Pre-European history One of Te Whakatōhea's earliest ancestors was chief Tarawa and his brother Tuwharanui, who had been left behind when the
Te Tohorā waka left Hawaiki, and so built
Te Arautauta waka to join the rest of their people in New Zealand. They arrived at Paerātā, east of the Waiotahe River. Tarawa released two pet tanahanaha fish into a spring on the eastern bluff above Waiotahe Beach, which came to be known as
Ōpōtiki-mai-tawhiti. Tarawa continued up the Mōtū River and married Manawa-ki-aitu. The tribe's next prominent ancestor was Tautūrangi of his own Te Wakanui tribe, who arrived with the
Nukutere waka around 26 generations before 1900CE. It made landfall on a rocky cove and was moored to a flat white rock now known as
Te Rangi. Tautūrangi then sailed the waka around to Te Kōtukutuku and went ashore, where he went up the
Waiaua Valley to a high point named Kapuarangi where he installed his
atua,
Tamaīwaho. During the twentieth century there was increasing recognition that Whakatōhea had suffered grievances at the hands of the Crown. In 1996, the New Zealand government signed a Deed of Settlement, acknowledging and apologising for the invasion and confiscation of Whakatōhea lands, and the subsequent economic, cultural and developmental devastation suffered by the iwi. A settlement between Whakatōhea and the Crown and redress was finalised on 27 May 2023. Tuiringa Manny Mokomoko, an activist for tūpuna who died in 1866, received a Royal Pardon in 1992 over wrongful confiscation of Māori land. ==Hapū and marae==