This short-lived amity came to an end in 1775 when the sons of Te Wera left Stewart Island to establish a pa between Colac Bay and Orepuki. As the Kati Mamoe could not allow this challenge to pass unnoticed, they rose and destroyed the pa. Their triumph was brief, for while they made their way to the Otago Peninsula, Taihua and his Kati Mamoe party marched into an ambush at Hillend, near the Pomahaka, where their enemies butchered them. Before the close of the century, warfare had again broken out at the Otago Heads, Port Molyneux, and Preservation Inlet. In the vicinity of Lake Te Anau one of the last and most desperate battles took place. A large number of Kati Mamoe were killed and the broken survivors ""disappeared into the gloomy forests and never again man's eye beheld them."" About the same time, the coast-dwelling Kati Mamoe at Preservation Inlet were also defeated, a pitiful remnant escaping in the direction of Dusky Sound. Summing up the warfare in Otago, Beattie states that of the twenty-five battles which took place south of Temuka, five were family affairs in which Kati Mamoe and Kai Tahu fought among themselves. A feature of the warfare was the monotonous regularity with which the two sides won alternately until the closing phases when the Kai Tahu established ascendancy. According to Beattie, defeated in one battle after another, the dwindling band of Kati Mamoe retreated in various directions, some to the western bank of the Waiau River, where they took refuge in caves, some to the far reaches of Te Anau and Manapouri, and some even to the cold shelters of the fiords. This has been the traditional European view but it is not borne out by the survival of Kati Mamoe lines of descent into the principal chiefly families of Otago into and beyond the time of the European arrival and it has been disputed in modern times.