Horouta: The History of the Horouta Canoe, Gisborne and East Coast—Rongowhakaata Halbert (1999)
Horouta is the definitive history of the descendants of the voyaging canoes that brought the first settlers from Polynesia to the lands that stretch from East Cape to northern Hawke's bay.
Publication details
Halbert, R. Horouta: The History of the Horouta Canoe, Gisborne and East Coast. Auckland: Oratia Books, 2012.
About the book
Horouta is a history of the descendants of the Horouta canoe and is the first complete tribal history of the area, and looks back over a thousand-year period to tell the origins of iwi who settled the East Coast of Aotearoa. The books three parts respectively present a narrative history, whakapapa and maps of lands settled.
Ronogwhakaata Halbert (1894-1973; Ngāti Ruapani, Te Aitanga a Māhaki, Te Whakatōhea, Rongowhakaata, Ngāi Tāmanuhiri, Kahungungu) assembled this work through painstaking historical and genealogical research over more than 70 years. He unfortunately passed away before the book was completed and family members steered the work to publication in 1999. It is a tribal history of outstanding scholarship and significance, in particular to the descendants of Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungungu, Rongowhakaata and Ngāi Tahu.
Further information
This publication is part of the series Te Takarangi: Celebrating Māori publications - a sample list of 150 non-fiction books produced by a partnership between Royal Society Te Apārangi and Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga.