Te Hirawanui Drive, Name
Name: Te Hirawanui
Suburb, Whakarongo
The drive is named in honour of Te Hirawanui Kaimokopuna (c. 1808-1883). Te Hirawanui Kaimokopuna was ariki (hereditary high chief) of the hapū (kinship group) Ngāti Mutuahi, Te Rangiaranaki and Ngāti Hauiti of Rangitāne. December 2022.
The aerial map is a derivative of the Palmerston North City Council online mapping Geographic Information System (GIS).
Te Hirawanui Kaimokopuna is variously associated with the Pā of Te Motu a Potua, Raukawa, Mokomoko and Ruahine in Manawatū, and, Tahoraiti and Otawhao in Tamaki nui-ā-Rua (Tararua District).
Portrait of Te Hirawanui Kaimokopuna held at Alexander Turnbull Library
He coordinated and signed the deed of sale of Te Ahu a Tūranga land block, in which Whakarongo is located. To learn more about Whakarongo, read this Back Issues article by Karla Karaitiana.
When his sister Whakarongo was abducted, he took her children Te Paea and Wirihana Kaimokopuna as whāngai (to foster and nuture) and raised them as his own.
The following history is told by Ngaruma (Ruma) Karaitiana, Te Hirawanui Kaimokopuna’s great-great-grandson.
Te Hirawanui Kaimokopuna lived through tumultuous times in his later life, with the invasions lead by Te Rauparaha, and the first European contact in the Manawatū.
He is recorded as having fought in the battle at Waiorua, on Kāpiti Island in 1824, where an alliance of some nine iwi (extended kinship group) were defeated by Te Rauparaha’s forces. This led to Ngāti Toa and their allied iwi to fully establish themselves in the lower North Island.
Te Hirawanui was residing at Te Motu a Potua and Raukawa at the time of early European contact. He is recorded as hosting the adventurer Jack Duff there in 1840, when he paddled up the Manawatū River from Foxton and through Te Āpiti gorge. This visit was soon followed by Frederick Hunt, from the New Zealand Company, who was prospecting land sales around Foxton.
Te Hirawanui also hosted William Colenso in 1846, while living at Otawhao. It is believed that he may have been baptised on this visit and took the name Te Hirawanui Karaitiana.
In the 1850’s, land sales between government agents and iwi took place in the province, and there were a series of disputes around ownership between iwi and hapu.
In 1858 Te Hirawanui attended a hui of seven iwi hosted by Nepia Taratoa and Ihakara Tukumaru, debating the ownership of the Manawatū. This ended in Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Tehihi and Ngāti Makatere formally acknowledging Rangitāne as holding the mana of the Manawatū, specifically the block of land known as Te Ahu a Tūranga. Further, they recognised Te Hirawanui as the only Rangatira of Rangitāne with the status to negotiate its long-term future.
Governor Thomas Gore Browne was keen to pursue a purchase of Te Ahu a Tūranga. Rangatira Nepia Taratoa urged Te Hirawanui to enter into negotiations with Donald McLean, the Land Purchase Commissioner, who had commenced purchase of the Rangitikei Block.
Te Ahu a Tūranga block extended from just north of present day Tokomaru to the head-waters of the Oroua River, bounded to the east by the Tararua and Ruahine Ranges, and to the west by the Oroua River to just above Feilding, then cutting a line just west of the Taonui Stream and across the Manawatū River.
McLean wanted to negotiate using a rough sketch of the block as a guide to the area under discussion. However, Te Hirawanui told the Crown agent that:
“... before the land could be sold that it must be surveyed all around the Boundaries and then paid for at the rate of 30/- per acre - that [the] land was of immense extent and that it should not be sold in the dark.”
Te Hirawanui understood that the Crown had already promised to have the land surveyed before sale.
Te Hirawanui having signalled the willingness to enter a sale agreement, once surveyed, met with surveyor John Tiffin Stewart in October 1858 and hosted him at Ruahine/Te Motu a Potua Pā. Te Hirawanui took Stewart to the clearing called Papaiōea and recommended it as the site for a township. Te Hirawanui and Stewart had a friendly relationship and Te Hirawanui accompanied the survey party on many excursions.
