Māori waka: types, parts and the great names

A Māori waka is a canoe, and the traditional ones were sorted by size, shape, carving and use, Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, explains: the great carved waka taua ‘war canoe’, the plainer waka tētē ‘fishing canoe’, the simple dugout waka tīwai ‘dugout canoe without attached sides’ and the mōkihi ‘raft’ of bulrush or flax stalks, with the waka ama ‘outrigger canoe’ and the waka hourua ‘double canoe’ coming from the wider Pacific. A carved waka taua has a tauihu ‘prow figurehead’ at the front, a tall taurapa ‘sternpost’ at the back, rauawa ‘top boards’ along its sides, and paddlers, kaihoe, each driving a hoe ‘paddle’. This guide gives the types in one table, a labelled diagram of the parts, the words for the crew and gear, the great ancestral canoes and the iwi who trace descent from them, and the revival that put double-hulled canoes back on the ocean in the 1990s.

Updated 24 October 2026 · 12 min read

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Types of waka

In the tropical Pacific, Te Ara explains, trees were narrow, so canoes needed an outrigger float to stay upright. New Zealand’s tōtara, kauri, rimu, kahikatea and other trees were big enough to carve a hull wide and stable on its own, so Māori waka became mostly single-hulled. Tōtara was the most common timber, and kauri was used in the north. The meaning column below is Te Aka Māori Dictionary’s; the rest is Te Ara’s.

Waka	Meaning (Te Aka)	What it was like (Te Ara)
waka taua	war canoe	The biggest, from 9 to over 30 metres long; James Cook saw some holding up to 100 people. The most richly carved. Named for the taua ‘war party’ it carried.
waka tētē	fishing canoe with a carved figurehead and vertical stern piece	Shorter and plainer than a waka taua, with the same basic parts. Named for its bow piece, a stylised face with a protruding tongue called a tētē or pakoko. Carried goods, produce and people along coasts and rivers.
waka tīwai	dugout canoe without attached sides	Probably the most common: a hollowed log with no top boards, carvings, seats, bow or stern pieces. Used on rivers and harbours, and still raced at regattas, especially in the Waikato. Also called waka kōpapa.
mōkihi or mōkī	raft made of bundles of raupō, flax stalks or rushes	Used especially by South Island tribes on inland waterways: a single bundle to sit on, or several lashed into a boat shape. Quick to make; did not last.
waka ama	outrigger canoe	A narrow hull steadied by an ama ‘outrigger’ float. Rare in New Zealand even in Cook’s time; today the name of a racing sport.
waka hourua	double canoe	Two hulls lashed together, able to carry many people and cargo over long ocean crossings. Out of use by the 19th century; revived in the early 1990s.
waka tangata	(not in Te Aka)	A late 20th-century canoe for teaching, much like a waka tētē with plain sides, free of the ritual restrictions many tribes keep for waka. The name means the people’s canoe.

The waka tīwai has a sporting name too: Te Ara says they were sometimes called waka peke, leaping canoes, because some regattas raced them over logs set just above the water, a canoe hurdling last seen at the Tūrangawaewae regatta in the early 1990s. On Rēkohu, the Chatham Islands, Moriori built four kinds of craft of their own (waka pūhara, waka rimu, waka pahī and waka rā), which Te Ara describes as rafts rather than canoes, because the islands lacked big timber.

Waka ama and waka hourua

Te Ara says the explorers who came with Cook in 1769 and 1773 saw a few outrigger canoes, which Māori called ama, amatiatia or kōrewa, but that they were rare even then, and that the only physical evidence is one very old canoe dug out of the Taieri plains about 1895 and one outrigger found in Moncks Cave near Sumner. Waka ama came back as a sport in the 1980s: the first clubs formed in 1985–87, and the first national championships were held at Lake Karāpiro in 1989. The ama is usually lashed to the left-hand side of the hull.

Double-hulled canoes were seen by Abel Tasman in 1642 and were still fairly common in the South Island in Cook’s time, but by the 19th century the last of them seem to have been single canoes lashed together for a while. The voyaging canoes that brought the ancestors from the Pacific, Te Ara concludes, were most likely large outrigger or double-hulled vessels that could be sailed and paddled.

Parts of a waka

This is a waka taua, the canoe with the most parts. A waka tētē has the same basic ones (hull, top boards, seats, bow piece and sternpost) with less carving, and a waka tīwai has only the hull.

A waka taua, drawn schematically and not to scale, with the part names Te Ara and Te Aka give. The bow, where the tauihu stands, is the ihu. A real waka taua could be over 30 metres long and carry up to 100 people, and its tauihu and taurapa are elaborately carved.

