some Tainui hapu such as Wiremu Te Whereo of Ngati Naho, who was a magistrate for the Pokeno area, fought with the British at Rangiriri and later manned a new wooden redoubt at Rangiriri for 4 years after the defeat of the Kingite rebels.
was also the name of a Māori electorate
in the New Zealand parliament
. It was replaced by the Hauraki-Waikato
electorate.
In 2011 it was announced that the Tainui business arm was to buy farm land adjacent to the Ruakura Research Station and Waikato University to establish an inland port for the redistribution and repackaging of containerized products from the ports of Auckland and Tauranga. The area will include housing and a green walkway.Tainui have said that this will provide a up to 20,000 jobs and will be a 20-40 year project.
Waka (canoe)
Waka are Māori watercraft, usually canoes ranging in size from small, unornamented canoes used for fishing and river travel, to large decorated war canoes up to long...
confederation of New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
Māori iwi
Iwi
In New Zealand society, iwi form the largest everyday social units in Māori culture. The word iwi means "'peoples' or 'nations'. In "the work of European writers which treat iwi and hapū as parts of a hierarchical structure", it has been used to mean "tribe" , or confederation of tribes,...
. The Tainui confederation comprises four principal related Māori iwi of the central North Island
North Island
The North Island is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, separated from the much less populous South Island by Cook Strait. The island is in area, making it the world's 14th-largest island...
of New Zealand: Hauraki, Ngāti Maniapoto
Ngati Maniapoto
Ngāti Maniapoto is an iwi based in the Waikato-Waitomo region of New Zealand's North Island. It is part of the Tainui confederation, the members of which trace their whakapapa back to people who arrived in New Zealand on the waka Tainui...
, Ngāti Raukawa
Ngati Raukawa
Ngāti Raukawa is a Māori iwi with traditional bases in the Waikato, Taupo and Manawatū/Horowhenua regions of New Zealand. In 2006, 29,418 Māori registered their affiliation with Ngāti Raukawa.- Early History :...
and Waikato
Waikato (iwi)
Waikato is a Māori iwi from the Waikato region of the North Island of New Zealand. Actually a confederation of smaller tribes, it is also part of the larger confederation of Tainui, consisting of tribes descended from Polynesian migrants who arrived in New Zealand on the Tainui canoe...
. These iwi share a common ancestry from Polynesian migrants who arrived in New Zealand on the Tainui waka
Tainui (canoe)
In Māori tradition, Tainui was the name of one of the great ocean-going canoes in which Polynesians migrated to New Zealand, approximately 800 years ago. The Tainui waka was named for an infant who did not survive childbirth...
, which voyaged across the Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
from Hawaiki
Hawaiki
In Māori mythology, Hawaiki is the homeland of the Māori, the original home of the Māori, before they travelled across the sea to New Zealand...
to Aotearoa
Aotearoa
Aotearoa is the most widely known and accepted Māori name for New Zealand. It is used by both Māori and non-Māori, and is becoming increasingly widespread in the bilingual names of national organisations, such as the National Library of New Zealand / Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa.-Translation:The...
(North Island) approximately 800 years ago. According to Pei Te Hurinui -Jones, the noted Taini historian,Tainui first entered the Waikato about 1400 bringing with them Kumara plants. By about 1450 they had conquered the last of the indigenous people in a battle at Atiamuri.
Kingitanga
Tainui were the tribe responsible for the setting up of the Kingitanga in 1858-a pan Māori movement of mainly central North Island iwi who aimed at establishing a separate Māori nation with a Māori King. The key aim was the refusal of the kingites to sell land to the government. The first Māori king was the great Waikato warrior Te Wherowhero who came from a great line of rangatiraRangatira
Rangatira are the hereditary Māori leaders of hapū, and were described by ethnologists such as Elsdon Best as chieftains . Ideally, rangatira were people of great practical wisdom who held authority on behalf of the tribe and maintained boundaries between a tribe's land and that of other tribes...
