Otakou

Otakou (which in Maori means “the location of the red earth”) is a historic Maori settlement that is located in the city of Dunedin, New Zealand. The settlement is protected on the Otago Peninsula, about twenty-five miles from Dunedin city center. It is near to the Taiaroa Head and the entrance to Otago Harbour.

The sealer John Boultbee was probably the first European to see the existence of Maori settlements around the Otago Harbour, as documented in the 1820s. In 1831, the Weller Brothers of Sydney came across and opened a whaling station on the shores of Otago Harbour, near the Otakou settlement. This became known as Wellers Rock.

On June13, 1840 in the Marae (meeting place) of the Ngai Tahu Otakou, a copy of the Treaty of Waitangi was sent by Captain William Hobson to Thomas Bunbury, who signed and delivered it. In July of 1844, the British civil engineer and surveyor Frederick Tuckett came to Ngai Tahu Otakou and bought 162 hectares of land on behalf of the New Zealand Company.

Called the Otago block, the settlement of Otakou also included the Ngai Tahu, recommending the area around the Otago Harbour be given to the Scottish settlers of the Free Church of Scotland as an appropriate settlement.

With the arrival of the first Scottish settlers in Port Chalmers, in 1848, came the first major step to organized colonization around the Otago Harbour and beyond. At this time the settlement was recorded as Otakou on the maps of the settlers.

Quickly, it turned out that the name Otakou was born from the misinterpretation of different dialects of Maori. The first Christian missionaries who came to this region knew only the language of the Maori of the North Island. Thus, the “g” sound was misinterpreted to be a “k” and the “o” sound to be an “ou”.

The Otakou settlement retained its name, but not without asking for the name to be applied to the entire region. On December 26, 1848, the then Governor of the colony of New Zealand, Sir George Edward Grey, finally complied with the wishes of the Scottish settlers.

The newly developed residential area, starting from the coast of Dunedin to the areas inland, was awarded the Maori name of Otago. Ignorance had probably led to the attribution, for the Maori name for the same country in their language is still Araiteuru (canoe from Hawaiki).

The Otakou settlement still exists and has about fifty inhabitants. It is situated on a hill overlooking the entrance of Otago Harbour as well as Port Chalmers on the opposite side of Otago Harbour.

The small settlement still has the Maori church that was built in 1864 by Reverend Johann Friedrich Riemenschneider (1817-1866), a German missionary, and a Marae (meeting place) with the Whare Runanga (meeting house). Inside the meeting house, one can see that the earth is red.