(1840 – 20 August 1915), known to Māori as Hori Pitama, was a New Zealand politician and alpinist.
The Beetham family emigrated to New Zealand in 1855, arriving on the William and Jane in 1855.
As the land had originally been owned by Māori, Beetham engaged with them frequently and they knew him as Hori Pitama.
In 1879, Beetham, accompanied by Joseph Prime Maxwell, a civil engineer of Wellington, made a complete ascent of Mount Ruapehu, and, reaching its summit, crossed the large southern glacier, and made a close examination of the hot lake that is in the great ice plateau, the existence of which had not been previously recorded.
[4] In 1881 Beetham made another ascent of the north-east ridge to the Tahurangi peak accompanied by William Birch and his wife Ethel, the first European woman to make the ascent.