. Tainui, who had conquered much Taranaki land, sent warriors to help fight the settlers and British soldiers in Taranaki to prevent minor chiefs selling land to the government. Missionaries at Te Awamutu
Te Awamutu
Te Awamutu is a town in the Waikato in the North Island of New Zealand. It is the council seat of the Waipa District and serves as a service town for the farming communities which surround it...
told the Kīngitanga they would be considered rebels by the government after they refused to take an oath of allegiance to the crown. Te Awamutu was a missionary settlement built by the missionaries and Māori Christians in July 1839 after they observed Tainui cannibals who had been fighting at Rotorua
Rotorua
Rotorua is a city on the southern shores of the lake of the same name, in the Bay of Plenty region of the North Island of New Zealand. The city is the seat of the Rotorua District, a territorial authority encompassing the city and several other nearby towns...
, return with 60 backpacks of human remains and proceed to cook and eat them in the Otawhao Pa.
Contact with Europeans
During the late 1840s and early 1850s missionaries introduced Tainui to modern inventions such as the water mill and gave then instruction in how to raise various European crops, potatoes were particularly widely planted. They set up a trade school in Te Awamutu to educate young Tainui so they became literate and taught the basics of numeracy and farming skills. Two mills were built to grind the wheat into flour-one near Cambridge on a stream leading to the Waikato RiverWaikato River
The Waikato River is the longest river in New Zealand. In the North Island, it runs for 425 kilometres from the eastern slopes of Mount Ruapehu, joining the Tongariro River system and emptying into Lake Taupo, New Zealand's largest lake. It drains Taupo at the lake's northeastern edge, creates the...
. Some parts of the mill are still visible.Later in the 1850s 6 others were built in the general area. During this time large numbers of new migrants came to Auckland and Te Wherowhero established a house in Mangere so he could oversee trade and get advice from the government. For a brief period until the mid 1850s Tainui made a good return from selling food to the new settlers but this all came to a sudden end when traders realised they could get food-especially flour, much cheaper from New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
.Tainui set up a bank at Cambridge to take the deposits of Maori traders but this was burnt down by the people when it was found that chiefs were using the money as their own. Tainui people were expelled from the Auckland
Auckland
The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...
area in 1863 because of their refusal to take the oath of allegiance to the crown and hand in their weapons which the governor thought posed a threat to Auckland and the new settlers as it had done in Taranaki.
Onset of conflict in the Waikato
Missionaries, who had been advising the government that Maniapoto in particular were collecting guns and powder, were expelled from Te Awamutu. Rewi Maniapoto and his followers tried to kill Missionary Gorst in 1863 but his life was saved as he was absent. The rebels stole his property and burnt down the mission and the native school . All of the peaceful farmers and missionaries who had lived in peace for many years were threatened and forced out of the Waikato .Wiremu TamihanaWiremu Tamihana
Wiremu Tamihana Tarapipipi Te Waharoa , generally known as Wiremu Tamihana, was a leader of the Ngati Haua Māori iwi in nineteenth century New Zealand, and is sometimes known as the kingmaker for his role in the Māori King Movement....
the kingmaker,who was considered a moderate, wrote a series of threatening letters to Governor Grey. He was an educated Christian who had lived with Governor Grey as a youth,and tried to stop Tainui fighting. At Rangiriri
Rangiriri
Rangiriri was a rural New Zealand parliamentary electorate in the Auckland Region from 1978 to 1984.-History:The electorate existed only from 1978 to 1984: it replaced the Franklin electorate in 1978, but the name was changed back to Franklin in 1984....
he went to the defensive line and tried 12 times to persuade the warriors to leave but they refused. After their defeat in 18 battles at the hands of the British and the loyal kupapa Māori, who fought alongside the troops, the remaining rebel Tainui retreated south of the Punui River and set up a quasi-autonomous community based around the Kīngitanga.
Some Tainui hapu such as Wiremu Te Whereo of Ngati Naho, who was a magistrate for the Pokeno area, fought with the British at Rangiriri and later manned a new wooden redoubt at Rangiriri for 4 years after the defeat of the Kingite rebels.
