Chapter II.

THE PORT HILLS AND THEIR NAMES.

It is the Port Hills’ nomenclature, perhaps, that carries the most poetic suggestions of any of the Canterbury place-names, and here, perhaps, the dwellers on the heights in the days to come when all these Plain-ward-looking slopes are dotted with pretty homes, will seek inspiration in such legendry and history of the soil as we of the present generation have preserved. There are names of dignity and beauty clustered about those old lava-built crags and ruined towers and tors past which the Summit Road goes a thousand feet above the city.

Finest of all is the Maori name of Castle Rock, that from one point in the Heathcote Valley looks like a colossal howitzer threatening the Plains. To the old Maoris it was Te Tihi o Kahukura, “The Citadel of Kahukura,” otherwise “The Pinnacle of the Rainbow.” The explanation brings in a reference to the religion of the tattooed pagan pioneers who explored those hills and plains, and planted their palisaded hamlets by creek-side and in the sheltered folds of the ranges. Kahukura—Uenuku in the North Island—was the principal deity for what may be termed everyday use among the ancient Ngai-Tahu. He was the spirit guardian most frequently invoked by thetohungas, and he was appealed to for auguries and omens in time of war. Eachhapuhad its image of Kahukura, a small carved wooden figure, which was kept in sometapuplace remote from the dwellings, often a secluded flax clump, or on a high, stilt-legged platform orwhata. The celestial form of Kahukura was the rainbow; literally the name means“Red Garment.” Omens were drawn in days of war from the situation of the arch of the “Red Garment” when it spanned the heavens. The name is sometimes applied to that phenomenon of days of mist in the mountains, the “sun-dog,” from which auguries were drawn. So when the Natives gave the term to the Castle Rock they were conferring upon it a name of hightapubefitting its bold and commanding appearance.

And this is not the only Hills name that holds a memory of the cult of the Rainbow-God. On the tussocky slope where the track goes over from the St. Martins tram terminus to the Summit Road above Rapaki, joining the hill track near Witch Hill, thetohungaskept in a sacred place one of the wooden figures representing Kahukura, forkarakia, consultation in time of need, and the spot became known as “Te Irika o Kahukura,” or “The Uplifting of the Rainbow God.” In time the name was applied to the Cashmere Hills generally. And the lofty Sugarloaf peak immediately to the north of Dyer’s Pass, was Te Heru o Kahukura, which being interpreted, is “Kahukura’s Head-Comb.” So the olden folk occasionally displayed a fine taste in names; and although some of those names may be a trifle long forpakehause it would be well to save them from oblivion.

Otokitoki—“The Place of Axes”—is the name of Godley Head, the lofty cliff upon which the lighthouse stands; its early-dayspakehaname was Cachalot Head. Working south from the lighthouse we presently come to the deep bay of Te Awa-parahi, where a little farmstead stands in its well-hidden nest, between the lowering peaks. Nearer Lyttelton, just where the Zigzag Road goes over Evans Pass to Sumner, are the precipitous

Te Tihi o Kahukura. Castle Rock.C. Beken, photo

Te Tihi o Kahukura. Castle Rock.

C. Beken, photo

Te Moenga o Wheke, or Wheke’s Sleeping Place.W. A. Taylor, 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

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 thetangata-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 followershacked off with their stonepatusand 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.

Witch Hill and The Giant’s Causeway.W.A. Taylor, photo

Witch Hill and The Giant’s Causeway.

