(All Rights Reserved.) TALES OF ROTORUA AND LEGENDS OF THE LAKES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 143, 18 June 1910, Page 13

(All Rights Reserved.) TALES OF ROTORUA AND LEGENDS OF THE LAKES.

(Specially written for the "Star," by J. COWANS)

No. 4. WHAKAREWAREWA, SCENES AND STORIES IN THE GEYSER VALLEY. "What is the meaning of the name .Whakarewarewa?" is a question that is often asked by white visitors. It is seldom safe to take the most obvious interpretation of a Maori place-name as its real meaning. Except in clearly descriptive names, it is certainly advisable to consult some trustworthy member of the local tribe before venturing on a translation. In the case of Whakarewarewa, an old Tuhourangi. chief, Mita, Taupopoki, gives mc the explanation of the name. There are two fenMothed, steep-sided email hills, called Te Whakarewarewa and Te Puia, rising from the famous Geyeer Valley. These were once fortified strongholds or pas, and have an authentic history dating back for about SOO years. The original and full name of the first-named hill, Te Whakarewaxewa, is "Te WhakarewaTewatanga-o-te-ope-a-Wahiao, 3, which means "The Upspringing of Wahiao's War Party." About 200 years ago the chief Wahiao i('old Miba's ancestor) assembled an army cf warriors at the foot of this Mil, in order to march on an expedition against a hestile tribe. As was customary, a iwar-dance was held before setting out on !the inarch. The "ope," or army, paraded in several ranks, one behind the other, and each with its chief on the flank, lAt ,the "word of command, each rank in succession sprang up from its kneeling position, wxfch spear at the and leaped into the wild dance of the "peruperu," to jfche sound of a terrific war-song. This up-leaping, the "Whakarewarewatanga," of the warriors, was the incident that gave its name to the pa which Wahiao ibuilt about that time on the hill-top. IThis name, in course of time, was extended to the whole valley. The steepness of the sides of the Whakarewarewa and Te Puia "pas" was a natural defence. Te Puia did not need any "maioro" or ramparts, but on that Bide of wJiakarcrwarewa which sloped snore gradually than the others a deep trench was dug, and 'both "pas" had *tuwatawaia," or stockades, of treeiferunks - as an additional protection against assault. Tβ Puia ("The Geyser," so named because of its proximity to the several great geysers of the valley) "was considered a very strong pa, though bo small. Those of its people who happened to be captured and eaten on various occasions in the caimibai raids »f old were taken while outside the pa. iWhakaxewarewa hill, now a burial-place of the Tuhourangi tribe, was, between . two and three hundred years ago, occupied by the sub-tribe Ngati-Wahiao; Te Puia, the other hill, was originally the pa of Ngati-Taoi, a hapu of the Ngati-Uenuku-Kopako section of the Arawas. Many battles and skirmishes were fought around these historic hills. Puarenga, the name of the brown, sulphurous river which flows down the Hemo Gorge and through the Geyser Valley of Te Whakarewarewa, contains a reference to the "frost" or "flowers" of sulphur, the little particles of white and yellow -sulphur often seen floating on the surface of the water. These particles of sulphur aTe likened in appearance to the f'renga 3, or pollen of the swamp plant, "raupo." The waters of Rotorua, near the Postmaster Baths and along towards the mouth of the Poarenga, are in many places strongly mineralised, because not only of the many hot springs which here flow into the lake, but-also the bitter acid sulphurous waters of the Puarenga. As an old song puts it, these pumiceous chores are "Te Kiritiri wai-Puarenga, Wfcakakawa kai o te moana." jf'The grarelly strand of the Sulphur Waters, fflhe water that makes bitter the food of the lake.") The Whakarewarewa Valley is one jgreat gorgeously-hued paint-pot, fresh from the hands of Nature's great alchemist. The coloured earths in which this part of Geyserland abounded were much sought after by the olden Maoris, for the purposes, toot only of painting their carved houses, their palisade posts and their canoeSj but also their faces and bodies. Most valuable of all was the ELokowai, or red ochre, which was procured in holes dug on the side of Pukesoa Hill, above Ohinemutu vilft.ge, and in this Whakarewarewa Valley. This ochre, when mixed with oil —preferably shark oil from the Bay of Plenty—made