Living in the King Country
They established their own press, police force,laws and governing body. Europeans who entered the rebel Kīngitanga area were killed. However because the country was unproductive and the people cut themselves off from European civilization they struggled to develop the Kīngitanga ideal. Drunkenness became a problem among the kingitanga supporters south of the Puniu. Friction broke out between the Maniapoto hosts who wanted to engage with the European settlers and the conservative Kīngitanga adherents who wanted to retain power and remain isolated.Peace
Over time the more forward thinking ideas of Maniapoto prevailed, land was sold to the government and work was given to Tainui men on roads and on the main trunk line railway. Māori men were given the vote and Māori were given four members in parliament who all argued strongly for modernisation and acceptance of the benefits of Pākehā civilization. Following this schools, stores and churches were built. Some of the Tainui leaders were employed by the government as advisors or given government pensions in recognition of their change of heart and willingness to engage with the government. Tainui continued to work behind the scenes to recover the remainder of the land they believed was wrongly confiscated(120000 acres (485.6 km²) was returned by 1873) from them after their defeat during the land wars. Some land or reserves were given back to Tainui but this act caused intra-tribal friction for many years because most of the land retained by the government was in the north and central Waikato. None of the Maniapoto land was confiscated, despite the fact they were the most actively hostile iwi in Taranaki and during the Waikato campaign, and this annoyed the other Tainui iwi.The Return of Confiscated land
120000 acres (485.6 km²) of land was returned to the rebels a few months after the British victory. In 1926 a government commission agreed to pay an annual payment of 3000 pounds. In 1946 an additional payment of 5000 pounds(later $15,000) per annum was made in perpetuity -this was a full and final payment. Since the 1990s Tainui have been actively seeking a resolution to their ongoing grievance over land confiscation. This has resulted in Tainui being gifted many millions of dollars worth of government-owned land and substantial financial compensation.Tainui Business
At first many of the investments made were poor such as a fisheries deal, the purchase of a Rugby league team and a hotel in Singapore which all failed. A financial overhaul and the separation of the Kīngitanga from Tainui business enterprise has paid dividends. The construction of The Base shopping complex has been a winner for the iwi, drawing many retail customers from the Hamilton central business district. Tainui business supports the Kīngitanga financially, as well as fostering tertiary education for tribal members with grants. Tainui has very close links with Waikato University and each year the university closes down during major Tainui celebrations. From 2002 until 2008 TainuiTainui (New Zealand electorate)
Tainui was a New Zealand Parliamentary Māori electorate. From the 2008 election the Hauraki-Waikato electorate replaced it.It was held by Nanaia Mahuta MP from 2002 to 2008.-History:...
was also the name of a Māori electorate
Maori seats
In New Zealand politics, Māori electorates, colloquially also called Māori seats, are a special category of electorate that gives reserved positions to representatives of Māori in the New Zealand Parliament...
in the New Zealand parliament
Parliament of New Zealand
The Parliament of New Zealand consists of the Queen of New Zealand and the New Zealand House of Representatives and, until 1951, the New Zealand Legislative Council. The House of Representatives is often referred to as "Parliament".The House of Representatives usually consists of 120 Members of...
. It was replaced by the Hauraki-Waikato
Hauraki-Waikato
Hauraki-Waikato is a new New Zealand Parliamentary Māori electorate for the New Zealand general election, 2008.It largely replaces the Tainui electorate...
electorate.
In 2011 it was announced that the Tainui business arm was to buy farm land adjacent to the Ruakura Research Station and Waikato University to establish an inland port for the redistribution and repackaging of containerized products from the ports of Auckland and Tauranga. The area will include housing and a green walkway.Tainui have said that this will provide a up to 20,000 jobs and will be a 20-40 year project.
External links
- Official site of the tribe, Waikato
- Official site of the tribe, Maniapoto
- Official site of the tribe, Raukawa
- Official site of the tribe, Hauraki
- Hauraki tribes in Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand
- Bohan,Edmund.Climates of War.Hazard Press.2005