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LEO FOWLER
RAKAU TAMATEA REKE
Somewhere between eight hundred and a thousand years ago, while events of great importance were shaping the destinies of Europe, somewhere, that is about the time the Saxons and the Danes were contesting for a foothold in England, a tiny puriri seed fluttered on to the forest floor in a river valley on the east coast of the north island of New Zealand.
As time passed and its branches began to spread, it began to harbour more and more of the bush birds until it knew them all. Kahu the hawk flew high above it, but kokako the crow, kakariki the parrokeet, koko the tui, korimako the bell bird, and many another, visited it and made their nests in it for countless bird-generations.
Year after year it saw kohikora and pipiwharauroa, the cuckoos, bring in another spring, and saw them lay their eggs in the nest of poor riro-riro the robin. Kou kou and ruru, the owls kept it company by night. Pihere the robin and pihipihi (which pakehas were later to call the blight bird) were among its especial favourites, for they devoured the minute insects which moles
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ted its bark. It knew the ground birds, also, huis, weka, kiwi, kakapo and the others. Except for an occasional swooping raid from the hawk species, they grew rapidly and lived fearlessly, so that even keruru the pigeon had nothing to fear.
About the year 1350 the great migration of canoes reached Aotearoa from Hawaiiki and the peace and solemn quietude of the East Coast were invaded and shattered.
Paoa and his men found their way down the coast, settled a little lower down at a place they called Turanga and began to press around up the coast and inland. They became the Rongo Whakaatu and the Aitanga Mahaki and they occupied all land around what is now Poverty Bay. Paikea came and landed at Whangara, a few miles from our tree.
The peace of the forest was broken. These strange new creatures called men, preyed upon the children of Tane, the birds. They made snares and cut spears to take the birds of the forest, disdaining not even the smallest of them miromiro the wren. They turned loose the kiore, the rats they had brought with them from Hawaiiki, until they were well established in the forest, and then laid snares on their tracks and took them as they took the birds. What they did not eat at the time, they stored in gourds for the winter.
Trees they felled, with stone adzes and pokai, and with fire, to build their canoes and their houses and their stockaded forts. Many cast a covetous eye on our tree, which was now grown a giant some 6 or 7 hundred years old, a youngster still and in the prime of life, but a stalwart trunk, straight and true for some thirty feet from the ground to the lowest branch. But some forgotten chief of Ngati Konohe put a small tapu on it to preserve it and it was left to grow.
Somewhere around the 1500's when Britain was being torn in strife with Scotland and with Wales, the descendants of Paikea in turn also had their differences to contend with. Porourangi, great-great grandson of Paikea had two wives, and one of them turned from him to his brother. So it was from his second wife, Tamatea Toi, that there descended the main line of Paikea, the tribes Whanau a Iri te Kura, Te Aitanga a Hauiti, and Whanau a Rua-Taupari which collectively are still known to men as the Wahineiti signifying their descent from Porourangi's smaller or second wife. From Porourangi descended the great tribes of the coast, those we have mentioned and those who sprang up further north, Ngati Uepohatu, Ngati Pokai, and Ngati Ruawaipu, all of whom are collectively designated by the title of Ngati Porou.
Still our tree gathered the years in her branches. In the reign of King James I, in the land of Ngati Porou, there was Tamahai, mighty toa of Whanau Apanui, and unbeaten master of the Taiaha. He came down the Coast from north of Hicks Bay, which men in those days called Wharekahika, as far as Turanga where he fought and bested the great red-haired chief Kuriteko. He paused at Whangara almost within sight of our tree, to make a friendly pact with Konohe, ancestor of the present Ngati Konohe. Back up the coast he pressed, to fight, or exchange insults with, a variety of chiefs. He had many adventures, a bout with Makahuri at Waiomatatini, and a skirmish at Ruatoria wherein he, accidentally some say, slew the Queen Hine Tapora and buried her body in the pit of the slave Toria, thereby gaining the locality its name. At Tikitiki he attacked the small dark ugly man Putaanga, who bested him in wordy warfare.
