The ancient Maori story of the Waipa plains and downs, as preserved by the word-of-mouth historians, the old men of the tribes, is a record of land-seeking, exploration, and place-naming by the chiefs who came in the Tainui canoe, and by Rakataura the priest; then a succession of tribal feuds and wars, raids, pa-buildings and pa-stormings, ambush, massacre, slave-taking, and man-eating. That warrior tale need not be gone into here; we take up our story of Te Awamutu with the first introduction of the pakeha interest, and in truth the place was savage and rough enough then. Here and there, on the well-settled lands to-day, one finds relics of the old cannibal era, when every tribe’s hand, and often every little hapu’s, was against its neighbours. Round about Te Awamutu, even, the lines of ancient trenched forts remain, particularly on the banks of the Mangapiko, where the numerous crooks and elbows of the river provided pa sites readily made formidable strongholds. The celebrated Waiari, a few miles from Te Awamutu and a mile from Paterangi, is an example. Another excellent specimen of Maori military engineering is an old earthwork called Tauwhare, on the Mangapiko, a mile south of Mr Harry Rhodes’ “Parekura” homestead; this is distinguished by a series of enormously deep trenches and high parapets, on the cliffy verge of the river. These forts on the Mangapiko belonged to the Ngati-Apakura tribe. But the King Country, on the south side of the Puniu River, is the land for hill-forts. Every cone, big or little, is trenched and scarped; every eligible river-elbow has its double or triple earthwork. Even on the very top of Mount Kakepuku, crowning the ancient crater rim, are the ruins of two fortresses of the Ngati-Unu tribe. Te Awamutu was inhabited, when the first pakeha ventured into these parts, by the Ngati-Ruru, a section of the great Waikato tribe. Rangiaowhia was peopled by two other large Waikato clans, Ngati-Apakura and Ngati-Hinetu. Ngati-Maniapoto held all the Puniu country and the land to the southward; their northern outpost was Kihikihi. The Orakau district was held by the Ngati-Raukawa and a hapu of Waikato called Ngati-Koura. NOTES. The terms “King Country,” “Rohepotae,” and “Aukati” require a little explanation for those who are unacquainted with the origin of the phrases. The King Country, embracing a vast area of territory south of the Puniu River and west of the Upper Waikato, with the Tasman Sea as the western boundary, was so called because the Maori King Tawhiao with his adherents took refuge there in 1864 after being dispossessed of Waikato. For some years Tawhiao’s headquarters were at Tokangamutu, close to the site of the present town of Te Kuiti. The name Te Kuiti is an abbreviation of Te Kuititanga, meaning “the narrowing in,” a designation given by the Kingites in reference to the conquest of Waikato and the consequent hemming in of the Maoris in the country south of the Puniu.