Description

The Pai Mārire movement was a syncretic Māori religion 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 European domination. Although founded with peaceful motives—its name means "Good and Peaceful"—some followers of Pai Mārire became known for an extremist form of the religion. These extremists were labelled as "Hauhau" by the Europeans. The rise and spread of the violent expression of Pai Mārire was largely a response to the New Zealand Government's military operations against the 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 any Māori in arms were almost invariably termed Hauhau despite no affiliation to the movement.