W.A. Taylor, photo

Orongomai, a melodious name when properly pronounced, is the old Ngai-Tahu name of Cass Peak, the rhyolite height which lifts 1780 ft. above the waters of Governor’s Bay, overlooking the remnant of the ancient forest at Kennedy’s Bush. It means “The Place Where Voices are Heard,” or, literally, “Place of Sounding-hitherward.” The name has fittingly enough been given by Mr. Ell to the stone house for visitors which stands under the ribbonwood trees at the head of the Kennedy’s Bush Valley. The story is that when Te Rangi-whakaputa and his followers landed, in their search for the Ngati-Mamoe, after taking thepaat Ohinetahi, in Governor’s Bay, the scouts entered the bush, and at the foot of Cass Peak heard the voices of a party of men in the bush; these men were Ngati-Mamoe, who had come across from theirpaat Manuka, on the plains side of the range. Led by the scouts—thetorotoro—the invaders rushed upon the Ngati-Mamoe some of whom they killed. The survivors fled over the hills to Manuka, a largepawhich it is believed stood on a knoll at the foot of the range not far from Tai Tapu. (Mr. Ell, on being told of this tradition,said that he believed the site of Manuka would be found to be the spur running into an old swamp upon which Mr. Holmes’s homestead is built, on the old coach road south of Lansdowne, and about two miles from Tai Tapu.) The Manuka village, although a strong defensive position, was stormed and taken by Te Rangi-whakaputa. In the vicinity, it is said by the Maoris, there was a shallow cave under the rocky hillside which was used by some of the Ngati-Mamoe as a dwelling-place; it is known in tradition as Te Pohatu-whakairo, or “The Carved Rock.” No doubt it was so called from the natural markings sometimes seen on the faces of these overhanging rock shelters, such as were used as dwelling and camping-places in many parts of the South Island by the ancient people.

Ohinetahi[1]pa, defended with a palisade of split tree-trunks and with ditch and parapet, stood near the shore at the head of Governor’s Bay two hundred years ago. After the place had been captured from the Ngati-Mamoe by Te Rangi-whakaputa, his son Manuwhiri occupied it with a party of Ngai-Tahu. This chief Manuwhiri had many sons, but only one daughter, and he named hispaafter his solitary girl, “The Place of the One Daughter.” The Governor’s Bay school now occupies the spot where this long-vanished stockaded hamlet stood.

[1]This name was adopted by the late T. H. Potts for his stone house at Governor’s Bay, directly below Kennedy’s Bush.

Orongomai, the Place of the Voices, Kennedy’s Bush.W. A. Taylor, photo

Orongomai, the Place of the Voices, Kennedy’s Bush.

W. A. Taylor, photo

The name of Cooper’s Knobs, the highest of the three tooth-like crags lifting abruptly above the head of Lyttelton Harbour to an altitude of 1880 feet, memorises, like so many others, an incident of the head-hunting cannibal days. After the Rangi-whakaputa and his merry men had conquered the various Ngati-Mamoepasaround the harbour, they

found frequent diversion in hunting out stray members of the fugitive

hapus

and converting them to a useful purpose through the medium of the oven. Often there were bush skirmishes, and although the Ngati-Mamoe frequently put up a good fight, they usually got the worst of the encounter. Mawete, the chief of Ngati-Mamoe, and a party of men from Manuka

were on their way across the range to Lyttelton Harbour to fish for sharks when they were ambuscaded in the bush just below Cooper’s Knobs by a band of Ngai-Tahu warriors. The Ngati-Mamoe chief and most of his followers were killed in the skirmish that followed, with the Maori weapons of wood and stone, the spear, the

taiaha

, and the sharp-edged

patu

, and their bodies went into the oven, for the Maori’s commissariat in that age was the flesh of his foeman. And the Mamoe leader’s name still clings to that wild craggy spot where he met his death blow, for the peak which the

pakeha

has named Cooper’s Knobs was called by the Ngai-Tahu conquerors Omawete, meaning the place where Mawete fell.

Beyond again are the peaks of Otuhokai and Te Tara o Te Raki-tiaia; below the harbour head curves into the bay of Te Rapu. Next as we go up to meet the hills of Banks Peninsula is the bold precipice of Te Pari-mataa, or “Obsidian Cliff,” with the great volcanic dyke of Otarahaka, and then our present pilgrimage ends, for we are right under the hugely parapeted castle hill of Te Ahu-patiki—Mt. Herbert—with its level top, where a loftypaof Ngati-Mamoe stood three centuries ago.