an excellent permanent paint for houses and carved figures. Pukepoto and Aumoana, blue clays, were chiefly obtained at the month of the Utuhina Creek. Yellow earth was called Kohai or Kowhai, from the golden-hued flowers of the tree of that name. The hue which we pakehas call maroon was by the Rotorua Maoris called poni'ni. THE LONG ROCK. Just at the back of the Whakarewarewa Valley rises the steep fern-covered lull Pohatu-roa ("Long Rock"). A winding track leads to the summit of this iheight. At the survey trigonometrical station on the MU-top the Tourist Department has placed a circular direction /table, showing the compass bearings and distances of the principal points of interest in the landscape, and many more distant places. Similar useful direction boards have been set up on Pukeroa Hill,, Ohinemutu and Mount Ngongotaha. The picture unfolded from the Long Rock trig, as one of uncommon beauty. Lakes and lakelets, ponds of all colours, steaming pools, spouting geysers, and snow-like (White "papa-kowhatu" or sinter beds are spread, out below; and all around the broken mountains build a sky-line of misty blue. Due north is Rotorua Lake, with its pyramidal island Mokoia; from the tree-shaded town the long avenue of Fenton-sireet runs like a ruled line laid out straight in the direction of Waikite Geyser. Penton-street is a straight line two miles in length. It was laid out thus on the suggestion of Captain Gilbert Mair, when the Government town of Eotorua was being surveyed in the early eighties, in a direct line from the lake ifoT Waikite Geyser, Whakaflewarewa. Many lakelets splash the green scrub with blue and white; these water sheets, come hot, some cold, lie scattered all about the Whakarewarewa Valley. Turning in the other direction, and looking southwards, there is the wild free country of volcano-land, a lawless array of Jrills and con-es and forested' ranges, stretching from Moerangi's rounded head on the left away to the Tihi-o-Tonga forested cliffs. One of the most picturesque objects in this landscape is tall Haparangi, a perfect type of a volcanic cone, with its steeply sloping ridged and hollowed sides and its crateral summit. Nearer, at the southern foot of Pohatu-roa, stretches a grassy valley.

Little hills, fern and grass covered, rise in strange swellings from the valley, and a little river, the Waipa, winds down it in lazy twisting 3 from the elopes of blue Moerangi. Away up yonder under tho rocky cliffs of Moerangi are the great springs, of coolest, clearest water that supply Rotorua town, the Whai-kapokapo and other never-failing fountains welling up from the mountain heart. Some distance up the "Waipa Valley are some dots at white, staring white against the green. These are the huts of the prisoners, the herehers, as the Maoris call them—the "tied-up"—who are engaged in the useful work of afforesting these treeless valleys and hills. Beyond, about three miles away, is the narrow pass Pareuru, between the lower slopes of Moerangi and the steep rise of Tutuhinau mountain. Through this pass ran the old Maori track to Rotokakahi, much used in the days before the Tarawera eruption, when the shores of Lakes-Tara-wera and Rotokakahi were peopled by the Tuhourangi tribe. Here, at Pareuru, is the celebrated rock of Hatupatu, bearing- strange markings like great scratches ("mea raraku"), in Maori legend the work of the forest giantess Kurangaituku, the ogre-woman with claws like, a bird's, and feathered like a bird, from whom the hero Hatupatu escaped by uttering the magical "Matiti, ilatata,"' whereupon the rj&ck opened and took him oil. Just at the southern foot of the Poha-tu-roa hill, alongside the track winding up the Waipa Valley is a solitary large puia, a cauldron of boiling white mud. It seems strangely placed here, this big mud basin, in the gra.ssy valley, far away from any other thermal vents. This, say the Maoris, is called Whanga-pipiro, and it is the very puia into which the terrible Kurangaituku ("Kura-of-the-claws") fell while chasing Hatupatu after he had left the shelter of his friendly rock; into this hole she plopped, and was boiled to death. This steaming mudrpool has something of a tapu character amongst the Maoris; it was an "uruuru-whenua," a place where offerings were made by passers-by to placate the spirit of the puia. iMaori travellers would pause -when they came to this great bubbling whitemud hole, and would throw a