According to their oral history, Māori people grew sweet potatoes (kūmara) in coastal Otago, and their religious practice featured worship of the agricultural deity Rongo.

Prior to 2021, Western archaeologists believed that the sweet potato failed to flourish in New Zealand south of Christchurch due to its unfavourable climate, forcing Māori in those latitudes to become (along with the Moriori of the Chatham Islands) the only Polynesian people who subsisted solely on hunting and gathering.

However, a 2021 analysis of material excavated from Pūrākaunui revealed that sweet potatoes were grown and stored there during the 15th century, before the industry was disrupted by factors speculated to be due to the Little Ice Age.

The researchers (from the University of Otago) urged future archaeologists to give more weight to accounts from indigenous oral history.

He had visited his nephew (some sources say cousin), Kāti Māmoe chief Te Wera, at the latter's pā, Huriawa, near the mouth of the Waikouaiti River.

[citation needed] Taoka returned to his kāika and summoned a war party which laid siege to Huriawa for a year without success.

Pakihaukea's guard was relaxed and Taoka struck, climbing the palisades in the dead of night and massacring the 250 people found within.