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Bestiary of Cryptids & Legendary CreaturesPatupaiarehe are elusive supernatural people in Māori traditions, associated with wooded mountains, mist and music heard from unseen companies.
Also recorded as Tūrehu, Pakepakehā
Voices approach Te Kanawa’s hunting camp: men, women and children, though nobody can yet be seen. When the visitors finally peer over the tree roots, they seem interested chiefly in him. The Waikato chief reaches for his ornaments, hoping a gift will persuade them to leave. [6]
Read the manuscriptTe Aka Māori Dictionary places patupaiarehe in wooded mountain country and describes them as humanlike supernatural people. Tūrehu and pakepakehā are other names in Martin Wikaira’s Te Ara account. The familiar English word “fairies” can suggest tiny winged bodies; these encounters instead concern people who talk, work, form companies and occupy particular places. [1][3]
A public Ngāti Pūkenga account begins with an unnamed mountain in the Hautere range. Pūwhenua loves mighty Ōtanewainuku, leaving the unnamed mountain’s love unreturned. He asks the patupaiarehe to carry him to the ocean so that he can drown. As they haul him downhill, his weeping and sighing move them. They name the gorge left behind Waimapu, the sighing waters, and call him Moao, the mist that descends around them. [5]
They continue through the inner harbour toward the coast, but the sun reaches the horizon. The patupaiarehe must escape its light. Unable to fulfil the mountain’s wish, they retreat to the forest, leaving him at the water’s edge with another name: Mauao, caught in daylight. The settlement schedule records this account among Ngāti Pūkenga’s relationships with Tauranga Moana and notes a chant still recited on Tauranga Moana marae, community meeting grounds. [5]
George Grey’s nineteenth-century collection gives a different night to Te Kanawa, a Waikato chief. He has been hunting kiwi with his dogs and companions on Puke-more. Darkness finds the party near the summit, where a large tree offers the best available shelter. Its roots rise well above the ground; the hunters lie between them, with their fire beyond. Voices grow louder in the surrounding forest. Te Kanawa recognizes the approaching company as supernatural, and his frightened companions have nowhere easy to flee. [6]
The visitors come close to look at him. They peer over the roots, then disappear behind trees and stumps whenever the flames rise. When the fire burns low, they approach again, singing. Their attention fixes on Te Kanawa’s handsome appearance. The company’s curiosity gives him no confidence: he thinks he must please them to save his life. He removes a carved greenstone neck ornament, a greenstone ear pendant and an ornament made from a shark’s tooth. [6]
Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal places such traditions within Māori relationships of genealogy, ancestry and land. He cites Hoani Nahe, a Ngāti Maru elder, describing high Hauraki dwelling places, including Moehau and Te Aroha. Nahe names communities and chiefs, then distinguishes their ordinarily invisible homes from voices heard in forests or from canoes at night. The sound has a place and an identity even when the speakers do not come into view. [2]
Grey’s book preserves these two accounts in English translation. Its footnote to Te Kanawa’s story names Te Wherowhero as someone who remembered the ending of the visitors’ song, though not the whole of it. That small admission makes a person’s memory visible inside the printed collection. Grey is the collector and editor named on the volume, not the creator of the traditions. [6]
Wikaira’s modern Kahukura summary begins differently: the traveller sleeps among dunes and wakes to the fishers. Grey’s longer version makes his discovery of traces, return to his lodging and planned night visit the beginning of the action. The difference changes his approach from an interrupted sleep to an investigation. The sequence followed above belongs to Grey’s translation. [6][4]
Wikaira attributes small stature to Tūhoe accounts, human proportions to others and giants exceeding two metres to Whanganui stories. Mohi Tūrei of Ngāti Porou describes white, albino or red-ochre skin and eyes from light blue to black. Red-dyed flax garments, rough mats and houses of mist or supplejack belong to the same public survey. Kōauau and pūtōrino flutes make music another sign of their presence. [3]
