Māori weapons: taiaha, patu, mere and wahaika

Māori weapons fall into two groups, Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, explains: long two-handed staffs such as the taiaha ‘long fighting staff’, the tewhatewha ‘axe-shaped staff’ and the pouwhenua ‘pointed staff’, and short one-handed clubs, called by the general name patu ‘club’, among them the highly prized greenstone mere pounamu ‘greenstone club’, the carved wahaika and the liver-shaped kotiate. They were made of wood, stone and bone. Māori did not use bows and arrows, so fighting was almost entirely hand to hand. This guide lists each weapon with its meaning from Te Aka Māori Dictionary, what it was made of and how the sources say it was used; names the parts of a taiaha; explains mau rākau ‘the use of weapons’, the martial art and its revival; and says where weapons appear today, why famous ones have names, and where the accounts differ.

Updated 24 October 2026 · 12 min read

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Māori weapons list: the long weapons

Te Ara’s two stories on the subject, Basil Keane’s on traditional warfare and Rangi Matamua’s on mau rākau, describe the long weapons as staffs usually one to two metres long, commonly of hard wood such as maire, rātā or kānuka. Each had a flat blade for striking and a sharp point that was thrust like a spear. The middle column is Te Aka’s definition of the word.

Weapon	Te Aka’s meaning	Material and use, as Te Ara describes them
taiaha	long wooden weapon of hard wood, with one end carved and often decorated with dogs’ hair; also called māipi	Usually wood, sometimes whalebone, about 1.5 to 1.8 metres. Used to stab, parry and strike. Keane notes it is sometimes mistakenly called a spear.
tewhatewha	long wooden or bone weapon with a flat section at one end like an axe	Shaped like a long-handled axe from a single piece of wood, sometimes bone. A bunch of feathers hung from a hole in the blade to distract an enemy, and the weapon was used to signal warriors to form up, advance, regroup and retreat.
pouwhenua	long weapon, usually of wood, similar to a taiaha but with a smooth point instead of the carved arero	Like a taiaha but more pointed, the blade or body sometimes wider. Used to stab, parry and strike.
hoeroa	a long weapon of whalebone	Rare, made from the lower jaw of a sperm whale. How it was used is not certain: one explanation is that it was thrown on a rope and reeled back in. A hoeroa in Te Papa was held by a rangatira ‘chief’ as a symbol of authority.
tao	spear, javelin, lance	A short spear of 1.5 to 1.8 metres, of mānuka or akeake, for stabbing, parrying and striking. Matamua says it was most often used in duels, which drew blood but not lives.
huata	long weapon similar to a taiaha	Keane describes a much longer spear, from about 3.5 to over 4 metres, held by more than one warrior and thrust at attackers from inside a palisaded pā ‘fortified village’.
koikoi	spear: a long spear pointed at both ends	Drawings of duels in Te Ara show it held in both hands to strike and parry, rather than lunging with the point alone.

Te Ara names other spears too, among them the tete, any spear with a detachable point of wood, bone or a stingray’s tail, which was both thrust and thrown, and other battle weapons such as darts, a dagger of wood or bone and the toki ‘adze’.

The short clubs: patu, mere, wahaika and kotiate

Patu is the everyday verb to strike, hit, kill, and as a noun Te Aka gives weapon, club. Matamua explains that the short one-handed weapons were collectively termed patu. A warrior held one in one hand and wrapped the free arm in a thick woven mat as a shield; Keane adds that both the tip and the blade were used, to strike, stab or parry, and that it was common to carry a long weapon with a patu tucked into the belt.

Weapon	Te Aka’s meaning	Material and use, as Te Ara describes them
patu	weapon, club; to strike, hit, kill	Any short club, of wood, stone or whalebone.
patu ōnewa	short club made of dark grey stone	Any patu made of stone. On its own, ōnewa is dark grey stone, basalt.
mere, mere pounamu	a short, flat weapon of stone, often of greenstone; short weapon made of greenstone	A patu of pounamu ‘greenstone’, highly prized, and also a symbol of authority.
patu parāoa	short club made of whalebone	Made from whalebone. Parāoa is the sperm whale, and whalebone.
wahaika	short club of wood or whalebone with a carved figure on one side of the blade	Shaped like a patu, but with a small human-like figure above the handle and the oval of the blade interrupted. A Te Papa example has a concave point on one side of the blade and a notch on the other, each with its own use.
kotiate	short weapon of wood or bone with a notch on both edges of the flat blade	Of wood or whalebone, named for its shape, which resembled a split liver.

Two of the names explain themselves. Te Ara says wahaika means the mouth (waha) of the fish (ika), which may refer to its hook-like shape, and that kotiate joins koti ‘to cut in two’ and ate ‘liver’. Matamua quotes a description from 1893 of how a mere was used: “the warrior tries to seize his adversary by the hair with the left hand, and, having his weapon firmly grasped with the right, and secured by a thong or strap wound tightly round the wrist, he thrusts or drives its sharp end against the temple of his victim.”

