Story: Traditional Māori warfare – Riri

Traditionally, Māori warfare involved strategies and sometimes trickery. In one story Māori warriors covered themselves with cloaks and lay on the foreshore to give the appearance of stranded pilot whales. When the inhabitants of the nearby pā came out to investigate, they were attacked and defeated. The real pilot whales pictured above stranded on Ōpoutere Beach, Coromandel, in 2004.