Part	Meaning (Te Aka)	Notes
tauihu	bow, prow, figurehead (of a canoe)	The carved prow piece. Te Ara says the figurehead of a waka taua stands on a perforated spiral carving, a pītau.
ihu	nose; prow, bow (of a canoe)	The bow, where the tauihu is fixed.
taurapa	stern-post (of a canoe)	The tall carved sternpost. Te Aka also lists the puhi kai ariki, a little carved figure at its base, facing the bow.
kei	stern (of a boat or canoe)	The same spelling as the everyday particle kei ‘at, on, in’; the context tells them apart.
rauawa	top boards, attached sides of a canoe above the hull	Dressed, often carved boards that raise the sides and keep the sea out. A waka tīwai has none.
riu	bilge (or hull) of a canoe	Te Ara calls the roughed-out hull a hiwi; see the table of differences below.
haumi	extension, piece of wood used to lengthen a canoe, bow-piece	Te Ara: hulls were often made in three sections, joined by a haumi and lashed.
taumanu	thwart (of a canoe), a paddler’s seat	The crosswise seats.
puhi	plume, plumed rods, feather ornaments on a canoe	Te Aka names the upper plume at the prow puhi maroke (dry plume) and the lower one puhi mākū (wet plume).

The crew and the gear

Word	Meaning (Te Aka)	Notes (Te Ara)
kaihoe	paddler, rower	From hoe ‘to paddle’ with kai-, the prefix for the person who does something.
kaituki	fugleman, coxswain: the one who gives the time to the paddlers	In netball, the same word is wing attack.
kaiurungi	steerer, coxswain, pilot	One steerer on coastal trips; up to four on the open ocean, two at the stern and two near the bow.
hoe or hīrau	paddle, oar	Usually kahikatea. The pushing face of the blade was flat and the back rounded; Waikato paddles had curved handles.
urungi	rudder, steering paddle	Te Ara also gives hoe whakatere and hoe whakahaere for the longer steering paddles.
rā	sail (of a canoe); also sun, day	Triangular, usually of light raupō leaf; a big canoe could carry two or three.
toko	rod, pole; to propel with a pole	For pushing a canoe upstream.
punga	anchor	Usually a shaped stone on a rope, or stones in a basket.
tīheru or tatā	bailer; to bail water out of a canoe	Often carved, and some were named. Te Ara adds tā wai.

Te Ara records a saying about how hard poling is: “He waka tuku ki tai, tūruru ana ngā tāngata o runga; he waka toko, tau ana te kohakoha.” In its translation: when the canoe drifts downstream, the people on board crouch; with a poled canoe, expect exertion. Te Aka has another everyday idiom, hoea tō waka ‘paddle your canoe’, which can back someone’s plan (go for it) or wash your hands of it (please yourself, you’re on your own).

How a waka taua was built

Te Ara describes the work as surrounded by ritual. A tree was chosen for strength and length and set aside, sometimes for years, with a clearing cut around it. A tohunga ‘expert, priest’ chanted karakia to lift the tapu and to appease Tāne, god of the forest, before it was felled, and the tapu went back on afterwards. The builders were under tapu by day, roughed out the hull where the tree fell, and hauled it away to finish. Top boards, then the tauihu and taurapa, were added last. Then came the kawa ‘ceremony to remove tapu from a new house or canoe’, and a karakia at the launching.

Because waka taua carried war parties, and sometimes brought the dead home from battle, Te Ara says they kept a spiritual standing that lasts today, and many tribes have their own rules for when theirs may be used. One of the last from the 1800s, Te Toki-a-Tāpiri, 25 metres long and built around 1836, is on display in the Auckland War Memorial Museum. The adze that shaped canoes and its ceremonial form are in Māori weapons.

The great ancestral waka

Te Ara’s “Canoe traditions” sets out the main thing to know first. The old idea of a single “Great Fleet” of seven canoes arriving in 1350 was shown in the 1960s and 1970s to be largely false, a 19th-century blend of separate traditions. New Zealand was settled by East Polynesians who came in different canoes at different times, the first some time in the 1200s, and tribal groups trace their origins to the captains and crews of more than 40 named vessels. Te Ara also notes that the traditions mix the historical and the symbolic.

Traditions vary from iwi to iwi, and many canoes have more than one account. The table gives one line per canoe from Te Ara and Te Aka and is not a full or authoritative list. For a person’s own waka, the account that matters is their own iwi’s.

