In Māori tradition, the canoe ''Horouta'' was one of the great ocean-going canoes in which

Polynesians Polynesians form an ethnolinguistic group of closely related people who are native to Polynesia (islands in the Polynesian Triangle), an expansive region of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean. They trace their early prehistoric origins to Island Sou ...

migrated to

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

approximately 800 years ago. The story goes that Kahukura, a man from Hawaiki, introduced

kūmara The sweet potato or sweetpotato (''Ipomoea batatas'') is a dicotyledonous plant that belongs to the bindweed or morning glory family, Convolvulaceae. Its large, starchy, sweet-tasting tuberous roots are used as a root vegetable. The young shoot ...

(sweet potato), to the locals who had never had anything like it before. In order to obtain more kūmara back in

Hawaiki In Polynesian mythology, (also rendered as in Cook Islands Māori, in Samoan, in Tahitian, in Hawaiian) is the original home of the Polynesians, before dispersal across Polynesia. It also features as the underworld in many Māori stories. ...

Toi gave the canoe to Kahukura. Upon gathering the coveted vegetables, Kahukura sent them back on the ''Horouta'', commanded by

Pāoa Pāoa ('smoke') was a Maori people, Maori ''rangatira'' (chieftain) of the Tainui tribal confederation from the Waikato region, New Zealand. He is the ancestor of the Ngāti Pāoa iwi. He probably lived in the first half of the seventeenth century. ...

(or Pāwa). According to Kahungunu tradition it was Pawa who captained the ''Horouta'' while Kiwa was the tohunga. J H Mitchell has written that the ''Horouta'' canoe reached New Zealand around 100 years before the main body of canoes, which arrived around 1350. ''Horouta'' called at different places along the East Coast until it was beached at Gisborne. Kiwa was the first to set foot on the land, according to custom. The place was thereafter known as Turanganui a Kiwa, or the standing place of Kiwa and the name was later extended to include the whole of the

Poverty Bay Poverty Bay (Māori: ''Tūranganui-a-Kiwa'') is the largest of several small bays on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island to the north of Hawke Bay. It stretches for from Young Nick's Head in the southwest to Tuaheni Point in the north ...

flats area.

Rongowhakaata Halbert Rongowhakaata "Rongo" Pere Halbert (2 February 1894 – 11 April 1973) was a Māori tribal leader, interpreter, historian and genealogist. He was considered "an eminent authority on Māori literature". Halbert's book ''Horouta: The History of th ...

wrote a history of ''Horouta'', published posthumously in 1999.

References

External links

https://web.archive.org/web/20101125020711/http://www.waitangi-tribunal.govt.nz/
Māori waka Māori mythology {{Māori-myth-stub

See also

References

External links