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POOR KNIGHTS ISLANDS , TUTUKAKA , NORTHLAND , NEW ZEALAND
Poor Knights Islands history . One of the best New Zealand dive sites
The Poor Knights Islands were named by Captain James Cook when sailing along northlands east coast on the 25th November 1769. Cook named them after a popular European and English dish commonly known at the time as "Poor Knights", now better known as French toast.
When Cook passed by, the islands were inhabited; He describes them as being "rather low and pretty well covered with wood and seems not ill-inhabited". Maori history states that the Poor Knights were inhabited for many generations by a population of 300-400 people. Aorangi Island was occupied by subtribe Ngatitoki, with their chief, Tatua. Tatua also ruled Tawhiti Rahi Island; inhabited by chief Tuaho and his subtribe, Ngatiwai
Self-sufficient for most seafoods, the people were however dependant on the adjacent coast for estuarine and harbour shellfish, obsidian, round stones for soil conditioning and totara logs
Pigs were introduced sometime around the end of the eighteenth century and were used to supplement diets and as barter items for coastal goods.
It is said that in 1806, Maori of the Hikutu tribe from Hokianga were refused supplies of pigs that they had come to trade for at the Poor Knights. Remembering this insult some 15 years later, chief waikato of the Hikutu tribe acted without delay on the information given by an escaped Aorangi slave, that the Poor Knights people lay defenceless. Their chief Tatua, and his fighting men, had joined hongi hika in a fighting expedition to the Hauraki Gulf
With three large canoes, the Hikutu people set out to raid the islands, to secure pigs and steal slaves. All but ten of the Poor Knights Maori were massacred
Tatua, on his return, was greeted by a grisly spectacle and the survivors. He performed last rites for those dead that could be found, declared the islands strictly tapu and left for Rawhiti , in the bay of islands