Waka	Captain and landing (Te Ara)	Who trace descent from it
Kurahaupō	Accounts differ: Pōhurihanga, landing near North Cape (Ngāti Kurī); wrecked at Māhia under Whātonga (Rangitāne) or Ruatea (Ngāti Apa)	Te Aka: many tribes, including some of Taranaki, Whanganui and the southern North Island; Te Ara adds that it is known in Northland too
Ngātokimatawhaorua	Nukutawhiti, to the Hokianga, alongside Māmari under Ruanui	Te Ara: Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa and Te Aupōuri (with Māmari)
Māhuhu-ki-te-rangi	Whakatau (Te Roroa) or Rongomai (Te Uri-o-Hau, Te Taoū); landing on the west coast of Northland or in the Kaipara	Te Ara: the most important canoe for Ngāti Whātua
Mātaatua	Toroa, landing at Whakatāne	Te Ara: Ngāti Awa, Ngāi Tūhoe and Whakatōhea; and Ngāpuhi, through Toroa’s brother Puhi, who took the canoe north
Te Arawa	Tamatekapua, final landfall at Maketū	Te Aka: the group of tribes of the Rotorua–Maketū area; Te Ara notes that they take their name from the canoe
Tainui	Hoturoa, landing at Whangaparāoa; the canoe rests at Kāwhia	Te Aka: the tribes of the Waikato, Hauraki and King Country areas
Tākitimu	Accounts differ: Tamatea, or Ruawharo; known in Northland, Tauranga, the East Coast and the South Island	Te Aka: Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Tahu and Ngāti Ranginui
Horouta	Pāoa, to Tūranganui (Gisborne)	Te Ara: Ngāti Ruapani, Rongowhakaata, Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki and Te Aitanga a Hauiti
Tokomaru	Accounts differ: Manaia, landing at Tongapōrutu; or Whata, landing at the Mōhakatino River	Te Aka: some of the Taranaki tribes; Te Ara names Ngāti Tama and Te Āti Awa
Aotea	Turi, landing in Aotea Harbour, north of Kāwhia	Te Ara: Ngāti Ruanui and Ngā Rauru, through Turi’s descendants
Uruao	Rākaihautū, landing at Whakatū (Nelson)	Te Ara: the Waitaha people of the Canterbury plains

This is why waka means more than a boat. Te Aka’s fourth sense of the word is the allied kinship groups descended from one canoe’s crew, and Te Ara notes that people introducing themselves on a marae name their waka first and foremost. The line Ko … te waka ‘… is the canoe’ opens many a pepeha; how it fits with the mountain, river and iwi lines is in how to write a pepeha. The land itself is a waka too: in the tradition Te Ara retells, Māui fished up the North Island, Te Ika-a-Māui ‘the fish of Māui’, from his canoe, and the canoe became the South Island, Te Waka-ā-Māui. Why some maps put it at the top is in Māori directions.

The revival

Year	What happened
1940	Ngātokimatawhaorua, a ceremonial waka taua built by northern and Waikato iwi to mark the centenary of the Treaty of Waitangi, is used at the commemorations. It is named after the ancestral canoe (Waitangi Treaty Grounds).
1974	Ngātokimatawhaorua is renovated for Queen Elizabeth II’s visit, and its present shelter, Te Korowai ō Maikuku, is built near Hobson Beach.
1985	The Hawaiian voyaging canoe Hōkūleʻa reaches New Zealand on a two-year voyage, and Hawaiki-nui, carved by Mātahi Whakataka-Brightwell, sails from Tahiti to Rarotonga and on to New Zealand.
1991–92	Hekenukumai (Hector) Busby of Northland builds the waka hourua Te Aurere, inspired by Hōkūleʻa’s navigator Nainoa Thompson. In 1992 it sails to Rarotonga, navigated by Mau Piailug.
1995	Te Aurere sails from the Marquesas to Hawaii with other modern canoes, then 30 days non-stop from Hawaii to Rarotonga and home.
2003	Waka taua are paddled into Auckland’s Viaduct Harbour for Waka 2003, in support of Team New Zealand’s America’s Cup defence.
2019	The waka hourua Haunui and Ngahiraka Mai Tawhiti sail in the Tuia 250 Voyage to 14 sites around the country. Busby, knighted in 2018, dies the same year.

Ngātokimatawhaorua is still launched every February at Waitangi for the Waitangi Day commemorations, the Treaty Grounds say, and Te Ara’s caption for Te Aurere puts its sailing at over 30,000 nautical miles, including three trips round the North Island. The waka taua Te Hono ki Aotearoa, which paddled towards London Bridge in 2011, appears in korowai and Māori cloaks, because of what its crew wore; names for boats and crews are in Māori team names.

Where the accounts differ

Point	One source	Another
waka pītau	Te Ara: a name sometimes used for a waka taua, from the spiral carving under its figurehead	Te Aka: a fishing canoe with a carved figurehead and vertical stern piece, the same gloss it gives waka tētē
haumi	Te Ara: a mortise and tenon joint holding the hull’s sections together; in the Horouta story, the bow	Te Aka: a piece of wood used to lengthen a canoe, a bow-piece
The hull	Te Ara: hiwi, the roughed-out hull	Te Aka gives hiwi no such sense; its word for a canoe’s hull is riu
kīato	Te Ara: the crossbeams that join a waka ama’s float to its hull	Te Aka: a canoe seat, a thwart
Nukutawhiti	Te Ara: the new captain who re-adzed Kupe’s canoe and renamed it	Waitangi Treaty Grounds: Kupe’s grandson; it also calls Matawhaorua a waka hourua
Spelling	Te Ara: Mataatua; Te Ika-ā-Māui	Te Aka: Mātaatua; Te Ika-a-Māui
Te Aurere’s date	Te Ara’s caption: built in 1991–92	Te Ara’s waka story: revived “in the early 1990s”

Going further

Several of these are words you will use every day: waka is also any vehicle, ihu is your nose, rā is the sun and the day, and riu is a valley. Our own free te reo Māori course teaches the everyday ones a lesson at a time, with each example read in a native voice.