Te Kooti's War: After surviving a five-day siege in the pā at Ngātapa, Māori leader Te Kooti escaped from New Zealand's Armed Constabulary.

Te Kooti's War was among the last of the New Zealand Wars, the series of 19th-century conflicts in New Zealand between the Māori and the colonising European settlers. It was fought in the East Coast region and across the heavily forested central North Island and Bay of Plenty from 1868 to 1872, between government military forces and followers of spiritual leader Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki.

The siege of Ngatapa was an engagement that took place from 31 December 1868 to 5 January 1869 during Te Kooti's War in the East Coast region of New Zealand.

The word pā can refer to any Māori village or defensive settlement, but often refers to hillforts – fortified settlements with palisades and defensive terraces – and also to fortified villages. Pā sites occur mainly in the North Island of New Zealand, north of Lake Taupō. Over 5,000 sites have been located, photographed and examined, although few have been subject to detailed analysis. Variations similar to pā occur throughout central Polynesia, in the islands of Fiji, Tonga and the Marquesas Islands.

Ngātapa is a rural community in the Gisborne District of New Zealand's North Island.

Māori are the indigenous Polynesian people of mainland New Zealand. Māori originated with settlers from East Polynesia, who arrived in New Zealand in several waves of canoe voyages between roughly 1320 and 1350. Over several centuries in isolation, these settlers developed a distinct culture, whose language, mythology, crafts, and performing arts evolved independently from those of other eastern Polynesian cultures. Some early Māori moved to the Chatham Islands, where their descendants became New Zealand's other indigenous Polynesian ethnic group, the Moriori.