[3] The following note describing the occupation of these localities after the first conflict between the two great tribes of the South Island was written by Mr. T. E. Green (Tame Kirini) of Tuahiwi, Kaiapoi, who died in 1917, and who was an authority on the history of his mother’s clan:—
“The Ngati-Mamoe were subdued by the Ngai-Tuhaitara section of the Ngai-Tahu tribe under Moki, an account of whose expedition is given in Canon J. W. Stack’s contribution to “Tales of Banks Peninsula.” Te Raki (or Rangi) -whakaputa was of the Ngati-Kurii section of the tribe; Ngati-Kurii carried their conquest no further south than Kaikoura. From there southward is the conquest of Ngai-Tuhai-tara. The second daughter of Te Rakiwhakaputa was the wife of Tu-Rakautahi, the founder of Kaiapoi Pa, so Te Rakiwhakaputa came to Kaiapoi after the settlement of the Ngai-Tuhaitara, here accompanied by other Ngati-Kurii chieftains, namely, Mako, Te Ruahikihiki and others, and dwelt in the vicinity of Kaiapoi for some time. There is a spot on the eastern bank of the Whakahume (the Cam), about half a mile from the Kaiapoi Woollen Mills, named Te Pa o Te Rakiwhakaputa. Some occurrence there enraged Parakiore, youngest son of Tu-Rakautahi and grandson of Te Rakiwhakaputa, and he declared that he would have no interloper in his midst, referring to his grandfather Te Rakiwhakaputa, (to whom, for brevity, I shall now refer by his short name Te Raki) and Mako (Mango) who was married to his aunt (Te Raki’s eldest daughter). As a result of this attitude of his son, Tu-Rakautahi said to Te Raki, ‘You must go out to the Whaka-raupo (Lyttelton Harbour); there are sharks there for us two.’ Mako he sent to Little River, to Wairewa, saying: ‘Yonder are eels for us two.’ To Te Ruahikihiki he said, ‘Go to Taumutu (at Lake Ellesmere); there are patiki (flounders) for us two there.’ Kiri-Mahinahina he sent out to Paanau: ‘Go yonder and catch hapuku for us.’
“Now this is what the present generation living at these places object to, the idea that their ancestors were sent there to procure food supplies for Kaiapoi. As Moki, the younger brother of Tu Rakautahi, headed the Ngai-Tuhaitara clan who conquered the Peninsula, you will readily perceive that no chief would deliberately go and settle on the territory of another, and particularly one so powerful as Tu-Rakautahi, without his permission—which in this case was given—and without tribute being paid annually for the privilege. This was strictly carried out by them until the advent of the pakehas. Of course Kaiapoi gave them kauru generally in return, merely in Maori etiquette; some are now trying to make out that the kauru (the sugar extract of the tii , or cabbage tree) was the payment for their fish.”
When first I went round the high bend in the harbour-side road from Lyttelton and saw Rapaki village a-slumber in the afternoon sun below, all in its green and gold of groves and flowers, grassy fields lapped about it in soft folds, the sea coming up in gentle breathings at the foot of the little cliffs, and the grand old crags above, with one huge taiaha -head of a peak lording it sentry-wise over all, I thought that for beauty of setting very few Maori kaingas even in the romantic bushlands and highlands of the North Island were peers of this hamlet of the Ngai-Tahu, almost jostled off the map by the crowding hordes of the pakeha . Down the bend into the hollow, where the ghost of a mountain stream goes tinkling through the little gully, and the towns that are so near seem a hundred miles away. The mat-kilted conquistador of old who gave his name to the place had an eye for a secure, well-hidden site for his pa . He could scarcely have chosen a spot more snug about these savage Port Hills. The dominating tors and marline-spikes of fire-born rock and the great up-swell of land on all sides but the sea ward off the cold winds. Loftiest of all and nearest is that towering spear-head Te Poho-o-Tamatea, a dark grey triangle of rhyolite, thrusting its naked apex into the warm sky a thousand feet and more above the groves and dwellings of Tikao’s people. It looks what it is, the mountain guardian of Rapaki; its presence, grimly grand on dark lowering days when the mists trail about it and give it added height and dourness, is no less overpowering in the night, when it leans over the deep-cut valley of dreams, a huge rugged blade of blackness etched against the sky. And even in this day of sunshine, when every cave and cranny in the Poho-o-Tamatea were searched by the golden light and when the mystery of its fiery birth stood revealed, the great spear-rock still seemed a place of eeriness and tapu .