At Rangitukia he had differences with Hikutaia, another small man who, however, likened himself to the small greenstone adze which felled even the mightiest of totara.
These belligerent junketings of Tamahai are part of the story of our tree, for because of his slaying of Hine Tapora there took place one of those wars which the Maori so enjoyed. The story of that war is too long a story to be told here. Many great chiefs were involved in it, among them Konohe, Pona Patukia, Karuai, Mahiti and Rerekohu. Rerekohu spoke out of turn and made himself unpleasant, with the result that he found himself at the wrong end of the fight and, to escape ignominy and perhaps a haangi, gave to Konohe his daughter Tataingaoterangi.
THE TREE IS FELLED
It was somewhere in the early 1700's, while Clive was cavorting about in India, that Konohe took Tataingaoterangi back to Whangara and wedded her to his son. From that union was born Hinematioro, in whose blood converged the lines of greatness of all the East Coast chiefs, and she was so distinguished in her lineage that her fame spread far and wide as the great Queen of the East Coast.
The rise of Hinematioro was the cause of the fall of our tree.
In the person of Hinematioro there occurred one of the fusings of the leading lines of exalted descent which made her the outstanding chief-tainess of her time. She became known throughout the country as the great Queen of the East Coast, though, because her mother had been given to Konohe, there are some who claim her greatness was modified by that circumstance. However, it may be expected that there were few who were game to make such a statement at that time, or they might have come to a grim end.
To so great a person there came, in those ancient Maori times, a constant flow of gifts. Food was here by right of mere being, and tributes of birds, fish, roots, rats and berries flowed in from all who desired to show their loyalty. There would be gifts too of toys, kites, jumping jacks, and other trifles beloved of Maori children, and their elders too.
As far as can be gathered Hinematioro was
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The handing over of Rakau Tamatea Reke was done with some formality. Mr Hira Paenga (right), on behalf of the Whangara Tribal Committee, handed the relic over to Mr Rongo Halbert (centre), chairman of the Maori Museum Committee. Left is Mr Leo Fowler, secretary of the museum committee and author of this articlie. Mr Fowler is manager of 2XG radio station.
Meanwhile it became necessary to have a food store whereby the gifts of food which continued to pour in in honour of Hinematioro could be suitably stored and displayed. And so our tree, which had been tapu'd and set aside for just such a purpose, was selected to become the storehouse of Hinematioro. The tohungas came and performed their karakia to take the tapu off the tree that it might be cut. The leader of the working party, himself a chief of high rank, would approach the tree and make the first chip in its bark with his toki-pou-tangata, the greenstone adze, set in a richly carved haft, which was carried only by chiefs of high rank. The resultant chip would be offered to Tane, god of forests and birds. Then the men would move in and the felling of the tree would begin. They would chip away with their heavy stone adzes until they had gouged out a double ring around the tree, and the wood between those rings would be laboriously removed with a long handled, very heavy stone adze called a ‘poki’, hafted horizontal to the handle, like a chisel, instead of at right angles like an adze.
In due course the long arduous felling would be completed and our tree, with its smaller branches removed entirely, and the larger branches trimmed back near to the trunk would be dragged away, with many incantations and chants, to its resting place close to where the town of Tolaga Bay now stands.
It must have taken a hole at least six feet deep and at least two feet in diameter to have accommodated the ponderous butt of that mighty puriri log. Digging this hole with the stone and wooden implements then in use was no joke, but slaves were plenty and time mattered little, so finally the hole would be dug, and the last hand
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ful of soil removed by the diggers. The front of the hole would have sloped outward at the top, and the back of the hole protected by a lining of heavy saplings to prevent the mighty butt from gouging into it.
A gigantic frame work, or staging or gantry would have been erected and over this would have been thrown a rope of twisted flax. Hundreds of men would have hauled and pushed, and pulled and struggled until finally the enormous tree would be firmly erect in its hole. As it was the storehouse of a person of such eminence it would, of course have been given a name. “Rakau Tamatea Reke” was the name given, in honour of that Tamatea Toi, great ancestress of the whole Wahineiti.
