Maui
Legend tells us that the North Island of New Zealand is actually the world's largest fish. Maui, a Maori hero of ancient times, hooked the enormous fish during an expedition to prove his fishing prowess. If you look at a map of the North Island, you can see that Wellington is the head, Cape Taranaki & East Cape are the fins, and Northland is the tail of the fish - Te Hiku o Te Ika. Near the ninth century AD, Maori arrived in Heretaunga or Hawke's Bay, settling in the river valleys and along the coast where food was plentiful.

Maori believe that they came to Heretaunga by canoe, travelling down the coast from the north, landing at Wairoa, Portland Island, the Ahuriri Lagoon at Westshore, and at Waimarama. Their culture flourished, along with gradual deforestation of the land, making this one of the few regions of New Zealand where sheep could be brought in without felling the bush first.

In the sixteenth century, Taraia, great-grandson of the great and prolific chief Kauhungunu, established the large tribe of Ngati Kahungunu which eventually colonised the eastern side of the North Island from Poverty Bay to Wairarapa.

Captain James Cook
Captain James Cook and the crew of the HMS Endeavour were probably the first Europeans to set eyes upon Hawke's Bay in October 1769. Cook named the bay after Sir Edward Hawke, First Lord of the Admiralty.

Whalers and flax traders arrived in the early 1800s, and a few Europeans came and went, including perhaps the first permanent resident, Austrian naturalist Frederick Sturm who settled at Mahia in the 1830s, moving to Napier in 1865.

In June 1840, the Treaty of Waitangi arrived in Hawke's Bay for signing.

In 1844 the missionary William Colenso, also botanist, printer and politician, arrived to establish his mission station at Waitangi, south of Napier

In 1851, French Catholic missionaries arrived to settle at Pakowhai, bringing with them the first vines to plant for their communion wine.

The Naming of Cape Kidnappers
The fish hook shape of the Hawke Bay coastline adds to the imaginative legend of Cape Kidnappers origin.

Maui-tikitiki-a-Taranga, a famous mythical hero, was fishing with his brothers, and decided to show them his supernatural powers.

He chanted his prayer, broke his nose and smeared the blood onto a magical jawbone. With it, he fished up the North Island or as the Maori name it, Te-Ika-a-Maui, the Fish of Maui. After Maui departed, his brothers attached the fish with their weapons, hacking it into pieces and helping to form the mountainous terrain of the North Island. The sacred jawbone used as the hook was left to form what is now known as Hawke Bay.

When Captain Cook visited the area in 1769, a group of Maori in canoes came out to the ship Endeavour to trade. They took aboard the canoes a Tahitian boy. Shots were fired at the retreating canoes resulting in some Maori being killed and the boy swimming back to the ship. Cook then named the area where this occurred as Cape Kidnappers.