New Books In Biography

Te Rauparaha is most well known today as the composer of the haka ‘Ka mate’, made famous the world over by the All Blacks. A major figure in nineteenth-century history, Te Rauparaha was responsible for rearranging the tribal landscape of a large part of the country after leading his tribe Ngāti Toa to migrate to Kapiti Island. He is venerated by his own descendants but reviled with equal passion by the descendants of those tribes who were on the receiving end of his military campaigns in the musket-war era. He Pukapuka Tātaku i ngā Mahi a Te Rauparaha Nui (Record of the Life of the Great Te Rauparaha) is a 50,000-word account in te reo Māori of Te Rauparaha’s life, written by his son Tamihana Te Rauparaha between 1866 and 1869. A pioneering work of Māori (and, indeed, indigenous) biography, Tamihana’s narrative weaves together the oral accounts of his father and other kaumātua to produce an extraordinary record of Te Rauparaha and his rapidly changing world. Edited and translated by Ross Calman, a descendant