Paratene Te Manu was "a Ngāti-Wai tribesman living on Little Barrier Island who had allied himself with the Ngapuhi raids carried out at the turn of the nineteenth century.... When he died in 1896, the year after dictating this story to a relative, Kiri Paraone, he was reckoned to be ‘over ninety years’ old though he had stated his age to be ‘kotahi rau’ (one hundred). As several of the Ngapuhi raids were directed against the tribes of the Bay of Plenty, including the Ngaiterangi of Tauranga, it is here reproduced. Its historic interest is enhanced by linking it with the stories of Percy Smith’s Māori Wars of the Nineteenth Century also published by Messrs Whitcombe and Tombs in 1910. Ed."
Biographical sources
- Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society 24 (1965): 27.
Other
- "Autobiography: Paratene Te Manu." Pictures of Old New Zealand: The Partridge Collection of Māori Paintings by Gottfried Lindauer. James Cowan. Auckland: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1930. Rpt. in Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society 24 (Apr./June 1965): 27-30.
- Paratene recounts eight battles he fought with Ngapuhi, tells of the arrival of the missionaries to Whangaruru and his subsequent baptism, and recalls his visit with a small group of Māori rangātira and one European [William Jenkins] to England aboard the "Ida Zeigler" in 1862 and describes their meeting with Queen Victoria. (Steven Oliver, in "Pomare, Hare fl. 1863-1864 Pomare, Hariata fl.1863-1864." The Dictionary of the New Zealand Biography. Vol. One. 1769-1869, writes that the "Ida Zeigler" sailed in 1863 (21).)