Tamainu-pō

Tamainu-pō was a Māori rangatira (chieftain) of the Tainui tribal confederation in the Waikato region of New Zealand and the ancestor of the Ngāti Tamainupō hapū.

[8] Tamainu-pō crossed the harbour to Te Taharoa, where an elder sung a karakia over him and sent him along a ridge of Mount Pirongia, saying that he would know he was safe when a storm came upon him.

Tamainu-pō followed the route towards Ōpārau, past Te Awaroa and up onto the Pokohuka ridge, the site of Kāwhia's mauri manu ('bird talisman'), where the storm caught him.

[10] The chieftain of this village was Māhanga,[10] son of Tūheitia and a descendant of Hoturoa of the Tainui canoe, according to Pei Te Hurinui Jones.

As Tamainu-pō hunted, Māhanga's daughters, Wai-tawake and Tū-kōtuku-rerenga-tahi, caught sight of him up a tree and invited him to come back to their village.

[11] Later on, Kōkako, who had fought with Māhanga's father in Manukau Harbour, came south with a war party and built a fortress at Kiri-parera, just downstream from Kāniwhaniwha.

While he was still on the fence, Kōkako's forces broke and fled into their fortress and Tamainu-pō caught sight of his father, recognising him by his red feather-cloak.

[14] Tamainu-pō's sister Maikao was married to Ta-nanga-whanga of Ngā Iwi, who said to her, "Oh there, perhaps, stand the tree ferns with large / edible hearts of Puke-o-tahinga."

[18] A similar story, attributed to Ngāti Awa sources, but actually derived from an 1871 manuscript by Wiremu Te Wheoro, appears in John White The Ancient History of the Maori: IV Tainui (1888).

[19] An account reported to Bruce Biggs by Elsie Turnbull recounts the story of the seduction in the kumara pit, but attributes it to Tamainu-pō's father Kōkako and the wife of one Kārewa.