The church bell at Rapaki, suspended from historic ribbonwood tree.
E. Cowan, photo
sanitation and modern comforts. Here and there a Maori tree, like our ribbonwood yonder, and a tattered clump of light bush in the gullies or on a rocky cliff-top, to remind us of the different setting when Rapaki was tumultuous with wild Maori life; when tattooed Ngai-Tahu were in fighting flower, and when dense and beautiful forest covered the feet and shoulders of all those dark volcanic crags and tors lifting above us there like so many ruined castles battered by the artillery fire of the gods. A remnant, a morehu , now are tribe and forest; alike they have dwindled to a shadow; “as the woods are swept away,” says the Maori, “so shall the people vanish.” The young people are so Anglicised that they use the pakeha tongue chiefly; the older ones only cling to Maori among themselves. Yet a brave little remnant, with a fighting heart worthy of their warrior ancestry; for of these descendants of fierce old Rangiwhakaputa and Wheke every eligible young man went to the Great War, and some salted with their bones the world’s greatest battlefields. (No Kipling monopoly in the phrase: “Bury me here,” said old Major Pokiha, of the Arawa, a fighting chief of the last generation—“bury me here as salt for the lands of my heroes”). One-eighth of the population of little Rapaki voluntarily enlisted. The well-plucked Ngati-Irakehu and their kinsmen have title to say, as Nelson said of old of his fighting sailors, “We are few, but the right sort.”
The Kaumatua of Rapaki, the pleasant-mannered kindly greybeard, Hone Taare Tikao, a gentleman of true rangatira breeding and demeanour, is the best informed man of his tribe-remnant on the Peninsula and Port Hills history and legends and genealogical recitals—whakapapa in the Maori tongue. Tikao was born at Akaroa over seventy years ago. He is of the Ngati-Irakehu hapu of the Ngai-Tahu tribe, and he is descended by several lines from Te Rangiwhakaputa and other of the warrior chiefs who wrested the Whanga-raupo and the Whanga-roa—Aka-roa is the modernised contraction—from the dusky men of Ngati-Mamoe. From his parents and from Paora Taki, a picturesque old rangatira who once was Native assessor at Rapaki, and kindred people of the generation that has gone, he learned the history and legends of these parts.
The old man tells us first how this village came to be named Rapaki—not Raupaki, as it is erroneously spelled on the maps. The full name of the place is Te Rapaki-a-Te Rangi-whakaputa which means “the waist-mat of Te Rangi-whakaputa,” and to it, obviously, there hangs a story, which when told leads on to the tradition of the conquest of this district from the Ngati-Mamoe a little over two centuries ago. The Rangi-whakaputa’s name in these parts is associated with Homeric exploits with the weapons of old. This long-gone tattooed hero was the Hector of the Whaka-raupo, and this well-hidden valley curving down from the crags was the spot where he settled awhile when the harbour-side fighting was done. He was one of the northern invaders, a kinsman and contemporary of Moki, Tu-rakau-tahi, and other baresark warriors of the end of the seventeenth century. On the beach below the present village he left his waist-garment, a kilt of flax or toi leaves, probably in connection with the act of tapa -ing the place as his possession, and from the fact of this rapaki , which would be a tapu one, being cast there the place received its name. Te Rangi-Whakaputa’s name has been translated as “Day of Daring,” or “Day of Energy.” It suited this enterprising warrior, who is described by his descendant Taare Tikao as a great toa or brave. He was indeed a fine figure of a man, nearer seven feet than six feet high, it is said, very powerful, and a most skilful man in the use of the taiaha , the Maori broadsword of hard tough akeake , and the spear and the stone mere . All these harbour-front villages and camping-grounds he captured from the Ngati-Mamoe who, as Tikao says, were the fourth iwi —race or tribe—to occupy the
Rapaki Village, with Tamatea’s Breast in the background.
W. A. Taylor, photo
South Island; the first people were the Hawea, the second the Rapuwai, the third the Waitaha and the fourth the Ngati-Mamoe, whom the Ngai-Tahu dispossessed, in their turn to be supplanted by the white-skins with their bags of gold sovereigns and their land-sale deeds.
And this Homeric figure of two centuries ago, great of stature and terrible in fight, had a son whose name is scarcely less famous in the little-written traditions of the conquest of the Whanga-Raupo. His name was Wheke, which means “Octopus,” and like his father he spread terror among the Ngati-Mamoe. With his war parties he scoured all these ranges and tracked the frightened fugitives into their most secret valleys and caves. One of his camping-grounds on a war expedition was yon fort-like nest of basalt towers and upjuts above Cass Bay, overlooking our Lyttelton road; he slept one night near the summit of one of these crags, a wild hard camping place, and it is still known as “Te-Moenga-o-Wheke” or “Wheke’s Bed.” And over the doorway of the large meeting hall in the village of Rapaki you will see the name of Wheke painted, in memory of a brown hero whose bones have been dust these two hundred years.[3]