Chapter IV.
RAPAKI: A VILLAGE BY THE SEA.
In the little Maorikaingaof Rapaki, folded away in a valley-fan of Lyttelton harbour-side, there is a tiny, steep-roofed church, of old-fashioned build, and by the side of this church stands a twisty-branched old ribbonwood tree, that in summer showers over porch and steeple its sweet, snowy blossoms, scented like the orange tree. On the lowermost bough of this knotty ribbonwood, thehouhi, orhoui, of the Natives, that stood here before the church was built, over fifty years ago, hangs the bell that calls the remnant of Ngati-Irakehu to worship; and it is this sylvan belfry that symbolises for me the intermingling of modernism and ancientry in the Rapaki of to-day. Like the otherhapusof the Ngai-Tahu tribe, the Ngati-Irakehu and their kin are now half-pakehain blood; they have intermarried with their European neighbours, and their little township, with its sixty odd souls, is scarcely to be taken at first sight for a Maori settlement. The communal house, of characteristic Native build, with its carved frontal barge-boards and its gargoyle-liketekotekoperched above the entrance, familiar to travellers in the Native districts of the North, is wanting here; but a survey of the village scheme, with its tree-shaded cottages grouped sociably about the central green space, and the hall and school-house and church, soon makes it plain that here stood an old-time Maorikainga, of totara slabs and raupo thatch, with maybe a tall stockade guarding its landward side and stretching from cliff to cliff of the little boulder-beached bay. The plan is the same; the buildings have changed, for Rapaki to-day believes in
The church bell at Rapaki, suspended from historic ribbonwood tree.E. Cowan, photo
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 usthere like so many ruined castles battered by the artillery fire of the gods. A remnant, amorehu, 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 thepakehatongue 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.”
TheKaumatuaof Rapaki, the pleasant-mannered kindly greybeard, Hone Taare Tikao, a gentleman of truerangatirabreeding and demeanour, is the best informed man of his tribe-remnant on the Peninsula and Port Hills history and legends and genealogical recitals—whakapapain the Maori tongue. Tikao was born at Akaroa over seventy years ago. He is of the Ngati-Irakehuhapuof 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 oldrangatirawho once was Native assessor at Rapaki, and kindred people of thegeneration 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 ortoileaves, probably in connection with the act oftapa-ing the place as his possession, and from the fact of thisrapaki, which would be atapuone, 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 greattoaor 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 thetaiaha, the Maori broadsword of hard toughakeake, and the spear and the stonemere. All these harbour-front villages and camping-grounds he captured from the Ngati-Mamoe who, as Tikao says, were the fourthiwi—race or tribe—to occupy the
Rapaki Village, with Tamatea’s Breast in the background.W. A. Taylor, photo
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]
[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, (towhom, 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 thepakehas. Of course Kaiapoi gave themkaurugenerally in return, merely in Maori etiquette; some are now trying to make out that thekauru(the sugar extract of thetii, or cabbage tree) was the payment for their fish.”
[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, (towhom, 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 thepakehas. Of course Kaiapoi gave themkaurugenerally in return, merely in Maori etiquette; some are now trying to make out that thekauru(the sugar extract of thetii, 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 hugetaiaha-head of a peak lording it sentry-wise over all, I thought that for beauty of setting very few Maorikaingaseven 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 thepakeha. 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 hispa. 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 andtapu.
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,kahikateaandmataii—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 namedake-rautangi, theakeof the “crying leaves” and a few other shrubs hold their little stony fort; and in Taare Tikao’s garden thekaumatuahas some treasured plants, such as the handsomerau-tawhirishrub, and the floweringhakeke, a variety ofake, the leaves of which when crushed in the hand have a lemon-like perfume; the Natives usedto boil them for thehinu 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 itwhauwhiandhouhere, here it ishouhiorhoui. It takes itspakehaname 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 shortrapakismade of this lacebark, deftly twisted and woven by their womenfolk for the ceremonial leaping parade.
In a Rapaki garden.E. Cowan, photo
In a Rapaki garden.
