RAPAKI: A VILLAGE BY THE SEA.
In the little Maori _kainga_ of 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, the _houhi_,
or _houi_, 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 other _hapus_ of the Ngai-Tahu tribe, the
Ngati-Irakehu and their kin are now half-_pakeha_ in 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-like _tekoteko_ perched 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 Maori
_kainga_, 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
[Illustration: 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
us there like so many ruined castles battered by the artillery fire
of the gods. A remnant, a _morehu_, 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 the _pakeha_ tongue 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.”
The _Kaumatua_ of Rapaki, the pleasant-mannered kindly greybeard,
Hone Taare Tikao, a gentleman of true _rangatira_ breeding
and demeanour, is the best informed man of his tribe-remnant on
the Peninsula and Port Hills history and legends and genealogical
recitals--_whakapapa_ in the Maori tongue. Tikao was born at
Akaroa over seventy years ago. He is of the Ngati-Irakehu _hapu_
of 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 old _rangatira_ who once was Native
assessor at Rapaki, and kindred people of the generation 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 or _toi_
leaves, probably in connection with the act of _tapa_-ing the
place as his possession, and from the fact of this _rapaki_,
which would be a _tapu_ one, 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 great _toa_ or
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 the _taiaha_, the Maori broadsword of hard tough _akeake_,
and the spear and the stone _mere_. All these harbour-front
villages and camping-grounds he captured from the Ngati-Mamoe who, as
Tikao says, were the fourth _iwi_--race or tribe--to occupy the
[Illustration: 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]
[Footnote 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.
[Illustration: 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.
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, an old 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 enormous _kupengas_ will 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-_pakeha_ years, 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 the
_pakeha_ fruit trees in blossom sweeten the soft air deliciously.
That patch of ploughed land behind the settlement before long will
show the first shoots of _kaanga_, 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 the _kainga_ of 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 the _pakeha_; 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 legendary
_Patu-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 a _poi_-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.”)
It is the song crooned by the women and the children in every
_kainga_ that, like slumbrous little Rapaki down yonder, sent
its young men to use rifle and bayonet beside their _pakeha_
brothers-in-arms on the thundering battlefields half a world away.