Hau Hau Movement

The Pai Mārire movement (commonly known as Hauhau) was a syncretic Māori religion or cult founded in Taranaki by the prophet Te Ua Haumēne. It flourished in the North Island from about 1863 to 1874.

Pai Mārire incorporated biblical and Māori spiritual elements and promised its followers deliverance from 'pākehā' domination. Although founded with peaceful motives—its name means "Good and Peaceful"—Pai Mārire became better known for an extremist form of the religion known to the Europeans as "Hauhau". The rise and spread of the violent expression of Pai Mārire was largely a response to the New Zealand Government's military operations against North Island Māori, which were aimed at exerting European sovereignty and gaining more land for white settlement; historian B.J. Dalton claims that after 1865 Māori in arms were almost invariably termed Hauhaus.

Governor George Grey launched a campaign of suppression against the religion in April 1865, culminating in the raiding of dozens of villages in Taranaki and on the East Coast and the arrest of more than 400 adherents, most of whom where incarcerated on the Chatham Islands. Elements of the religion were incorporated in the Ringatū or "Raised hand" religion formed in 1868 by Te Kooti, who escaped from the Chatham Islands after being incarcerated there.

In the 2006 New Zealand Census 609 people identified "Hauhau" as their religion.

Te Ua Haumēne was born in Taranaki, New Zealand, in the early 1820s. He and his mother were captured and enslaved by a rival tribe in 1826. He learned to read and write in Māori while in captivity and began studying the New Testament. He was baptised by the Rev John Whiteley in the Wesleyan mission at Kawhia in 1834 and given the name of Horopapera Tuwhakararo, a transliteration of the name John Zerubbabel. He later returned to Taranaki.

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