The Origins of Ngāti Kahungunu

Abstract

This study is an attempt to discover the origins of the modern Māori tribe, Ngāti Kahungunu. It re-examines European tribal histories in the light of Māori traditions about the region often believed to have been Ngāti Kahungunu territory since the sixteenth century. Because one of the most important sources of local Māori tradition is the oral evidence given to the Native Land Court in the nineteenth century, Māori witnesses' accounts are used as a major resource. This study examines their versions of the social organization of Māori of the Hawke's Bay/Wairarapa region. It is argued that the descent group, Ngāti Kahungunu originated in Tūranganui-a-Kiwa (Poverty Bay) some seventeen generations before 1865. Splinter groups migrated to Wairoa, Te Māhia and Heretaunga (central Hawke's Bay) three to four generations later. Intermarriage with other descent groups already living in the region, or with other migrants, gradually established Kahungunu kin links over a wider territory. But Ngāti Kahungunu fitted themselves into an existing, fragmented society, which, both before and during the contact period, managed social relations and exploitation of the environment through a system of independent social groups. Ngāti Kahungunu as a tribe, meaning a large social group with corporate functions, did not dominate Hawke's Bay and Wairarapa until the nineteenth century. Its eventual ascendancy resulted from a combination of centripetal forces, some of which arose out of contact with Europeans.