Kaiapoi

Kaiapoi Pā was a major Ngāi Tahu stronghold on the Canterbury plains, established around 1700 by Tūrakautahi and his people. It was a centre of leadership and exchange, linked to the wider Māori world through kinship and trade. Its history belongs to the fortified settlement north of the later town, rather than to the nineteenth-century European port that subsequently took its name.

During the late 1820s, Ngāti Toa visitors came to Kaiapoi ostensibly to exchange muskets for greenstone. After learning of attacks on their Kaikōura relatives and a plan against the pā, Kaiapoi people killed several leading visitors, including Te Pēhi Kupe. Te Rauparaha escaped and returned with a larger force in the summer of 1831–32. The siege lasted three months. Fire spread to the wooden palisades in a northwesterly wind, allowing the attackers to enter. Survivors joined other southern communities, while Kaiapoi remained central to Ngāi Tahu memory and genealogy.