near present-day Akaroa. Of Tama-i-hara-nui's character Stack (in his book Kaiapohia. The Story of a Siege) says: "Unlike most Maori chiefs of exalted rank he was cowardly, cruel and capricious." The 'eat relation' feud began when Murihake, a woman at Waikakahi on the eastern shores of Lake Ellesmere, happened to put on a dog-skin cloak left in the village by Tama-i-hara-nui, who was then absent at Kaikoura. This sacrilegious action required that the chief, or his relations on his behalf, should immediately take utu (or payment in revenge). But instead of taking revenge on the woman herself, the chief's relations ambushed and killed a slave belonging to one of her relations. In revenge for the death of the slave, the woman's relations went to a village near Tai Tapu, and killed a man named Hape, who was related to those who had killed the slave. But it also happened that Hape's wife was the sister of the principal chief of Taumutu. At this stage Tama-i-hara-nui returned from Kaikoura. Telling the people of Kaiapoi, who had ties with both sides, to stay out of the fight, he went on to Takapūneke and then to Wairewa (Little River), where he gathered a war party. From Wairewa an attack was launched on Taumutu, in which many of the people of that village were killed, including some Kaiapoi women married to men of Taumutu. In the next stage of the feud the people of Taumutu were joined by reinforcements from Otago under the chief Taiaroa, and also, in spite of Tama-i-hara-nui's order, by about 100 men from Kaiapoi, who wished to avenge the death of the Taumutu women. This force then proceeded to attack Wairewa, led by two men with muskets — the first of these weapons to be carried by a war party in Canterbury. They found the pā empty, however, chiefly because Taiaroa, whose real purpose was to try to end the feud, had warned the people of Wairewa of the approach of the war party. On their way home, the Kaiapoi men fell upon and killed a nephew of the important chief Taununu, whose pā was at Ripapa Island. Instead of taking his reprisal by attacking Kaiapoi—probably because of the strength of that fortress—Tanunu attacked Whakaepa (Coalgate), a small but populous offshoot of Kaiapoi, and killed all its people. Kaiapoi was now more deeply involved in the feud. A strong war