The chiefly greenstone adze, the toki poutangata, is a near relative: Te Ara describes one in Te Papa as mainly ceremonial, a symbol of a chief’s authority that could also be used as a weapon. It and the stone itself are explained in Māori symbols and their meanings.

The parts of a taiaha

The taiaha is named like a body. Keane writes that its pointed end, the arero ‘tongue’, comes out of the upoko ‘head’, which then becomes the ate ‘liver’ or tinana ‘body’. Te Ara’s caption to a taiaha in Te Papa from about 1800 adds two more parts: below the carved head is a tauri ‘band, collar’ of bird feathers and dog hair, and the opposite end is a flat, smooth blade, the rau ‘blade’.

A taiaha, drawn schematically and not to scale, with the part names Te Ara gives. A real one is about the height of a person, and its head is elaborately carved.

Part	Te Aka’s meaning	On the taiaha
arero	tongue; carved point of a taiaha	The point, used for jabbing, carved as a tongue coming out of the head.
upoko	head	The carved head at the pointed end.
tauri	band, tying something to something else	The collar of red kākā feathers and dog hair. Te Ara says it added beauty and distracted an opponent.
tinana, ate	body, the main part of anything; liver	The shaft. Keane gives both names.
rau	leaf, feather; blade of a weapon	The flat striking blade.

Matamua describes how the long weapons were fought with: held upright or diagonally with the point down, a warrior might feint a jab with the point, then reverse the staff and bring the blade down on the head or shoulders. In one demonstration at Parliament in the late 19th century, a taiaha expert said to be 80 years old took on a confident officer of the Horse Artillery, an expert swordsman; his first sweep was parried, and the reversed point lifted the officer off the floor. Te Ara says the duel lasted exactly 30 seconds.

Mau rākau: the art of using them

Te Aka gives mau rākau as to wield weapons and Māori weaponry. Mau is to hold or carry, and rākau, besides tree and stick, means weapon. Matamua describes the training: children were woken suddenly at night and struck unexpectedly with sticks to keep them alert, and their games, from stick-throwing to wrestling, prepared them for battle. Young men then entered a school of weaponry, the para whakawai, which Te Aka glosses as to practise the use of weapons.

There they learnt battle formations, guards, strikes and parries (Te Ara gives the terms whakatū rākau, whakarite rākau and whakahoro rākau), mock-fighting with reeds instead of weapons. Footwork was stressed, and a proverb reminded them why: He waewae taumaha, he kiri mākū ‘heavy feet, wet skin’, wet, that is, with their own blood. They also learnt the rituals and codes of conduct of war.

Decline and revival

Once muskets arrived with Europeans, Matamua writes, the taiaha was quickly made obsolete, the schools closed and much knowledge was lost, though some regions passed it on quietly to a chosen few. From the 1980s, as part of the wider Māori cultural renaissance, the art revived, although today it centres on a few weapons, above all the taiaha. Mita Mohi set up a school on Mokoia Island in Lake Rotorua in the mid-1980s, and Pita Sharples founded Te Whare Tū Taua o Aotearoa at Hoani Waititi marae in Auckland. Sharples had learnt from Arapeta Awatere, whose ceremonial taiaha Tūwhakairiora had passed down ten generations of his family.

Weapons in haka, pōwhiri and speeches today

The weapons are not museum pieces. Te Ara names three places they are still used:

The wero. At a large welcome, a warrior with a taiaha confronts the visitors, parrying invisible blows, and lays down a token that the visitors pick up. Te Aka calls the challenger the kaiwero, and gives the challenge stick he lays down as one sense of rākau. Arapeta Awatere used Tūwhakairiora in the wero for Queen Elizabeth II at Waitangi in 1963. The whole ceremony is explained in pōwhiri explained.
Kapa haka. Since the 1980s, Matamua writes, performers have routinely used taiaha and patu on stage, so handling them is part of rehearsal. Keane notes that the haka peruperu, performed with weapons, was often part of going to war; the kinds of haka and the rest of the art are in kapa haka explained.
Whaikōrero. Orators once emphasised their words with a long or short weapon, and Te Panekiretanga o te reo Māori, the language excellence programme, has revived the practice. Te Ara pictures Tumu Te Heuheu, paramount chief of Ngāti Tūwharetoa from 1997 to 2025, holding a greenstone mere to deliver his whaikōrero ‘formal speech’.