That old ribbonwood tree that quite overshadows the little Rapaki church holds memories of the vanished forests that once clothed all these Port Hills and of the “flitting generations of mankind” it has so long outlived. It is a dignified survivor of the woodlands of the Rapaki-a-Te Rangi-whakaputa. Once upon a time the indigenous timbers thickly covered all these now-grassy slopes slanting quickly from the rhyolite hilltop crags to the quiet waters of the Whaka-Raupo. There were big trees—totara , rimu , kahikatea and mataii —but all have gone long ago. Remains there but a remnant from the general slaughter with fire and axe and crosscut saw—a copse on yonder rocky point on the Lyttelton side of the hamlet, where the poetically named ake-rautangi , the ake of the “crying leaves” and a few other shrubs hold their little stony fort; and in Taare Tikao’s garden the kaumatua has some treasured plants, such as the handsome rau-tawhiri shrub, and the flowering hakeke , a variety of ake , the leaves of which when crushed in the hand have a lemon-like perfume; the Natives used to boil them for the hinu kakara , the fragrant oil expressed. But the old ribbonwood, or lacebark, or thousand-jacket, as the bushman variously calls it, is the tree that takes the eye. The Maoris of the north call it whauwhi and houhere , here it is houhi or houi . It takes its pakeha name from the peculiar characteristics of the inner bark, which is tough and strong of fibre and beautifully netted and perforated. The early colonists have been known to use it for the trimming of ladies’ hats and bonnets. I have seen a war-dance party of Taupo Natives, more than a hundred strong, kilted with short rapakis made of this lacebark, deftly twisted and woven by their womenfolk for the ceremonial leaping parade.
In a Rapaki garden.
E. Cowan, photo
That is the tree that extends its Maori mana tapu and its twisting flowery branches over the village church, with a little spire like an old-time candle extinguisher, and it was under its shade that Tikao told something of the past of these parts. The church itself, as he remembered, was built in 1869 by the Wesleyan Natives, but the Anglicans used it also, for in those days there was no puhaehae , no violent jealousy of sects. And in its very shadow, when the sun westers, is a tangled grassy spot sacred to the memory of a heathen chief who would have none of the white man’s church or the white man’s beliefs. Mahuraki was his name, a shaggy tattooed pagan of the first half of the last century. He was exceedingly tapu , steeped in wizardry and mysticism. Often the missionaries besought him to become a Christian, but the grim old warlock scoffed at the Rongo Pai. “Hu!” he grunted, “what is your Karaiti? Who was he? My god is Kahukura, the god whose sign is the rainbow. As for yours, your Karaiti—he is a poriro , a misbegotten!” And at last the sorely pained missionary abandoned in despair the hopeless task of plucking the ancient man from the burning. Mahuraki died sixty years ago and was buried in a hole dug in the floor of his thatched hut, which was left to decay. As he lived, he died, a sturdy unregenerate pagan, and the faith of Ihu Karaiti prevailed; the bell of the Rongo Pai calls the kainga to prayers within a few paces of Mahuraki’s grave, and the tohunga’s mumblings are a forgotten creed. The tohunga himself is by no means forgotten, for one of the names of yonder lofty arrowhead of a crag that overlords Rapaki is “Mahuraki’s Head.” The original name, as we have seen, is Te Poho-o-Tamatea, which means “Tamatea’s Breast,” so named by this barefooted pioneer of Maori land surveyors by way of claiming the land for his tribespeople. In about 1849-50, when the commander of a British surveying ship made the first survey of Lyttelton Harbour and named the landscape saliencies, his Maori interpreter asked the name of this sharp peak, whereupon our old savage claimed that it was named after himself, “Te Upoko-o-Mahuraki.” It was his way of perpetuating his name and fame. But long-distance pedestrian Tamatea fairly has prior claim.
So by the foot of the greenwood tree was begun the talk of olden days that ended, as the sun declined behind the historic crags of Tamatea, on Taare Tikao’s hospitable verandah, overlooking the little village and the soft blue placid waters of the Whaka-Raupo. It was a rambling korero , wandering deviously from pakeha times into romantic ancientry, when the wild men lived in the woods and when war canoes filled with fierce tattooed eaters of men swept up and down this shining harbour of ours. The Kaumatua , describing the old industrious age of his people, told by way of example of the tribal communistic energies how great flax nets fully a quarter of a mile long used to be made for the catching of the shark in this sea arm. These immensely long seines were six or eight feet deep, and were worked by canoes, which would take one end out into mid harbour, the other being made fast, and sweep the great kupenga round the shoals of fish making their way up the harbour with the flood tide. Huge quantities of sharks and other fish were caught in this manner, a fishing fashion which was only possible under the old tribal system, when the whole strength of the hapu was available for such tasks.