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“Te Kooti was a brilliant guerrilla warrior, but he was no master of the modern pā.” So said Gregor Fountain, my Year 12 history teacher, and the phrase has stuck with me. True, indeed, Te Kooti was a successful guerrilla leader, especially when ambushing the British, but he failed to understand the complexities of pā defence. One time, at Ngatapa, Te Kooti and his followers got tired of starving under siege by Māori and British forces. They boldly escaped by abandoning their women and children and descending a sheer 20-metre cliff that the British had left unguarded.

However, Te Kooti was more than a skillful guerrilla leader; he was also a charismatic, boozed-up, polygamous prophet. Like many of history’s great men and women, Te Kooti knew his way around the bottle, beginning the relationship in Gisborne in the 1850s while with a gang of boys who would break into settlers’ homes to steal their alcohol. Sources suggest he remained determinedly drunk for the rest of his life, with one judge deriding him as not only “a Māori prophet” but “a drunken one to boot.” He eventually caused so much of a ruckus as a youth in Gisborne that his own father tried to kill him by burying him alive; this was, of course, before the enactment of any anti-smacking legislation.

Such “hands-on” parenting didn’t work, as Te Kooti wound up on the wrong end of the law in 1866 and was imprisoned on Chatham Island, where his demands for a trial were repeatedly ignored. It was while in prison and delirious from fever that Te Kooti experienced visions (don’t they all) and founded the Ringatū faith, appointing himself as its prophet.

Te Kooti used phosphorus from match heads to appear to shoot fire from his hands, and soon developed a following. In 1868, presumably figuring he hadn’t had a drink in a while, Te Kooti and some 200 followers overthrew the prison guards on Chatham Island, stole a ship and headed for Turanga. Faced with contrary winds, Te Kooti demanded a sacrifice — greenstone, other treasures and his own uncle were all thrown overboard. In his later years, Te Kooti spent much time getting drunk with his many wives and generally pissing off the British and Māori authorities.