E. Cowan, photo
That is the tree that extends its Maorimana tapuand 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 nopuhaehae, 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 exceedinglytapu, 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 aporiro, 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 thekaingato prayers within a few paces of Mahuraki’s grave, and thetohunga’smumblings are a forgotten creed. Thetohungahimself 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 claimingthe 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 ramblingkorero, wandering deviously frompakehatimes 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. TheKaumatua, 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 greatkupengaround 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 thehapuwas available for such tasks.
Lest readers should question the dimensions of that quarter of a mile seine, let me say that in quite recent times, up to within the last thirty-five years or so, anold Ngati-Pikiao chief, the late Pokiha Taranui (better known as Major Fox), had a net nearly a mile in length, which was used on special occasions, such as the gathering of food for native meetings; the locality was Maketu village, on the shores of the Bay of Plenty. But those enormouskupengaswill never again be hauled through the fish-teeming waters.
From Tikao, too, we hear something of the poetic legend and nature-myth that steep those swart hills above Rapaki. Yon savage Poho of rhyolite, and the peaked and pinnacled cores of old volcanoes that break through the grassy hills for mile after mile, all have their tales of pre-pakehayears, of which we shall chronicle something again. Just now we may content ourselves with the gentler scenes in Rapaki valley, where the kowhai has shed its showers of gold and thepakehafruit trees in blossom sweeten the soft air deliciously. That patch of ploughed land behind the settlement before long will show the first shoots ofkaanga, or maize; there is not much grown in this island except by the Natives. The water-front, in spite of its smart new jetty for the launches, is lonelier than in the old days; for there was a time, long after the war-canoe era, when three long whaleboats were hauled up on the sand where the boulders are piled aside yonder and often these could be seen pulling down to Lyttelton laden with potatoes, corn and fruit. That bit of beach is over-rough; but a little way to the north, under the lee of a wild bit of a rocky headland thick with beautiful light bush, is a gem of a white beach, clean and hard and shining, a sandy alcove that must have been made for picnicking. And from this hillside turn in the road where we get our first glimpse of Rapaki, we may also most fitly take our sunset farewell of thekaingaof an artist’s dream.
The sun is over the range, and Tamatea’s gloomy peak is outlined in sharp symmetry against the burning west. In the deep gullies between the spear-head and the ridge of the Sacred Fire the smoky-blue mists are already forming, and wreathing and creeping around the tangled shrubberies of bush that have escaped the general massacre. The harbour lies a sheet of scarcely moving tender turquoise, just a shade lighter than the face of the famous Tikitapu, inaccurately called the Blue Lake by thepakeha; high beyond the shark’s-teeth of the peaks that someone has named the Seven Sleepers are drawn in soft blue upon the rose of the heaven above, their feet are bathed in violet, and the purple mists swim wraith-like from their hidden hollows. The sun goes, and the delicacy, the tenderness of colour, the fading of landscape details into a haze like the camp-fire smokes of the legendaryPatu-paiarehe, weave a veil of faery over the valley and the darkening sea. The little boys and girls of the settlement are still at play around the meeting-hall, and every call and every laugh come clearly through the velvet soft air. Down in a nearer dwelling, a girl is rehearsing apoi-dance song, and the lilt is familiar, the half-sad chant that begins,
“Hoki-hoki tonu mai,Te wairua o te tau.”(“Return, return again to me,The spirit of my love.”)
“Hoki-hoki tonu mai,Te wairua o te tau.”(“Return, return again to me,The spirit of my love.”)
“Hoki-hoki tonu mai,Te wairua o te tau.”(“Return, return again to me,The spirit of my love.”)
“Hoki-hoki tonu mai,
Te wairua o te tau.”
(“Return, return again to me,
The spirit of my love.”)
It is the song crooned by the women and the children in everykaingathat, like slumbrous little Rapaki down yonder, sent its young men to use rifle and bayonet beside theirpakehabrothers-in-arms on the thundering battlefields half a world away.