Maori have always spoken of a race of fair skinned people who preceded them. They called them "Patu-paiarehe" or Turehu, and some still trace a shared lineage. In 1867, a Ngati Whatua Tohunga (historian) stated that the Ngati Whatua came to New Zealand from the Cook Islands nine generations earlier, making landfall at a place called Hatarau (Little Barrier Island). Arriving there they encountered a race of fair haired people with fair skin and green blue eyes, whom they named PAKEHA . They took the women to breed from - the males as slaves and food.

There are Maori who speak of babies stolen long ago by a "fairy people" who hid in the bush, only coming out at night – an understandable action of people who were being killed and eaten faster than they could breed. It is also highly possible that children taken were born to their own women captured by Maori. In savage post-Maori New Zealand, captives were eaten immediately, kept for breeding or enslaved and subsequently killed for food – an unpalatable history to inherit, but a fact, nonetheless.

One of the last surviving sub-tribes of the Patu-paiarehe was called the Ngati Hotu, pockets of whom survived into colonial times. Here’s a description of them from Maori oral history: "Generally speaking, Ngati Hotu were of medium height and of light colouring. In the majority of cases they had reddish hair. They were referred to as urukehu. It is said that during the early stages of their occupation of Taupo they did not practice tattooing as later generations did, and were spoken of as te whanau a Rangi (the children of heaven) because of their fair skin. There were two distinct types. One had reddish skin, a round face, small eyes and thick protruding eyebrows. The other was the Turehu. They had white hair and blue green eyes. They were fair-skinned, much smaller in stature, with larger and very handsome features." ( Refer: Tuwharetoa, Chpt.7, pg.115, by rev. John Grace). Note: The cavern dwellings and stone walls of these people can still be seen at Taupo, but are unprotected and under threat from development.

These tall bones and small Turehu bones were found just last month in a cooking pit.

The bones of the first New Zealanders have been found at locations all over the country: A cache of bones was found in the Kaipara District in 2005 when a pig hunter’s dog wandered into a cave. Investigations were handed over to Noel Hilliam, retired Curator of the Dargaville Maritime Museum, and his team ofresearchers. The skeletons showed that there were, at least, three distinct physical types of pre-Maori interned there, ranging from the very tall people (around 7 to 8 feet in height - 2.4 metres), to people of normal stature, to the very small pygmy people.

Noel: "The small stature ‘Turehu" were a particularly attractive childlike people with very fine features. We know about them because these small people once populated countries like Ireland and traditional stories relate their occupation of the Pacific range from Tahiti to New Caledonia to New Zealand. A specialist who examined some of the skeletons in the cave likened them to a race of people living in Wales 3000 years ago."

[link to www.kaimaiview.co.nz]