Tamainu-pō was a Maori rangatira (chieftain) of the Tainui tribal confederation in the Waikato region of New Zealand and the ancestor of the Ngāti Tamainupō hapu. He probably lived around 1600.
Life
Tamainu-pō was the son of Whaea-tāpoko, a female rangatira based at Kāwhia, who belonged to Ngāti Taupiri. She was raped in the night by Kōkako, a Waikato Tainui chieftain of Ngāti Ruanui and Mātaatua descent. Tamainu-pō's name, which means 'Son-of-the-drink-by-night', was given by his father in reference to the rape. He grew up around Kāwhia Harbour and his mother only revealed his parentage to him when he was a young adult. He had an older half-brother, Taiko, and a sister, Maikao, who married Ta-nanga-whanga, a rangatira of Ngā Iwi.
Flight to Pokohuka
One day, when the young men were playing teka (a form of darts) with his friends, one of the darts fell into a kumara pit and Tamainu-pō went to collect it. There he found his sister-in-law, wife of his elder brother, Taiko. The lady called him down into the pit, revealed the dart held between her thighs, and when Tamainu-pō went to take it, she had sex with him.
Taiko was out fishing, but he found out about the adultery, because his fish hook had been fouled and one of the feathers from Tamainu-pō's cloak was left in the kumara pit. Taiko confronted Tamainu-pō in the gardens, attacking him with his koikoi spear, but Tamainu-pō parried with his digging stick, until their mother Whaea-tāpoko arrived and broke up the fight.
Tamainu-pō fled to the harbour, where one of his elderly relatives was carving a canoe. The elder hid him under the canoe and because a canoe under construction is tapu, the party pursuing Tamainu-pō did not check underneath it and took the elder's word that he had not seen Tamainu-pō. Tamainu-pō crossed the harbour to Te Taharoa, where an elder sung a karakia over him and sent him along a ridge of Mount Pirongia, saying that he would know he was safe when a storm came upon him. Tamainu-pō followed the route towards Ōpārau, past Te Awaroa and up onto the Pokohuka ridge, the site of Kāwhia's mauri manu ('bird talisman'), where the storm caught him.
Courtship of the daughters of Māhanga
After the storm, Tamainu-pō and his slave went hunting birds, coming down the Kāniwhaniwha stream to a village called Kāniwhaniwha or Pūrākau, which was located where the stream meets the Waipā River, near modern Te Pahu. The chieftain of this village was Māhanga, son of Tūheitia and a descendant of Hoturoa of the Tainui canoe, according to Pei Te Hurinui Jones. As Tamainu-pō hunted, Māhanga's daughters, Wai-tawake and Tū-kōtuku-rerenga-tahi, caught sight of him up a tree and invited him to come back to their village. The two girls vied with one another to marry Tamainu-pō, but Māhanga, impressed by the large haul of birds that Tamainu-pō had caught, which indicated the power of his karakia (magic spells), and the efficiency with which he distributed the birds to the people, decided in favour of Tū-kōtuku. According to Wiremu Te Wheoro, Wai-tawake angrily fled to the south and married a man of Maniapoto.
Battle of Kiri-parera
Later on, Kōkako, who had fought with Māhanga's father in Manukau Harbour, came south with a war party and built a fortress at Kiri-parera, just downstream from Kāniwhaniwha. Māhanga assembled his forces and called for his Toko-whitu ('Seven Champions') to leap over his back. None of them could, but Tamainu-pō was able to do it, a sign that he would defeat Kōkako.
When Māhanga's force approached Kiri-parera, they saw Kōkako's forces hiding ready for an ambush near the gateway. Taimainu-pō shouted for them to charge and then used the distraction to sneak over the palisade into the fortress and search for his father. While he was still on the fence, Kōkako's forces broke and fled into their fortress and Tamainu-pō caught sight of his father, recognising him by his red feather-cloak. He leapt down on him, pushed him into the ditch, snatched off his cloak, seized his patu, and then let him go free, without revealing who he was.
After the battle, the Toko-whitu all presented severed heads, claiming that they had killed Kōkako, but they obviously looked nothing like him (Kōkako had distinctive light-coloured hair). Taimainu-pō also brought a head, taken from someone who looked similar to Kōkako, and together with the cloak and patu, this convinced Māhanga that Kōkako was dead.