The Taipā and Ōruru Valley

The Taipā and Ōruru Valley heading inland remained the most popular of the places. In comparison only a few Māori live there today. Hikurangi became the main Ngāti Kahu pā and is located at Taipā on what became the Adamson’s farm.

Most of the people however, had spread up the Ōruru Valley, where the river provided an easy pathway to the sea, extending as far as the fertile Pēria Valley and where Kauhanga pā was maintained. Dr Susan Bulmer, regional archaeologist for the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, provided the following description of the Ōruru Valley in the Waitangi Tribunal Mangonui Sewerage Report:

“The Ōruru was an extraordinary Valley, one of the longest in Northland (22km) and it had excellent garden land. It possibly supported one of the densest concentrations of population in the country; a late 18th century map recorded a fighting force of 2,000 men, suggesting there may have been around 8,000 people in the Ōruru Valley at that time.”

This population was gone by the early 19th century and Leigh Johnson concluded from his studies that this was likely to have been a consequence of a devastating epidemic of disease about 1794.

There were 57 pā along the ridges of Ōruru Valley, and each had many associated pit and terrace sites of undefended settlement. Altogether this adds up to one of the most spectacular archaeological landscapes in the country.

The area was so densely settled that news and messages could be shouted from Taipā to Kauhanga, from one pā to the next.”