Ēnoka Te Whanake

Ēnoka Te Whanake signed the Tauranga sheet of the Treaty of Waitangi in April or May 1840 at Tauranga. He was a rangatira (chief) of Ngāi Te Rangi. A man called Te Whanake, perhaps Ēnoka’s father, was killed in 1842 in a Ngāti Maru attack on the E-ngere pā (fortified villiage) led by Tāraia Ngākuti in revenge for insulting letters sent from Tauranga.

In 1864 Te Whanake fought at Gate Pā against the Crown, causing severe losses to the naval brigade commanded by Commodore William Wiseman. [1] Ngāi Te Rangi later made peace with the government, and Governor George Bowen and Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh, visited them in 1868. Te Whanake greeted them, saying that he had repented for fighting the government and was now following the government’s laws.

James Mackay, the civil commissioner, visited Te Whanake and others of Ngāi Te Rangi at Motuhoa in 1866 to organise the sale of the 50,000 acres (20,234 ha) of the Te Puna and Katikati blocks and arrange reserves for the iwi (tribe).

In the late 1860s and 1870s, Te Whanake was employed as a Native Land Court assessor at Ōtaki.

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[1] No. 101. — Copy of a Despatch from Governor Sir G. F. Bowen to the Right Hon. the Earl of Kimberley, An Epitome of Official Documents Relative to Native Affairs and Land Purchases in the North Island of New Zealand

For further information and sources see Debbie McCauley, Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Tauranga), 2014, http://tauranga.kete.net.nz/tauranga_local_history/topics/show/2423 (Tauranga Memories, last updated 2 April 2016)

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