Pōtatau Te Wherowhero was a Māori warrior, leader of the Waikato iwi, the first Māori King and founder of the Te Wherowhero royal dynasty. He was first known just as Te Wherowhero and took the name Pōtatau after he became king in 1858. As disputes over land grew more severe Te Wherowhero found himself increasingly at odds with the Government and its policies.

Māori are the indigenous Polynesian people of mainland New Zealand. Māori originated with settlers from East Polynesia, who arrived in New Zealand in several waves of canoe voyages between roughly 1320 and 1350. Over several centuries in isolation, these settlers developed their own distinctive culture, whose language, mythology, crafts, and performing arts evolved independently from those of other eastern Polynesian cultures. Some early Māori moved to the Chatham Islands, where their descendants became New Zealand's other indigenous Polynesian ethnic group, the Moriori.