The Ati-Awa in exile, and re-conquest of Wai-O-Ngana.
About 1760.

After the most disastrous defeat inflicted on the Ati-Awa hapus that lived between Nga-Motu (Sugar-loaves) and the Wai-o-ngana river, at the hands of Nga-Potiki-taua, the people were in a deplorable state. They had lost their pas, their villages, their cultivations, their fishing places, their sacred burial grounds—which latter were now open to be desecrated by the conquerors, a dreadful thing to the Maori people—in fact, everything but their arms and clothing. Their bravest warriors had fallen; many of the women had been killed or taken prisoners. Some families had disappeared altogether; in others none but one or two members remained. There were children without parents, husbands without wives, wives without husbands; in fact, the particular hapus that suffered so terribly by Tu-whakairi-kawa's conquest were next door to extinguished. But the people did not lose heart. Those that escaped massacre fled to the forests and secret hiding places known only to themselves, and where, as at all times in anticipation of defeat, there were small cultivations and rough wharau or sheds, in which they found shelter and food. In the first stages of their discomfiture, the birds of the forests and cels of the streams furnished them with the means of keeping body and soul together.

In regard to the case in point, my informants say that for many years the energies of the people were entirely directed to the one object of the growth. and training of warriors, with the idea of eventually returning from their exile and driving their enemies from the lauds which had been their's and their ancestors for not far short of a thousand years. To this end the old warriors still left to the tribe were unceasing in their admonitions to the young girls to marry early, and bring forth children to be trained as toas or warriors. The boys as they grew up were incited by tales of war-like deeds; the wrongs the tribe had suffered were incessantly kept before them, and the duty of redressing them constantly dilated on. The military education included in the term "nga mahi a Tu" —the works of the war-god, Tu—were especially attended to by the old warriors, and consisted in the occular demonstration of the use of weapons—of the taiaha, or wooden sword, which was a science in itself, consisting of blow and guard; of the tao or spear with the proper thrust and karo, or guard, in which latter the Maori was very clever; in the use of the shorter weapons, such as the mere) the onewa, the koti-ate, made of jade, stone or heavy wood; of the kotaha or sling-spear—indeed of all classes of Maori weapons, not omitting the ki-tao or reo-tao, charms repeated over weapons to give them măna, power or prestige.

Mr. John White, the author of the "Ancient History of the Maori," was at Waitara in 1860 as interpreter to H.M. forces, and whilst there gathered many notes on the history, etc., of the Ati-Awa people. In a long letter of his (known to be his but not under his name) published in the "Taranaki Herald," 9th and 10th June, 1860, in which he writes of the causes of the war of the "sixties" from the Maori point of view, and wherein he touches on the matters we are now dealing with, he says, "only one hundred of Ati-Awa escaped (at the conquest by Nga-Potiki-taua), and these men had eluded their enemies by being at the back of Mimi, in the forest…." Our Maori historians say nothing of this, but Mr. White had excellent opportunities of getting good information at that time, and it is not at all improbable that a page 220party of Ati-Awa might have been away at the time of the conquest. If so, they would form a useful contingent to their fellow tribesmen when the time came for the reconquest.

How long it was that these branches of Ati-Awa remained in their forest homes after their escape from the destructive effects of the Nga-Potiki-taua conquest, cannot be fixed definitely. But as they had "to grow men" it would probably be not less than fifteen to twenty years. As soon, however, as the tribe felt strong enough, the old chiefs felt that the time had come to strike a blow for the recovery of their lost homes. Matters were brought to a head in the following manner: A woman who was a sister or cousin of Whanui's, dreamed that she was back on the coast, fishing at their old fishing place at Whatiwhati, on the beach near Rewa-tapu (just south of Wai-o-ngana mouth). In the morning she told her dream to Koro-tiwha, Whanui and Ranga-tapu, saying that she had heard the rollers breaking on the shore, etc. She was crying and lamenting the loss of her old home, the beaches on which she had played as a child, her corapauions killed by the enemy; and wound up by asking: "Ma wai au e kawe ki nga tai e whati mai ra, ki taku hau-kainga?" "Who will take me back to the breaking seas, to my home?" Koro-tiwha replied, "Maku koe e kawe ki to kainga. Taihoa ka kawea koe e au?" "I will take you to your home, yet a little while and I will do so."