Finding 'Te Wherro in Otakou': Otago Māori and the gold rush

Abstract

Nearly every history of Otago gold begins with Vincent Pyke's "that the Maoris were aware of the occurrence of gold, before the arrival of European colonists, is a tolerably well established fact". However the story of Otago Mãori mining fold in the early 1860s has a history far more complex than one might suppose from Pyke's statement.