![Thumbnail: [No. 46 (March 1964) page 12]](/journals/teaohou/images/Mao46TeA/Mao46TeA012(t150).jpg)
Ponga and Puhihuia
The Story So Far
The tribes concerned in the story are Nga-iwi at Maungawhau (now Mount Eden in Auckland) and Ngati-Kahukoka at Awhitu and Tipitai (on the South Manukau Heads).
Ponga, a young chief from Awhitu who is not of very high rank, and Puhihuia, the beautiful high-born daughter of the chief of Maungawhau, fall in love when a party of young people from Awhitu visits the people of Maungawhau. They secretly agree that Puhihuia will return with Ponga; she runs after them as they are going overland to their canoe at Onehunga, and they reach the canoe in safety.
During the voyage back home, the young chief in charge of the party (he is the son of the chief of Awhitu, and of much higher rank than Ponga) tries to win Puhihuia for himself. When she rejects him, he becomes very jealous of Ponga. The canoe arrives at the beach at Tipitai, and is met by the people of the pa. While it is still in the water, this young chief tells his father that Ponga has treacherously stolen Puhihuia from her home and that she must be taken back there at once, as her people would otherwise come to take her by force, and to avenge themselves for the insult. (There has in the past been fighting between the tribes.)
A Difficult Decision
All the people of Awhitu know that the people of Maungawhau will come for Puhihuia, and their chief has to make the difficult decision as to whether to send her back; if she does stay, it may well cause the death of many of his people. Finally, mostly because of her high birth and the ties of blood between the two tribes, he allows her to remain with them as Ponga's wife.
At the beginning of this last instalment the people of Awhitu are awaiting the arrival of the warriors of Maungawhau.
Readers may be interested in the photograph of a painting of Mount Eden, once Puhihuia's home, on Page 26 on this issue of ‘Te Ao Hou’. The young artist Selwyn Muru portrays it as it appears to him today, some three hundred years after the events in this story: a tall hill with a dark crater, in the midst of a sea of red tin roofs.
