Puhiwahine was from the Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngāti Tūwharetoa tribes. She was a renowned composer of waiata (songs). One of these, ‘Ka eke ki Wairaka’, was a song for her lover Mahutu Te Toko. In part it outlines the role that the ancestral explorer Ngātoroirangi and his sisters Te Hoata and Te Pupu played in bringing to New Zealand the fire which heats the volcanoes, hot springs, mud pools and geysers.

Learn more at the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography
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