Wiremu Kingi Moki Te Matakatea


Wiremu Kingi Moki Te Matakatea was a notable New Zealand tribal warrior and leader. Of Māori descent, he identified with the Taranaki iwi.
Te Matakatea was a principal chief of Ngati Haumiti hapu of the Taranaki tribe. Born probably in Taranaki in the early years of the nineteenth century, he was first known as Moki. In the 1820s and 1830s he was caught up in his tribe's resistance to a series of Waikato raids. After a Waikato victory at Maru, at the base of Mt Taranaki, in 1826, he became the leader of some 120 men and their families who stayed within the protection of Te Namu pa, near Opunake, when the remainder of the Taranaki tribe migrated to the Kapiti coast about 1827. Moki and his people were able to obtain muskets from European flax traders who had settled at Ngamotu, near present-day New Plymouth, in 1828. When in 1833 Waikato laid siege to Te Namu, Moki distinguished himself by his marksmanship and received the name Te Matakatea, the clear-eyed. Waikato retreated but, sensing that this was only a temporary reprieve, Te Matakatea led his people a few miles south to a complex of three pa at the mouth of the Kapuni Stream, in the territory of his Ngati Ruanui relatives.