TUNA LAGOONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 162, 10 July 1926, Page 21

TUNA LAGOONS.

EEL SWAMPS OF KAWA.

TAXES OF THE OLDEN SATS.

(By J.C.)

On the run from Te Awamutu to Otoxohanga, after crossing the insignificant looking but historically famous Puniu River, the Main Trunk trains pass between two remarkable volcanic cones , and over the one-time morasses and lagoons called Kawa. The place i 3 a storyland as well as a region of eyepleasing landscape. Gracefully-moulded Kawa Mountain, overlooking the nonrien ■ pasture levels of the drained swamps, is really a wonderful cone, presenting on the side facing the railway a deep hollow, the ancient crater, and on the other flank, the eastern, a symmetrical rounded breast carved by the ancient Maori fort-builders in scarp after scarp of defensive works. On the other side of the railway, the west, Kakepuku Mountain—he and beautiful Kawa were husband and wife in the local Maori folk lore —seems to keep guard like some stern old sentry over the ancient foodteeming valleys of the Waipa. To the south, again, is a minor mountain, the Puketarata Range, of which the natives say in their highly imaginative fashion that it was the rejected lover of Kawa. Here is the "eternal triangle"; here, of old, too, the warrier watched the rich eel preserves, for Kawa's eels were celebrated all over this island. The Maori, indeed, set amazing store by the now unwatered eel lagoons and slow-running dark streams of the Kawa swamps. Many years ago, when I rode past those raupo and flax swamps and their calm, shining, shallow lakes, and saw the eel-weirs of the native owners in many a creek, I heard from a Maori companion stories of the wars that were waged for the possession of those immensely-desired "tuna," the kinds failed "pnhi" and whitiki. The silver eels of the Kawa, smoke-dried and packed in baskets, were sent far over the eounfry as a commodity in barter, and they were especially valued by the tribes ' living on the sea coast. The present notes are from information given in more recent times, chiefly by my friend Raureti te Huia, of Mangatoatoa. The ancient owners of this country over which the railway now runs between Kakepuku and Kawa mountains were the Ngati-Uru tribe, whose villages were at Ouruwhero and elsewhere on the plain; they had cultivat-ons and strongholds, too, up on Kakepuka; there are still to be seen the fern-grown earthworks of their refuge forts right on the summit of the mountain. Fights For Eel Weirs. The principal food of the land (says the Moon story) was the "tuna," and it became the cause of many wars. Tribe fought tribe for the ownership of the several "rauwiri," or eel weirs, called '•pa-tuna" in other parts. The principal rauwiri were all given names, and their ownership was strictly defined. Various hapus of Ngati-Maniapoto had rights in its great swamps, and periodically set their nets and eel-baskets and made great hauls, and these eel-taking times were occasions of very great importance among the tribes. A rauwiri was constructed by driving stout stakes into the bed of the creek and filling up the interstices closely with fern, thus confining its waters to a V-shaped channel; the eels, when making their migrations in huge numbers, were caught in nets made of flax and in "hinaki," cleverly-made receptacles, closely woven of the tough elastic creeping plant called mangemange. The Mangawhero Creek, which meandered along from these lagoons to the Waipa River, was the great eel river, and in it and its small tributaries, creeping along from the oozy depths of the great marsh, the rauwiri were constructed, and the owners thereof ever kept jealous watch to see that no greedy plundering party interfered with , their rights. The names of all of these fishing V's are preserved. These are examples—Te Tarere, at the mouth of the Mangawhero (this was owned by Ngati-Ngaupaka, or Ngati-Paiariki); Te Tawa, Te Roti-parera ("duck lake") — this eel-weir had five mouths, Te Toatoa, Te Manuka, Te Rautawhiri, Pangopango ("black"),' Tere-Ngarara, Taumoana, Kumi, Papaki, Te Maire, Te Waikoka (this was devoted to eelcatches for the great chief Tukorehu), Te Ara-Kopara (the property of the old chief and tohunga Hopa te Rangiamini, ' whom pioneer families on the King Country frontier will well remember). Numerous other names were given mc, with details of their building and ; ownership, all indicating the truly enormous value of these food preserves to the olden Maori. The present-day settlers on those reclaimed swamp lands might find in those ancient place-names suitable designations for their homes. There are old Maoris of Te Kopua and Kawa and the Puniu who can still identify the localities, though the face of the" land has been transformed by the deep canal-like drains and the plough and the railway. Story after story there is of battles for the possession of such-and-such a "rauwiri" amid the flax and raupo of the Kawa. Predatory Expedition. "The fame of the delicious and abundant eels of Kawa," says the Maori traditional history given mc, "spread to every part of this island, and this chief and that considered how they might secure for themselves a supply of those tuna, and they made expeditions to view the place for themselves. There was an expedition of Ngati-Maru-Kai-Moko-moko ('the descendants of Maru the lizard-eater 5 ), who came from Taranaki, and built two stockaded camps near Mangawhero, on the east side of the Waipa River. They came into conflict with the local people at last, and were attacked by a war-party of a hundred and forty men, and were driven out of the district, in fact they were pursued right down to Taringamotu, near Taumarunui, where they got canoes and fled down the Wanganui River. "Tale after tale of this sort, warstories, songs and proverbial sayings about Kawa, going back to the era oi the warrior chief Umu, who lived and fished for eels twelve generations ago— three hundred years. Now the great bogs and shallow lakes have become fat dairy farms, the most fertile bit of all this beautiful region south of the Puniu Now and again a farmer deepening his drains or following his plough turns up a stone weapon, or strikes an old-time eel-weir post; and I have seen a little canoe, discovered by a settler near the railway station, among the raupo on a slight elevation, once an island, in the newly-drained land, a dug-out 'Kopapa' used by some long gone duck-hunter and tuna-fisher of famous Kawa Repo."