Named weapons: heirlooms, authority and peace

To their owners, Matamua writes, weapons were taonga ‘treasures’, heirlooms handed down the generations. A long hardwood weapon could take months to make, and a stone patu well over a year. The ethnologist Elsdon Best wrote in 1902: “No weapon that had seen much service was without its name, and on many hinged the stories of famous battles, of noted peace-makings, of slaughters grim and great.” Te Ara gives some of the names:

Amokura, the mere of the Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha, given him by his uncle Hape-ki-tūārangi. The story of his haka is in Ka Mate.
Te Tuhiwai, a mere pounamu Te Rauparaha received from the Ngāi Tahu chief Te Mātenga Taiaroa in an exchange sealing peace, for which he gave a canoe, Wai-ka-hua. He passed it to his war leader, Te Rangihaeata.
Te Ringa Toto, “the bloody hand”, a patu of the Tūwharetoa chief Te Rangitāhau.
Te Raukaraka, “the leaf of the karaka”, a mere named for its colour. The Tauranga chief Koraurau gave it to the trader Gilbert Mair in 1828, but Mair did not claim it at once; British troops unearthed it in 1864, after both men had died, and Koraurau’s son fulfilled the offer by giving it to Mair’s son.

Weapons could be made tapu ‘sacred, restricted’: Te Ara records karakia ‘incantations’ said over them to place an atua within, and the Taranaki leader Tītokowaru instilling the atua Uemutu in his taiaha before battle. They could also carry peace. Te Aka defines tatau pounamu, literally the greenstone door, as lasting peace, made with a precious gift. Matamua tells of the Tainui warrior Tūkorehu and Te Pūrewa, who fought a duel in the 1820s that neither could win, made peace between their tribes and exchanged weapons to seal it; and of the Ngāti Maniapoto chief Wahanui, who in 1885 presented John Ballance with a taiaha to show there would be no more bloodshed between his people and Europeans. Keane adds that a weapon might be sent to a neighbouring tribe as a gift, inviting it to join a battle. Mere pounamu as treasures, and pounamu as a gift, are covered in Māori symbols and their meanings.

Where the accounts differ

Te Ara’s two stories, its picture captions and Te Aka do not agree on every detail. None of the differences is large, and this page decides none of them.

Point	One account	Another account
How long a taiaha is	about 1.5 to 1.8 metres (Keane)	long two-handed weapons usually 1 to 2 metres (Matamua)
Who carried one	common for warriors to take a taiaha with a patu in the belt (Keane)	a status symbol and treasure, not used by ordinary members of a war party (Matamua)
What a taiaha is made of	hard wood (Te Aka)	usually wood, sometimes whalebone (Keane)
The taiaha’s parts	arero, upoko, then ate or tinana (Keane)	upoko, arero, tauri and rau (Te Ara’s caption to a Te Papa taiaha)
The pouwhenua	like a taiaha with a smooth point instead of the carved arero (Te Aka)	more pointed than a taiaha, blade or body sometimes wider (Keane); one of the spear-like weapons that were the principal battle weapons (Matamua)
The huata	a long weapon similar to a taiaha (Te Aka)	a spear 3.5 to over 4 metres long, held by several warriors (Keane)
The hoeroa	possibly thrown on a rope and reeled in; its use is uncertain (Keane)	held by a chief as a symbol of authority (Te Ara’s caption to a Te Papa hoeroa)
The wahaika’s figure	on one side of the blade (Te Aka)	just above the handle (Keane; Te Ara’s caption to a Te Papa wahaika)
Spelling	patu onewa, patu paraoa, without macrons (Keane)	patu ōnewa, patu parāoa (Te Aka; Matamua’s caption writes wahaika parāoa)

Old weapons and the law

An old Māori weapon is more than an antique. Under the Protected Objects Act 1975, an object made, modified, brought to New Zealand or used by Māori, which relates to Māori culture and is more than 50 years old, is a taonga tūturu. The Act says:

One found anywhere in New Zealand is deemed, at first, to belong to the Crown, and the finder must tell the Ministry’s chief executive or the nearest public museum within 28 days. The Māori Land Court can then decide who owns it.
It may be sold only to a registered collector or a public museum, or through a licensed auctioneer or second-hand dealer.
Taonga tūturu are one of the categories of protected New Zealand objects, and a protected object may not be exported without the chief executive’s permission.

Many of these weapons are treasured family or tribal taonga, named and sometimes tapu, and no published source used here sets one rule for handling them. If someone shows you one, the respectful course is to ask before touching it.

War parties travelled by waka taua: the canoes and their parts are in Māori waka.

Going further

Several of these words are everyday te reo. Patu is still the ordinary verb for hitting, rākau means tree or stick, upoko is head, tinana is body and ate is liver; taiaha, mere, tao and pounamu are in the course’s vocabulary too. Our own free te reo Māori course teaches them one lesson a day. Keane notes that warriors wore little into battle, sometimes a dogskin war cloak or a cloak to turn spear thrusts; cloaks are explained in korowai and Māori cloaks.