[1] Located to the west of Aramoana (12 kilometres (7.5 mi) northeast of Port Chalmers) and included as a section of the Otago Heads, Whareakeake was a place of habitation for Māori people from early times until the Sealers' War skirmish of 1817 from which it derived its colonial name.
[4] During an 1879 Royal Commission of Inquiry into Ngāi Tahu land claims, a local kaumātua named Taare Wetere Te Kahu identified Whareakeake as a traditional kāinga nohoanga (place of residence) and kāinga mahinga kai (place of food production).
[5] Other older Māori people at the time recalled "a fenced fort, a cemetery, a sacred altar and a canoe anchorage.
[8] One artefact found in the surface layer in 1863 was a medal given out by Captain James Cook during his second voyage to New Zealand, and most likely subsequently traded from Queen Charlotte Sound for pounamu.
Among them was a settler named William Tucker, who had built a house at Whareakeake two years previously, where he ran an export business in ornamental hei-tiki (pounamu neck pendants).
Their subsequent report claimed that the Māori had boarded the Sophia and were killed in the fight to retake it, and that Korako was captured and shot when he attempted to escape;[9] historians caution that Kelly's account of events, made to justify the actions he took, exaggerates the danger he and his men were in.
Kelly believed it was a reprisal for previous shootings of Māori by Europeans[11] in the ongoing state of lawless conflict known as the Sealers' War.
A later account accused Tucker of having stolen a Māori preserved head in 1811 and inaugurated the trade in these items;[9] this is considered to be poorly evidenced.
[8] This remained its official designation until 1998, when the name Whareakeake was restored in the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act.