In due course a small carved receptacle, of the type we have come to know as a pataka would have been made, richly carved, and placed in position at the top of the pole storehouse some twenty feet or more above ground-level, and if old traditions are to be believed above fly level too.
The food store would then become a ‘timanga’ or ‘komanga’ and would then be thickly hung with food as long as Hinematioro's mana persisted. It would have been standing there for some 17 or 20 years when a strange ship would sail into the bay of Uawa, which we now know as Tolaga Bay. This ship would have been commanded by a young naval lieutenant, named James Cook whom we remember as having become a collier's apprentice some 18 years before.
Time went on, Hinematioro married and had children. These children in turn had children, and of them was Te Kani a Takirau, the greatest chief of the East Coast, who was invited to be the Maori king. Within the two generations between Hinematioro and Tekaniatakirau, many things happened. The Ngapuhi raided from far off Bay of Islands killing hundreds of East Coast people and stacking the racking ovens with their flesh as prelude to many a cannibal feast. Then came other pakehas, the whalers and the traders. Then the missionaries and the old ways of warfare, slavery and cannibalism gradually passed away. With them passed Hinematioro, lost, as an old old woman, in the welter of wars between the tribes.
But the tree remained and it saw all things. It saw the coming of Te Kooti, and the passing of the Hauhaus. It saw the beginnings of pakeha settlement and the spread of prosperity for both races. It too, though cherished by the tribe, felt the keen appetite of the passing years.
Many times its base rotted in the ground, but each time it fell it was re-erected, a litle shorter than before.
Somewhere between the time it saw Maori volunteers depart to fight for the Great white Queen in the Boer War, and the time the first world war started, it was removed to Whangara. Here again it was erected. It saw the men of the first Maori battalion come back from Hitler's war.
But during these years its deterioration increased and it was recently decided by the Whangara tribal committee to transfer it from its outdoor position on the grounds of the Whiterea Marae, to the Gisborne Museum. Here it will be preserved and erected in a suitable display. It will continue to belong to Ngati Konohe but a wider circle of people will be able to see this famous relic, the only one of its kind, which has witnessed over a thousand years of history here on the East Coast, and may exist to see another thousand.
Ngati Poneke
Comes of Age
The Ngati Poneke Association will celebrate its twenty-first birthday during Queen's birthday weekend next year. There will be an announcement over the radio later, but all those who were associated with the club in former days will be especially welcome.
In 1957 it will be twenty-one years from the date when Sir Apirana Ngata and Kingi Tahiwi set up the Association as we now know it as part of an effort to build the carved house at Waitara.
However, Te Ao Hou is told that before 1936 there existed a Ngati Poneke Organization which was not mentioned in the article we published about Ngati Poneke in our issue 12. We must apologise for this omission; the full story as told by Mr Arapeta Awatere is that on 29th March 1929 a group of people in Wellington formed an independent organization for welfare and relief work. This group had previously been part of a Maori group in the Hutt Valley, set up for the same purpose, but from 1929 they operated independently and called themselves the Ngati Poneke club. They put in money each week to be used by their members when in need, they operated a soup kitchen which was of great importance for city Maoris during the depression and they collected food from beaches near to Wellington to keep this kitchen going.
In 1935, some members of this group formed a concert party which soon had a membership of eighty and trained and performed in a hired hall. In 1936, the building of the Waitara house and the interest of Sir Apirana Ngata and others gave the association the form in which we now know it. (See Te Ao Hou, issue 12).
The Ngati Poneke Club is trying to make a full register of old members, dating from 1929. Information from anyone who was connected with the club at any stage would be warmly appreciated.
The birthday celebrations will be planned to appeal both to old and young. There will be Maori dancing, discussions on the past and future of Ngati Poneke, and on general Maori subjects; and there will also be some educational activities.