The friendly relationship did not continue into the negotiations with Donald McLean. The relationship quickly became rancorous and Te Hirawanui became concerned about the outcomes for iwi in other concluded sale processes.
The Crown refused to negotiate a per acre price for the land, seeking instead to negotiate on a lump sum basis. Negotiations for the sale broke down by late 1859, after Te Hirawanui rejected Crown offers of first £5,000 and then £6,000 for the block.
In April 1862, the Governor authorised the superintendent of the Wellington Provincial Council to purchase land on behalf of the Crown. In 1863, the Crown resumed negotiations. Te Hirawanui’s son, Wirihana Kaimokopuna, and Hoani Meihana Te Rangiotū joined Te Hirawanui to negotiate and, despite reservations, the deed of sale was signed on 23 July 1864, transferring approximately 250,000 acres to the Crown. More than 150 Rangitāne signed the deed.
The purchase price of £12,000 was paid to Rangitāne on 19 August 1864.
To learn more about the sale read these Back Issues articles, An anniversary with meaning for Manawatū by Toi Warbrick, and The trio who oversaw a momentous land sale by Virginia and Warren Warbrick.
Te Hirawanui was later asked to negotiate in the sale of the Tapere nui a Whatonga block in Tamaki nui-ā-Rua/Wairarapa, also known as ‘Seventy Mile Bush’. However, soured by his experience, he refused and offered his son, Wirihana Kaimokopuna, in his stead.
Wirihana’s battles with MacLean continued and are recorded in multiple letters from him to MacLean and to Parliament. However, in 1871 along with multiple kaumatua (including his cousins, Karaitiana Takamoana and Karaitiana Te Korou) Wirihana signed the deed of sale.
In 1878, when Christianity largely saw a more settled Aotearoa, and at the age of 70, Te Hirawanui set his energies on a different matter. In the early 1820s Te Hirawanui Kaimokopuna’s sister, Whakarongo, was captured by Te Amio-Whenua expedition at Te Ruru Pā near Ngāwapūrua.
Whakarongo was a niece and whāngai of Te Aokautere. She was daughter of Te Aokautere’s sister, Koa, and her husband Pakahuruhuru (the great-grand-son of Rangiaranaki).
Te Aokautere raised her as whāngai at Te Kuripaka pā and is said to have doted on her. He was generally blamed for cultivating her feisty, independent nature. She was also noted as being a great beauty. Whakarongo is believed to have fought in battle alongside Te Aokautere and her brothers, Te Wharepuni and Te Hirawanui Kaimokopuna, at least once.
Whakarongo and a party, including Tukere, her second husband, were returning to Manawatū from the battle at Te Horehore Pā in Takapau. Most of the pā in Tamaki nui-ā-Rua had been abandoned and the people retreated to Te Ahu Tūranga. It was believed that Tukere had been badly injured at Te Horehore and was unable to travel any further, so they made a stand at Te Ruru on the Manawatū river near Kumeroa and Ngāwapūrua.
A taua of Ngāti Kahungunu, allied to Ngāti Whatua and led by Puhara and Te Hapuku, ran them down. It is understood that Whakarongo fought in both battles (at Te Horehore and Te Ruru). Everyone in the group at Te Ruru were killed except a woman called Wiramina, and Whakarongo. Because of her rank, moko kauae and demeanor, Whakarongo was not killed, but captured, and taken to Kaipara where she married a chief of Te Uri-o-Hau branch of Ngāti Whatua and had another family.
And so, in the late 1870s, Te Hirawanui made an epic journey cross country to Kaipara and sucessfully negotiated for his sister's return.
He brought her back to Manawatū and she spent most of her remaining years at Raukawakawa Pā.
For someone with such a tumultuous life, Whakarongo lived to old age spending her last years at Tahoraiti Pā in Tamaki nui-ā-Rua being cared for by her son, Wirihana Kaimokopuna, and his wife Rora. She is buried at Tahoraiti urupā with her son.
Te Hirawanui Kaimokopuna died in 1883 after living a somewhat reclusive and disillusioned lifestyle at Raukawakawa. The pā was noted at that time to be lightly occupied and being largely eroded by the Manawatū River.