Music can compel as well as attract. Wikaira describes a woman drawn to a patupaiarehe’s camp and obliged by his spell to return when called. His account also names fire, cooked food and kōkōwai, an iron-oxide mixture, as protections. Those dangerous relationships differ from the fishers who willingly help Kahukura with his apparently troublesome string. [4][6]
Ōtanewainuku also has a life described through conservation: the Department of Conservation’s forest account names rimu, tawa, kāmahi and rewarewa, with birds and continuing efforts to protect them. The place shared by walkers and conservation workers is the same named mountain involved in Pūwhenua’s love. Ecology and the mountain narrative attend to different relationships within that landscape. [7][5]
Wikaira distinguishes the sea-dwelling ponaturi, whom Tāwhaki keeps indoors past dawn to avenge his father. Shared fear of daylight does not make them patupaiarehe. [3]
Te Papa’s discussion of Tia Ranginui’s work notes that some serious patupaiarehe narratives are tapu: sacred and subject to restrictions. In some iwi, discussing them freely may invite unwanted attention. Publicly shared accounts exist alongside those limits. [8]
Royal’s explanation of genealogy and ancestral authority gives the mountain beings a setting that racial speculation misses. Descriptions of fair skin in supernatural accounts do not establish an earlier European population. They belong to named Māori traditions, whose relationships with land are more substantial than a resemblance isolated from its story. [2]
Ranginui’s 2020 photograph Taniwha, from Tua o Tāwauwau / Away with the Fairies, places two patupaiarehe in a dinghy. Te Papa describes an abstracted reflection that makes their arrangement difficult to resolve: two bodies seem to merge or double. The uncertainty concerns what is visibly present, and whether its character is benign or threatening. A contemporary Māori artist makes ambiguity part of the encounter. [8]
Norbert Hausberg’s puppet show Mustava and the Kauri Giant gives Patupaiarehe an environmental task. A kauri escapes a woodcutter after receiving the power to walk. Te Papa records about five hundred performances in schools and community theatres between 1993 and 1995. The show’s appeal ultimately turns toward its audience: people must protect the environment themselves. The walking tree belongs to this particular performance. [9]
A different adaptation appears in Jane Orford’s 1951 Maori Folk Lore for Brownies. Te Papa’s record describes how New Zealand Girl Guiding combined British fairy-group names with Māori names including Patu-pai-arehe and Turehu. The museum interprets that borrowing as appropriation intended to give the movement a New Zealand identity. The names entered an organization whose group identities already drew on British folklore. [10]
The two hunting and fishing accounts leave an intriguing difference in possession. Te Kanawa offers valuables and recovers them; Kahukura helps with the work but contrives to keep the net. One company accepts shadows, the other loses a usable pattern. The consequences sit in a hunter’s returned ornaments and in a netting stitch his children can learn. [6]
Te Aka supplies vocabulary; Royal and Wikaira give attributed public contexts. The Ngāti Pūkenga schedule preserves the Mauao account. Grey’s adjacent chapters contain the hunting and fishing encounters. DOC describes the forest; Te Papa’s three records address Ranginui’s photograph, Hausberg’s puppet and Orford’s book. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]
Te Aka Māori Dictionary, dictionary editorial institution · Te Aka Māori Dictionary · Māori and English
patupaiarehe entry, English gloss and displayed related-word examples
Checked 2026-10-09
Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal · Te Ara — The Encyclopedia of New Zealand · 2012-09-22 · English with Māori terms
Artwork
Select a folio to enlarge it. Its caption describes the account, landscape or artistic choices behind the image.
Manuscript checked 2026-10-13. Artistic interpretations © Scott Schubr / Luminary Oddities.
