Te Kooti in the context of "Rua Kenana Hepetipa"

The Pai Mārire movement (commonly known as Hauhau) was a syncretic Māori religion founded in Taranaki by the prophet Te Ua Haumēne. It flourished in the North Island from about 1863 to 1874. Pai Mārire incorporated biblical and Māori spiritual elements, and promised its followers deliverance from European domination. Although founded with peaceful motives—its name means "Good and Peaceful"—some followers of Pai Mārire became known for an extremist form of the religion. These extremists were labelled as "Hauhau" by the Europeans. The rise and spread of the violent expression of Pai Mārire was largely a response to the New Zealand Government's military operations against the North Island Māori, which were aimed at exerting European sovereignty and gaining more land for white settlement; historian B.J. Dalton claims that after 1865 any Māori in arms were almost invariably termed Hauhau despite no affiliation to the movement.

Governor George Grey launched a campaign of suppression against the religion in April 1865, culminating in the raiding of dozens of villages in Taranaki and on the East Coast and the arrest of more than 400 adherents, most of whom where incarcerated on the Chatham Islands. Elements of the religion were incorporated in the Ringatū or "Raised hand" religion formed in 1868 by Te Kooti, who escaped from incarceration on the Chatham Islands.