Tama-te-rangi

He was born at Waerengaahika (modern Hexton, near Gisborne), where his parents had settled alongside his maternal uncle Rakaipaaka.

[3] As a young man, he probably participated in Rakaipaaka's ill-fated attack on the chief Tu-te-tohi, which led to the tribe's defeat and exile.

He sent his sons Rakai-hakeke and Tama-te-hua to his uncle Rakaipaaka with a calabash of huahua (cooked birds, preserved in their own fat) to seek his assistance.

The war parties of Tama-te-rangi and Rakai-paaka met up at Te Poti (near Wairoa), where they held a hui (discussion), until Rakaipaaka's teenage son, Urewera, shouted "Are we here for the black or the red?!"

The combined force continued to pursue Ngāi Tauira, finally defeating them on the Taupara flats at Awamate, near Aranui.

[7] Tama-te-rangi now led a war party against Tu-te-kohi to get revenge for his family's earlier defeat and expulsion from the Tūranga region.

The force gathered at Te Mania in Marumaru, but when they were about to depart, Tama-te-rangi would not come out to perform the tohi ritual, without which the war party could not set out.

Parua gathered a war party, attacked Tama-te rangi at Ma-kakahi (on the Wairoa River) and killed him.