Ponga and Puhihuia: A Blue Pacific Retelling

The Blue Continent and the Shores of Tāmaki

Before Europeans marked Aotearoa on their charts, the seas between Kāwhia, Tāmaki, and Hauraki were already highways in a federated Pacific world. The people of Ngāti Whātua and Ngāti Hikairo did not think of themselves as “isolated tribes” but as descendants of Tainui voyagers, kin bound by oceanic genealogies that reached to French Polynesia and beyond.

Sweet potato, carried long ago from the Andes, was already planted in the earth of Aotearoa. Shell ornaments from far islands still glimmered in chiefs’ houses. Names like Hawaiki and Pulotu survived in chants, reminding the people that the Pacific was one civilisation, linked by voyaging and memory.

The Gathering at Ōrākei

On the shores of Ōkahu Bay in Tāmaki, Ngāti Whātua called a great hui. Visitors came from the Waikato and Kāwhia, their canoes crowding the beach. Games, speeches, and feasting filled the days. For the hosts, this was a display of mana: to feed many and to renew alliances.

Among the visitors was Ponga of Ngāti Hikairo, youthful, quick, and striking in bearing. Among the hosts was Puhihuia, daughter of the Ngāti Whātua chief. Her beauty and chiefly rank made her a figure of high expectation: she was to be wed in a union that would cement power. But the gods, and her own heart, had other plans.

The Meeting of the Lovers

At the contests of skill and endurance, Ponga excelled. His grace caught Puhihuia’s eye, and soon whispers passed among her attendants. Songs tell us that their eyes met across the games as if across a star-path, and in that moment the course of their lives altered.

Though separated by chiefly duties, they found one another in secret. Theirs was a union of spirit as much as of body, bound not only by desire but by a recognition of each other’s mana. Just as navigators once defied the horizon to sail for new lands, so they dared the wrath of their elders for the sake of love.

The Flight from Ōrākei

When their plan to escape was revealed, the night exploded into pursuit. Canoes of Ngāti Whātua followed across the Waitematā, their paddles flashing in the moonlight. But Ponga and Puhihuia were guided by the same daring that had carried ancestors across the Pacific. The tides bore them, and the currents hid them, until they reached the open sea and made for Kāwhia.

Their flight was more than romance. It was an act of voyaging — a breaking of tapu, a leap across boundaries, as bold in its way as Kupe’s discovery of Aotearoa.

Sanctuary at Kāwhia

At Kāwhia, Ngāti Hikairo welcomed Ponga and his new bride. Though Ngāti Whātua warriors came to reclaim her, the law of kinship and the sanctity of marriage turned aside bloodshed. The chiefs negotiated, and Puhihuia remained with Ponga. Their union stood, and from it came descendants who bound the lines of Ngāti Whātua and Ngāti Hikairo together.

Thus the story passed into genealogy. What began as defiance became history, remembered not as scandal but as the weaving of whakapapa.

The Wider Horizons

The tohunga who recited the story placed it within a broader ocean of memory.

• Just as Polynesians had voyaged to the Americas for kūmara, so Puhihuia voyaged from Ōrākei into Kāwhia.

• Just as fragments of silk, porcelain, and iron were remembered in chants of Hawaiki and Pulotu, so this marriage brought new wealth of mana between two peoples.

• Just as Tupaia would later map the Pacific in chant and sand, so these lovers redrew the map of descent, binding iwi across waters and generations.

The Story as Hapū Memory

For Ngāti Hikairo, this tale is not “mere legend.” It was told by Tahuri Kaora, remembered by Mari Hamunata, and carried in waiata that still echo. In that chain of transmission lies its truth: the story belongs to the hapū.

Ponga and Puhihuia are not simply characters in a romance. They are voyagers in their own right, navigating not seas of water but seas of kinship. Their waka was love, their horizon whakapapa, and their destination the continuation of a people’s mana. AM: I'm considering writing a one-act opera on the subject, entirely in reo Māori. As a history buff, I'd point out James Belich noted that early Māori were coastal, so the story makes sense from that POV as well.