In Māori tradition, Ngātoro-i-rangi (Ngātoro) is the name of a tohunga (priest) prominent during the settling of New Zealand (Aotearoa) by the Māori people, who came from the traditional homeland Hawaiki on the Arawa canoe. He is the ancestor of Ngāti Tūwharetoa and his travels around Lake Taupō and up onto the Volcanic Plateau are the basis of Ngāti Tūwharetoa's claim to those regions.
Depiction of Ngātoro-i-rangi at Mine Bay, created in the late 1970s by Matahi Whakataka-Brightwell and John Randall.
Māori mythology and Māori traditions are two major categories into which the remote oral history of New Zealand's Māori may be divided. Māori myths concern tales of supernatural events relating to the origins of what was the observable world for the pre-European Māori, often involving gods and demigods. Māori tradition concerns more folkloric legends often involving historical or semi-historical forebears. Both categories merge in whakapapa to explain the overall origin of the Māori and their connections to the world which they lived in.
Six major departmental atua represented by wooden godsticks: left to right, Tūmatauenga, Tāwhirimātea, Tāne Mahuta, Tangaroa, Rongo-mā-Tāne, and Haumia-tiketike.
Detail from a ridgepole (tāhūhū) in a Ngāti Awa wharenui. Believed to represent one of two ancestors: Tūwharetoa or Kahungunu.
First European impression of (Ngāti Tūmatakōkiri) Māori, at Murderers' Bay, 1642.