branch of fern or other shrub into it, repeating the short karakia, "mau c kai te manawa o tauhou"—an incantation addressed to the genus loci, and meaning, "O spirit of this place, feed thou on the heart of the stranger." If this observance were omitted, in Maori belief, a storm of rain would shortly descend and punish the wayfarer for his thoughtlessness. A STORY OF THE WAIROA GEYSER. The celebrated Wairoa Geyser, at Whakarewarewa, has a story that has not been previously told. It is curiously associated with a momentous chapter of Rotorua history, the fierce war of 1835----IS4O between the Arawa tribe and Te Waharoa's Ngati-Haua and other Waikato warrior tribes. A Maori proverb has it that women and land were the causes of all wars; in this case it wa3 a woman who, in'dk rectly, gave rise to the series of cannibal campaigns in which musket and tomahawk and. fire and pillage swept the Lakeland and the coast of the Bay of Plenty. Nga-tomokanga was one of the three wives of Haerehuka, an important chief of the Ngati-Whakaue tribe, of Ohinemutu. She became very jealous of Haerehuka's other wives, who received a greater share of the warrior-lord's attention than she did, and she brooded over thie until in her "pouritanga," her melancholy and despair, she attempted suicide in an appalling form. She was staying at Whakarewarewa, and one day while sitting beside. Te Wairoa —the pool of which was very much larger than it is at present—she suddenly rose and threw herself into the cauldron. Her friencfe managed to pull her out, but she was terribly scalded. She was carried on a lifter to Ohinemntu, to her husband's house, and as she was dying she was placed, as was customary with the Maoris, in a little wharau or temporary hut for those ■who were not long for this world. In two or three days ehe expired. But while she was lying there dying, a man and girl of the village entered the little hut for surreptitious lovemaking, regardless o£ the sick woman. This became known, and Haerehuka i was in a fury of anger when he heard of the desecration of his wife's tapu "dying-house." It was an unforgivable insult, and he looked around: for utu, or revenge. For some mysterious reaeon he did not seek to square accounts with the man, Tama-Whakangaro, who had trespassed in his wife's sickroom. Instead, quite after the unaccountable fashion of the Maori, he sought out and killed a man who had nothing at all to do with it. He had to kill someone, and deliberately selected a man named Hunga, a chief of the Arawa, who ■lived on the opposite side of the lake, and who was closely connected with the heads of the Ngati-Haua tribe, of the Waikato and the Upper Waihou Valley. His object apparently was to draw down the vengeance of Ngati-Haua, who were famous warriors and well armed with muskets, on the NgatiWhakaue tribe, to whom the man and young woman who had offended him belonged , . It was a curiously roundabout but truly Maori way of obtaining "utu." Of course Haerehuka himself would have to join his tribe and fight against Ngati-Haua when they came for their "utu"; but that again had nothing fro do with the case. ISo Haerehuka, going across the lake to one of his settlements, Te Waerenga, on the north side of the lake, announced his intentions to his family and followers. He quickly carried out his resolve. He launched his war-canoe, and with a band of his men, paddled along the lakeehore to Puhirua, where 'he surprised poor Hunga at his house. The murderous chief advanced as if to greet Hunga with the nose-pressing greeting of the "hongi," but,just as he reached him he enatched his sharp steel tomahawk from his waist-belt, and dealt Hunga a blow on the temple that killed him instantly. Haerehuka- and his party immediately returned and announced what had been done, and the tribe, realising the inevitable eerious consequences, set about their preparations for war. The great Pukeroa Pa, on the hill overlookkrg the lake, was put in order and the stockade strengthened, and . stores of provisions were gathered in. The savage war that-. followed, and Te Waharoa's attack on Pukeroa and Ohinemutu, is a matter of well-known Rotorua history. The slaying of Hunga occurred at the end of tie year 1535. It is said that Haerehuka also had a quarrel with hie tribe in connection with, the flax-trade and the location of the white.traders; but that it was the incident just related that precipitated the tragedy.