HORONUKU TE HEUHEU

Taupo Times, Volume III, Issue 122, 28 May 1954, Page 1

HORONUKU TE HEUHEU

Horonuku Te Heuheu, a son of Te Heuheu Mananui, became paramount chief of Taupo following the death of his uncle, Iwikau, at Pukawa in 1863. Till then Iwikau had been a restraining influence in the warlike Kingite politics, and had, with the peace counsels of the Rev. Thomas Grace, kept most of Tuwharetoa neutral in the early weeks of the Waikato War. But Horonuku told the missionary that the appeals of his kinsfolk in the field could no longer be unheeded. He raised a contingent of 200 men. Well armed and equipped they marched to Mr Grace's quarters at Oreti, where a religious service was held, an orderly quiet service, as the Scottish Covenanters and Cromwell^ Ironsides held theirs before battle. The missionary sadly saw his ffock depart. In later and happier years Horonuku, encouraged by his son-in-lay, Mr Lawrence M. Grace, M.H.R., gave the National Park mountain peaks to the Crown as the nucleus of the present Park, the decision to do so being made at a sitting of the Maori Land Court held in the Court House, Taupo, in March 1886. The greenstone mere held by Te Heuheu is the famous Pahikaure.