Return to the Bestiary ↑He offers everything, but still wants to avoid being touched. Fixing a stick in the ground, he hangs the ornaments on it. The company finishes singing. Then the visitors take the ornaments’ shadows and pass them from one to another, until the whole gathering has handled them. Suddenly the company disappears. The shadows have gone with it, but the ornaments remain where Te Kanawa placed them. He takes them back. [6]
The account says the visitors are satisfied with their share and regard Te Kanawa as well disposed. His own response is less relaxed. At first light, he hurries down the mountain instead of continuing the kiwi hunt. The danger has passed without an attack or the loss of his valuables, yet the experience ends the expedition. The exchange has worked on terms he could hardly have anticipated when he reached for his jewellery. [6]
Kahukura approaches another company with a more deliberate intention. In Grey’s preceding chapter, he has travelled north to Rangiaowhia, near Te Rarawa country. On the beach he finds discarded mackerel entrails and studies the footprints left by the fishers. He concludes that they worked at night. Something is missing: the reeds and grass that human canoe passengers would have left behind. He decides supernatural beings have been fishing there, examines the place carefully and returns to his lodging. The discovery stays with him as a chance to learn something new. [6]
That night he goes back. The fishers have returned too, calling for their net. One canoe goes to fetch the vessel carrying it, and the company sings as the net enters the sea. Kahukura slips among the workers and joins in hauling. His fair skin resembles theirs closely enough for him to remain unnoticed. As the catch approaches the beach, some fishers must go out before the rocks to prevent the net from snagging; the rest keep pulling. The first light of dawn arrives as the fish come ashore. [6]
The fishers hurry to gather the catch, each taking fish and threading them through the gills. Kahukura works with an unusually short string. He ties a slip-knot, loads it and lifts: the weight pulls the knot open, scattering his fish. Others stop to help him string them again. One ties a proper knot for him. As soon as that helper leaves, Kahukura undoes it and substitutes another slip-knot. The fish fall again. By repeatedly accepting assistance and undoing its result, he keeps the company occupied until full daylight exposes his human face. [6]
The fishers flee in confusion, abandoning their catch, their net and canoes made from flax stems. Grey’s text describes the net itself as made of rushes. Kahukura keeps it as a pattern and learns its stitch, then teaches his children to make nets. The chapter gives the skill a continuing life beyond the encounter: through his descendants, it becomes shared knowledge. The visitors’ helpfulness has cost them their equipment, while Kahukura’s calculated clumsiness has brought home something more useful than a morning’s catch. [6]
Full print article; Framework of the traditions and Patupaiarehe, tūrehu and other inhabitants (page 5)
Hoani Nahe’s account is followed through Royal’s presentation; the 1894 publication is not the edition used here.
Checked 2026-10-09
Martin Wikaira · Te Ara — The Encyclopedia of New Zealand · 2012-09-22 · English with Māori terms
Page 1, Physical features; Where did they live?; What kind of people were they?
Checked 2026-10-11
Martin Wikaira · Te Ara — The Encyclopedia of New Zealand · 2012-09-22 · English with Māori terms
Page 2, Encounters with patupaiarehe; complete page body, Kahukura and music/compulsion passages
Checked 2026-10-09
Ngāti Pūkenga · Ngāti Pūkenga / New Zealand Treaty settlement documents · 2013-04-07
Printed p. 14, Waimapu Stream account
Checked 2026-10-09
George Grey, collector/editor · Sacred Texts, transcription of George Grey’s collection · 1855
The Art of Netting Learned by Kahukura from the Fairies, pp. 209–211; Te Kanawa’s Adventure with a Troop of Fairies, pp. 212–214, including footnote
These accounts follow Grey’s English translation; the Māori originals have not been compared.
Checked 2026-10-11
New Zealand Department of Conservation, institutional forest account · New Zealand Department of Conservation · English with Māori place names
Public forest page; vegetation, bird and conservation context, excluding separate mountain narrative
Checked 2026-10-09
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, unsigned collection interpretation · Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa · Collection record for Tia Ranginui’s 2020 photograph; object date, not a record publication date · English with Māori terms
Object O.052216, online record 2408926; curatorial discussion including tapu qualification
Checked 2026-10-09
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, unsigned collection interpretation · Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa · Collection record for Norbert Hausberg’s circa 1990 puppet; object date, not a record publication date · English
Object GH018310/3, online record 1473704; Mustava and the Kauri Giant performance context
Checked 2026-10-09
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, unsigned collection interpretation · Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa · Collection interpretation of Jane Orford’s 1951 book; underlying book not independently read · English
Object GH026934, online record 1988419; GirlGuiding appropriation discussion
The book is discussed through Te Papa’s collection interpretation, rather than an independent reading of Orford’s text.
Checked 2026-10-09