Cooper’s Knobs Dog’s Head Pinnacle Hill

View from Cass Peak, showing Cooper’s Knobs, Dog’s Head, and Pinnacle Hill.W. A. Taylor, photo

View from Cass Peak, showing Cooper’s Knobs, Dog’s Head, and Pinnacle Hill.

W. A. Taylor, photo

Te Whaka-raupo is the ancient name of Port Cooper or Lyttelton Harbour. The name sometimes has been given as Te Waka-raupo, which means “The Canoe of Raupo reeds,” otherwise a raft ormokihiof thetype so often used on the South Island rivers. This, however, is not correct. “Whaka” here is the Ngai-Tahu dialectical form of “Whanga,” which is a harbour or bay, as in Whangaroa and Whanganui. Whaka-raupo, therefore, means “Harbour of the raupo reed.” Thetinoor exact place from which the harbour takes this name is Governor’s Bay, at the head of which there was a swamp filled with a thick and high growth of these reeds. It was here, at the head of Governor’s Bay, that the stockaded pa Ohinetahi stood; it was occupied by Te Rangi-whakaputa’s son after the dispersal of the Ngati-Mamoe tribe in these parts more than two hundred years ago.

Corsair Bay and Cass Bay, as theKaumatuaof Rapaki tells us, have Maori names which contain a reference not only to the ancient forests which clothed the slopes of the Port Hills and descended to the sandy beachside, but to one of the vanished practices of the native people, fire-making by wood-friction. Corsair Bay was named by Te Rangi-whakaputa, Motu-kauati-iti, meaning “Little Fire-making Tree-grove,” and Cass Bay was Motu-kauati-rahi, or “Great Fire-making Tree-grove.” The bays were so designated because on the shores and the slopes above there were plentiful thickets of thekaikomako(pennantia corymbosa), the small tree into which Mahuika, a Polynesian Prometheus, threw fire from his finger-tips, so that it should not be extinguished by Maui’s deluge. A myth which to the Maori quite satisfactorily accounts for the readiness with which fire can be obtained from thekaikomakoby the simple process of taking a dry block of the wood and rubbing a groove in it with a stick of hardwood—with, of course an incantation to give more power to the elbow—until the dust and the shavings become ignited. Thekaikomakowood is used as thekauati, the piece which is rubbed; the pointed rubbing stick which the operator works to and fro is thekaurima.Motuin these two names is a tree-clump or grove. There are none of the ancient fire trees on the bay shores nowadays; thepakeha’spinus insignis and cocksfoot grass have long supplanted them.

Ri-papa is the full and correct name of Ripa Island, in Lyttelton Harbour. It is an historic and appropriate name, carrying one back to the ancient days when the brown sailors hauled their long canoes up on its little shelving beach.Rimeans a rope, the painter of flax by which canoes were dragged up on shore, andpapais a flat rock. Ripapa is a white man’s fort these days, but centuries before a British gun was planted there it was a fortified place, though the weapons of its garrison would hardly carry as far as those of the present coast defence force. The Ngati-Mamoe three hundred years ago had a small village on this rocky islet, commanding the harbour-gate; it was defended with a palisade. But when the Rangi-whakaputa conquered the inhabitants of Te Whaka-raupo, he took the island and named it Ripapa—its first name is forgotten—and he built apaon the spot where the fort of thepakehaartillery-men now stands.

Quail Island, the dark-cliffed isle of the lepers, is known by the Maoris as Otamahua. Herein is a reference to an era when the island was a birding ground of the olden race. Many sea-birds, gulls and puffins and divers, bred in the crannies of its fire-made rocky shores, and the mainland Maoris canoed across on fowling expeditions. The eggs (hua) of the sea-fowl were esteemed delicacies, especially by the children (tamariki), who were fond of roasting them on their island expeditions.Manu-huahua, or birds cooked and preserved in their own fat, anddone up in sea-kelp receptacles, as is the way in the Stewart Island mutton-bird industry to-day, also formed a large portion of the native supply of winter food in these parts.

