Te Tihi o Kahukura. Castle Rock.
C. Beken, photo
Te Moenga o Wheke, or Wheke’s Sleeping Place.
W. A. Taylor, photo
summit rocks of Tapuwaeharuru, “The Resounding Footsteps,” a place-name met with in more than one locality in the volcanic country of the North. Far below is the little indent of Te Awa-toetoe, or “Pampas-grass stream” near the artillery barracks. Mount Pleasant, where a Ngati-Mamoe
pa
once stood, was known to the Maoris as Tauhinu-Korokio, a combination of two names of shrubs common to the ranges. Passing Castle Rock—Te Tihi o Kahukura—just on the right hand or west as we travel towards Dyer’s Pass, we have on the other hand Te Moenga o Wheke, or “Wheke’s Sleeping Place” and Ota-ranui, or “Big Peak,” the towering rough-hewn crests of the Range looking down on Cass Bay and lying east of the Summit Track. Then comes Witch Hill, with “The Ashes of Tamatea’s Camp Fire,” of which a legend later, and Te Poho o Tamatea, or “Tamatea’s Breast,” overlooking the Rapaki native settlement.
Oketeupoko, or, to divide it into its component words, O-kete-upoko, is the Maori name of the rocky heights immediately above the town of Lyttelton. It means “The Place of the Basket of Heads.” A sufficiently grim name this, remindful of the Whanga-raupo’s red and cannibal past, for the heads were human ones. When the olden warrior Te Rangi-whakaputa set out to make the shore of the Raupo Harbour his own, he encountered numerous parties of Ngati-Mamoe, who put up a fight for their homes and hunting-grounds. One of these parties of the tangata-whenua , the people of the land, he met in battle on the rocky beach of Ohinehou where the white man’s breakwaters and wharves now stand. He worsted them, and the heads of the slain he and his followers hacked off with their stone patus and axes. Some, those of the chief men, Te Rangi-whakaputa placed in a flax basket, and, bearing them up to the craggy hill-crest that towered above the beach, he set them down on a lofty pinnacle, an offering to his god of battles. There they were left, say the Maoris, he kai mo te ra, mo te manu —“food for the sun and for the birds.” “O” signifies “the place of,” “kete” basket and “upoko” head, and thus was the place named, to memorise the tattooed brown conqueror of old and the ancient people whom he dispossessed on the shores of the Whangaraupo.