TE AROHA MOUNTAIN.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 270, 13 November 1926, Page 42

TE AROHA MOUNTAIN.

ITS LEGENDS OF THE ANCIENT PEOPLE. FOLK TALES AND PLACE NAMES (By J.C.) Fastness of aboriginal tribes from immemorial timee, refuge of broken clans in war, fairy haunt invoked in poetic chants of the Maori, Te Aroha — "Mountain of Loving Greetings"—is a place whose human 'interest heightens its landscape beauty. This three thousand feet wooded lue bastion of the Moehau-

Hautere range, that builds a high skyline a hundred miles long, is more than a mere rugged mass of rock and soil and tall timber. It is one of those mountains •with a personality, like Taranaki'a lone peak, the type of mountain that came naturally into the animistic mythology of the olden race. It looked to them a giant watchman overlooking riverside and valley and plain. Some people have fancied the name Te Aroha a reference to the love and pity symbolised in the fact that the mountain wae a refuge for defeated and hunted

tribes in the days of continual warfare.

Undoubtedly its ravines and forests often gave secure sanctuary to Maoris retreating fro their enemies. But the origin of the name antedates the intertribal wars; and there is a definite explanatory tradition. Kahu the Pathfinder. Five centuries ago a chief of the Arawa people climbed to the topmost peak of Te Aroha range, and surveyed with wonder the vast expanse of territory that stretched west and_ south and north as far as vision could carry. Hi 6 name was Kahu-mata-momoe, which means "Sleepy-e/ed Kahu." But the adjective 'belied this explorer of old; he was by no means one of the dozing kind. "Kahu"— "Hawk"—described him well no doubt, for, like most Polynesians, pathfinders of that most adventurous epoch in Pacific Islands history, it was his habit to ascend as higf aS possible above the lower world. Kahu was the son of Tama-te-Kapua, the captain of the Arawa sailing canoe, who had died and been buried on the summit of Moehau ('Cape Colville), and he was on his way j home to Maketu from a visit to a kinsman at the Kaipara. As was his way, he kept to the tops of the ridges on his travels, and when he came to these parts he ascended the mountain heights that loom like a blue cloud above the Upper Waihou. When he felt the soft sea ] breeze fanning his cheek he murmured words of affection for the friends and places far away, his father, whose grave was high Oil Cloudy Moehau, and the ■words "Muri-Aroha" came to his lips— love for those left behind. As he stood on the mountain top he thought of hie kinsfolk on the distant sea slope, and he : •aid, "Let this mountain peak be called •Aroha-tai-o-Kahu' "—his love towards the sea. Then he went to where he had a clear view over the Western plains and hils and as he gazed long upon that wild lone land he. chanted his words of affection and regret for his kinsfolk who had gone to Taupo and othet inland parts, and he named that peak "Aroha-uta-o-Kahu," or "Kahu's Landward Love." And bo this place-naming accomplished the explorer travelled leisurely homeWard to Rotorua and Maketu, giving names to many more places as he went. At beautiful old Maketu, on it. green hill by the sea, the people to this day Will show you Kahu's first garden-ground, a sheltered smooth little saucer of land alongside the ancient pa. On that historic spot, called Parawai, the Maoris have grown kumara and taro for more than five hundred years. Tales of Fairy Foresters. The Maoris call them Patu-paiarehe or Turehu, a term which means fairies, enchanted people, furtive woodsmen, and sometimes mohoao, or wild people of the busiL I hate a legeiid of Te Aroha Which peopled the mountain with a fairy trible, Whose chief Was called Ruatane. He was the chieftain of all the fairy people inhabiting the Colville Range, as it is now' called, extending from Moehau down to Te Aroha and the ranges on the south. No doubt these Patu-paiarehe- were really fugitive tribes of the ancient people who preceded the HaWaiki Maoris in the land. The legend refers to them as a mystic people, skilled in enchantments. Ruatane once seized a woman of the Ngati-Matakore tribe, far away in the Rangitoto country, south of the present Rohepotae boundary, and bore her off to his village high up on cloudy Aroha. Bilt there Was another fairy chief, Tarapikau, whose home Was in the Rangitoto Ranges, and he pursued Ruatane, and by stratagem and the exercise of powerful hypnotic charms, which steeped the abductor and his tribe in deep slumber, he recovered the stolen woman and restored her to her tribe. An angry fairy was Ruatane when he awakened from his heavy sleep, and be made war on Tarapikau, and he hurled from the top of his mountain a burning dart which Bet Are to a tree on which his foe was perched on the topi of Rangitoto, fifty miles away! Of a truth there were" wOnder-worKera in that enchanted period of our Maoriland's stofyv Rib-tickling With Spears. An old man of the Ngati-Tama-te-ra— the Ohinemuri tribe over whom the grim warrior Taraia was chief in the early days—gave mc some previously Unrecorded names of the Aroha region. That high hill to which so many holiday visitors to Te Ai-oha town cfimb,; the * P _*J ust fi^dve Government baths and Domain, was called Whakapipi. On «L?W__ < snce5 nee Btood a fortified place the Ngati-Tumutumu tribe, rW.li. th \ ver y dnc ient clans of bushh™d^*M? igfantß fe&ched New ZeaH™ the and Tainui, and other historic canoes. .. Whakanini MM ?»■___? *=*!.•« Te Aroha town into the Waihou Rrvf? was called by the Maoris the Tutu! mangeongeo. It is not an enticing name - r JSL e , fcyro . m Ma6ri pronunciation nevertheless it is a curiously interesting title that should be preserved, for it holds a story. My old 'Tama-te-fa informant said that the stream derived its name from a combat between two long-ago champions who met each other in front of their war-parties on the creek side. Both were armed with lon<* spears. They fought so desperately that each was fatally pierced by the other's spear, and both died on the bank °* J? 8 * 5 1 "? B , tream - And >* memory of that duel of long ago the name-givers combined the root-words "tv" meaning wounded, and "mangeo," meaning pain, or acute smarting. Also, there is a form of the word meaning to tickle Let us reduce the formidable Aroha" tbrookname, therefore, to its most agreeable form and give it a down-to-date translation as "Tickled to Death."