Looking out from the Port Hills the olden Maori wayfarer surveyed the far-spreading Plains and the name handed down from the days of the Waitaha tribe, the forerunners of the Ngati-Mamoe, came to his lips: “Nga Pakihi Whakatekateka a Waitaha.” It is a barbed-wire fence, perhaps, to the averagepakeha, yet abbreviated it is not inappropriate as a Plains homestead name. In the long ago, before water-races and artesian wells, the trails across the Plains from the Waimakariri to the Selwyn and the Selwyn to the Rakaia and the Ashburton were weary and thirsty tracks, for there were very few springs of drinking water and the Maori disliked the water of the cold glacial torrents. So the tired and thirsting trail-parties, swagging it across the wastes of tussock and cabbage trees, came to call the district “The Deceptive Plains of Waitaha,” for they discovered that it was unwise to rely upon springs and streams on the long tramp. They made water-bags of seaweed, the great bull kelp, which they split and made watertight, and thesepohahenceforth became as necessary to the kit of a trans-“Pakihi” traveller as a water-bottle is to the soldier in the field to-day.

The Heathcote River, whose native name has been abbreviated to Opawa, was originally the Opaawaho, which means “The outer, or seaward,pa,” otherwise “An outpost.” A tribe-section orhapuof the Ngai-Tahu, about two hundred years ago, built a village on the left bank of the river, on a spot slightly elevated above the surrounding swampy country; the exact spot must have been

Whaka-raupo, Lyttelton Harbour, looking south-west, showing Quail Island.W. A. Taylor photo

Whaka-raupo, Lyttelton Harbour, looking south-west, showing Quail Island.

W. A. Taylor photo

close to the present Opawa Railway Station. The name of the village was Poho-areare, or “pigeon breasted,” after some chief of those days, and it was because of its situation, the outermost

Kainga

of the Plains and swamp dwellers, commanding the passage down the Heathcote to the sea, that the river became known as the stream of “The Outpost.” Here it may be recalled that the

hapus

who lived where Christchurch City now stands were given a nickname by the outer tribes at Kaiapoi and elsewhere. They were called “O-Roto-Repo,” or more briefly, “O-Roto-re’,” which means “In the Swamp,” or the “Swamp-Dwellers.” They lived in a marshy region which had its compensations in the way of abundant food, for the swamps and creeks swarmed with eels and wild duck. The upper part of the Heathcote was the O-mokihi or “The Place of Flax-Stalk Rafts.” The

tino

of the name, the place where it had its origin, was an ancient lagoon-swamp at the foot of the Cashmere Hills, which the river drained. Another version of the Heathcote name is Wai-Mokihi, or “Flax-stalk Raft Creek.” Lower down the Heathcote, where the broad tidal shallows are, the Maoris gave the place an equally appropriate name; they called it O-hikaparuparu, which may be translated as “The spot where So-and-so fell in the mud,” or “Stick-in-the-mud,” which serves equally well to-day. About Redcliffs, where the tramline passes round from the broads and under the great cave-riddled lava precipice, there belongs a rather beautiful name, Rae-Kura, which is more modern than most of the other Native designations. It means “Red-glowing Headland,” or, let us say, “Rosy Point.”

Immeasurably more ancient is Rapanui, which is the name of Shag Rock, in the Estuary; a place-namethat could very well be appropriated by some of the near-by residents. It is a far-travelled name, for it was brought by the first Maori immigrants from Hawaiki, just as our white settlers brought their Canterburys and Heathcotes and Avons with them. We find it on the map of the Pacific some thousands of miles away; it is one of the Native names of Easter Island, that strange relic of a drowned Polynesian land in Eastern Oceania. And further out still, there is Tuawera, the Cave Rock at Sumner, to which belongs a legend of love and wizardry and revenge, to be narrated at another time, in which the chief figures were a girl from Akaroa named Hine-ao or “Daughter of the Dawn,” the chief Turaki-po, of “The Outpost” village, and Te Ake, thetohungaof Akaroa.

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