Tamatea Urehaea
In Ngāti Kahungunu tradition, he is distinguished from his grandfather Tamatea Arikinui who captained the Tākitimu canoe on its journey from Hawaiki to New Zealand.
[5] When Tamatea came of age, he engaged the craftsman Kauri to build a canoe for him at Whangaroa, which he named Tākitimu after his grandfather's vessel.
Henry Matthew Stowell (Hare Hongi) calls him "the most famous navigator of purely Maori history" after Tamarereti.
[6] In a South Island Māori account, Tamatea was shipwrecked at Te Waewae Bay as he rounded Murihiku and his canoe became the Takitimu Mountains.
A vast fire came down from the mountain along the Whanganui River and over the Cook Strait, boiling away the water, so that Tamatea could walk all the way back to the central North Island.
[9] Tamatea established a settlement called Tinotino at Orongotea, where he and his men hunted kererū in such great numbers that the location was renamed Kaitaia, which means "food in abundance" When.
his son Kahungunu was born, he buried the child's umbilical cord nearby with three whatu-kura (sacred stones), so that it would be an iho-whenua, a link which would bind the land to him.
They built fortresses at Whangape, Rangaunu, Herekino, Ahipara, Hukatere, and Rangiaohia, hemming Tamatea in.
When Tamatea came to Moumoukai, a village near Mōrere, he received the news that Rongomai-wāhine had given birth to a girl, who was the child of her previous husband, not Kahungunu.
[7] Travelling up the Mangakopikopiko River, he nearly starved at Pohokura in the Ruahine Range, but continued all the way overland to Lake Taupō.
[7][10] From Moawhango, Tamatea set out on a final exploratory journey through the North Island, heading up the Whanganui River and then going overland to Lake Taupō.
[8] From Taupō he sailed into the Waikato River and was killed by the rough water at Huka Falls or the Aratiatia Rapids.
The meeting house of Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa at Pouākani Marae in Mangakino is called Tamatea Pokai Whenua after him.
[24] The meeting house of the Ngāti Ranginui hapū of Ngāi Tamarawaho at Huria Marae in Judea is also called Tamatea Pokaiwhenua.
