Rotorua's Legend of Tam-O-Hoi

Many years ago, when the first great canoes arrived in New Zealand, Ngataro-i-rangi the high priest of the Awara canoe imprisoned Tama-O-Hoi, a man eating daemon who lived on Mt Tarawena, inside a chasm in the mountain.

Tama-O-Hoi remained inside the mountain for many centuries. Then the white people came and disrupted Maori morals causing Tama-O-Hoi to return. He exploded from the mountain in an eruption. The peaks threw out coloums of basalt and the bed of lake Rotomahana blew up, destroying nearby villages.

Some say before the 1886 eruption of Mt Tarawera a large war canoe carrying the souls of many Maori departed was seen on the Lake Tarawera.