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 the _tohungas_, and he
was appealed to for auguries and omens in time of war. Each _hapu_
had its image of Kahukura, a small carved wooden figure, which was kept
in some _tapu_ place remote from the dwellings, often a secluded
flax clump, or on a high, stilt-legged platform or _whata_. 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 high
_tapu_ befitting 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, the _tohungas_ kept in
a sacred place one of the wooden figures representing Kahukura, for
_karakia_, 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 for _pakeha_ use
it would be well to save them from oblivion.
[Illustration: Te Tihi o Kahukura. Castle Rock.
_C. Beken, photo_
]
[Illustration: Te Moenga o Wheke, or Wheke’s Sleeping Place.
_W. A. Taylor, photo_
]
Otokitoki--“The Place of Axes”--is the name of Godley Head, the lofty
cliff upon which the lighthouse stands; its early-days _pakeha_ name
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 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.
[Illustration: 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
the _pa_ at 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 their _pa_
at Manuka, on the plains side of the range. Led by the scouts--the
_torotoro_--the invaders rushed upon the Ngati-Mamoe some of whom they
killed. The survivors fled over the hills to Manuka, a large _pa_
which 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 his _pa_ after 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.
[Footnote 1: This name was adopted by the late T. H. Potts for his
stone house at Governor’s Bay, directly below Kennedy’s Bush.]
[Illustration: 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-Mamoe _pas_ around 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 _pa_ 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 lofty _pa_ of Ngati-Mamoe stood three
centuries ago.
[Illustration:
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_]
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 or _mokihi_ of the
type 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.” The _tino_ or 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 the _Kaumatua_ of 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 the _kaikomako_
(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 the _kaikomako_ by 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. The
_kaikomako_ wood is used as the _kauati_, the piece which is
rubbed; the pointed rubbing stick which the operator works to and fro
is the _kaurima_. _Motu_ in these two names is a tree-clump
or grove. There are none of the ancient fire trees on the bay shores
nowadays; the _pakeha’s_ pinus 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. _Ri_ means a rope, the painter
of flax by which canoes were dragged up on shore, and _papa_ is
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 a _pa_ on the
spot where the fort of the _pakeha_ artillery-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, and done 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 average _pakeha_, 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 these _poha_ henceforth became as necessary
to the kit of a trans-“Pakihi” traveller as a water-bottle is to the
soldier in the field to-day.
[Illustration: Whaka-raupo, Lyttelton Harbour, looking south-west,
showing Quail Island.
_W. A. Taylor photo_
]
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 or _hapu_ of 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 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-name that 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,
the _tohunga_ of Akaroa.