King Country
Driving through Taupiri it would be easy to think there’s nothing special about this little place but you’d be wrong. Taupiri is the sacred mountain of the Waikato people. It is remembered in the tribal saying: Ko Waikato te awa l Ko Taupiri te maunga l Ko Te Wherowhero te tangata, translated it says: Waikato is the river l Taupiri is the mountain l Te Wherowhero is the man l
“Many Waikato ancestors and chiefs are buried on Taupiri including all the Māori kings, and the late Queen, Dame Te Ātairangikahu who passed away in 2006. The King movement (Te Kīngitanga) began in the 1850s, some years after the arrival of Europeans in an attempt to halt sales of land and promote Māori authority in New Zealand. At that time the tribes from all over the country, including the South Island, debated who should be offered the kingship.
They finally agreed upon Pōtatau Te Wherowhero, the Waikato chief, who became first king in 1858. Pōtatau was succeeded by his son Tāwhiao in 1860. Tāwhiao’s reign coincided with the Waikato war of 1863–64 between Maori tribes and new European settlers in Taranaki and later Waikato.
In 1863 when he was defeated in the Waikato battle of Rangiriri, 50km north of Hamilton, he fled south to safety among the rugged bushclad hills. Legend has it that King Tawhiao threw his hat over a map of the North Island and declared “there I rule” of the area it landed over. Thus the King Country, or Rohe Potae, was named.”
How many times have you passed through locations you’ve known all your life and never wondered about the stories and the people, those human documents that brought it into being.
The bitumen beat beneath me turns over the miles. Ngaruawahia is situated at the junction of the Waikato and Waipa Rivers. To the west of the town the land is hilly, rising to the Hakarimata (Whawhapunga) Range.
Elsewhere the district consists of alluvial plain. The North Island Main Trunk railway and the main Auckland-Hamilton highway pass through it. It was an important Maori settlement in early times and the place where Te Wherowhero was invested as Maori King with the title Potatau I.” We make a pit stop here and stretch our legs, the hills above us seem alive, a fitting ‘cloud of witnesses’ as our march north continues.
