Known by Europeans settlers as the “Fitzroy pole”, this pole, or pou, a puriri spar about 30 feet high, was named by Maori as “Pou tutaki,” the blocking pole, and was intended to mark the limit of European settlement. No pakeha, according to Maori, was to own any land between this spot and the Auckland District.
This was significant in leading to the First Taranaki (Land) War.
Prior to European settlement of early New Plymouth, Waikato Maori under Te Whero Whero attacked the local Te Atiawa people destroying their pa, killing or enslaving those of their people who did not abandon their lands and escape to settle around Port Nicholson, Wellington.
Thus when the New Zealand Company's representative Colonel Wakefield sought to buy land for the settlement of New Plymouth, he succeeded in buying up the claims of the Cook strait fugitives and those of the few remaining in the area of their original tribal lands. Payment was also made to Te Whero Whero as 'owner' by virtue of his conquest of Te Atiawa. Altogether this amounted to around 70,000 acres, of which one-tenth was to be set aside for the Maori.
Thus the settlers began arriving to their 'freehold' land purchases in ever increasing numbers. Attracted by the protection offered by the growing settlement of New Plymouth, the Cook strait refugees began returning, as did slaves released by Te Whero Whero. These subjugated slaves were not party to the original purchases and dissension soon arose about the validity of the Company's land purchases.
In June 1844, Land Commissioner William Spain came to the province to rule on the case. Accordingly he awarded the New Zealand Company settlers 60,000 acres being approximately 3 miles inland from the coast from Paritutu to the Waitara river. He awarded the Maori 6,000 acres plus all their pa, wahi tapu, urupa and gardens within that area.
This resolution was not acceptable to the settlers who were being squeezed into ever narrower limits of occupation by lawlessness on the part of the Maori. In response the settlers asked for protection and relief from the Governor of New Zealand.
In August 1844, Captain Robert FitzRoy came in person. He immediately informed the settlers that although he had not even read Commissioner Spain's report, being satisfied that his decision was wrong, he would at once proceed to set it aside. Governor Hobson had purchased the whole district for the New Zealand Company. Commissioner Spain awarded them 60,000 acres. Governor FitzRoy's judgement was to repurchase the land upon which New Plymouth town stood - a narrow coastal patch of around 3,800 acres without any timber, stretching from Paritutu to the Waiwhakaiho river - forcing all the settlers into it, and abandoning the remaining 56,000 acres to the Maori. To regain rural lands the settlers would have to renegotiate new land purchase agreements with the Maori.
In commemoration, Puketapu Maori, a sub-tribe of Te Atiawa, erected this pole, Pou tutaki - pou, pole, tutaki, meaning to bar the way, or to prevent progress - as a constant reminder that the European settlers should never return to the lands east of the Waiwhakaiho river. It represents the supremacy of Maori over pakeha, with a well-endowed Maori warrior portrayed as virility and potency standing above a pakeha personified as impotent and physically limp.
This particular pole is "an exact replica" of the original pole, destroyed by an out of control hedge fire in 1877. It was erected near to the original site on the commemoration of the Centennial of New Plymouth in 1940.
Please bring your own writing stick as there is only room for the log