MOTUTAWA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 38, 14 February 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

MOTUTAWA.

A TALE OF MAORI MANNERS.

LAKE ROTOITI HISTORY.

(By J.C.)

The island-like headland of MotutaAva is seen on your right-hand ~side as you go boating down Rotoiti from the mouth of the Ohau stream that links the lake to its sister Rotorua. The face of the high flat-topped hill is a sheer cliff of white, the suicide cliff called Te Rerenga-a-Tikawe, famed in local legend. A low neck of land joins tbs headland to the main. Nature made of Motutawa a sentry cape and a secure retreat, and the Maoris of old time seized on it as a desirable fortress site, and so it was one of the rude castles that held these good shores and fish-teeming waters of Rotoiti. It was a scene of busy life, of animated toil and play, of love and laughter and oft-times tragedy. Now it is all fern-grown and silent, a tribal cemetery of the Ngati-Pikiao tribe. My old mate Tamarahi, who was a chief of the 'Pikiao, told me some of the traditions of Motutawa as we sailed close past its rocky base on a Lakeland camping cruise of long ago. "That old pa up there " said Tamarahi, "is one of my burial places. I can lie there if I like when I die, or over at Taheke yonder, or at Pukurahi, across the lake, or on Pateko, that little island down the lake, or, of course, at Maketu. Oh, I have lots of land tor my crave! Taihoa! Motutawa here I'd like best; you can see such a long way from the hilltop, _ all over R°toi i and everywhere. But if it hadn t been for my ancestor Te Takinga calling on fhp chief of Motutawa at breakfasttime one day, those rascals of Tuhourangi would have' the place still, as likely as not. Te Takinga was such a kindly, polite old fellow. The Inter-tribal Vendetta. For generations, Tamarahi narrated, there was a bitter feud between those two tribes of Rotoiti, Ngati-Pikiao and Tuhourangi. In the course of many years of war the Tuhourangl were gradually expelled from the eastern and northern shores of the lake. They los their hilltop strongholds one after the other, until the only important pa they had left was this ■ Motutawa. This was their last hold on the lake where they had once lorded it over aU. SMi. they were not a foe to be despised. Ihey made swift raids against their foes every now and again, in their war canoes, and returned to their fortress hill with plunder and the bodies of «lnm for their food ovens. At the time of this story, eight generations ago—2oo years-the chief of this Motutawa was Te Rangipuawhe, the hereditary of the Tuhourangl l tribe. The chief man among his foes of, NgatiPikiao and Waitaha was Te Takinga, a grim old warrior; that carved meetinghouse in Mourea village yonder is named after him. Tuhourangi made a foray oil tne people who lived at the eastern end of Rotoiti, where the village of Tapuwaeharuru stands to-day, and they slew some of Te Takinga's kinsfolk, among them two lads, his grandchildren. "Taka ma,u, taka muri" says the war .pr overb-f-swif tto attack and swift to retir.§»;;<c,*u<i ,* A Morning Call. A truce was called; both sides were wearying of the long vendetta, and presently Te Takinga and a party of his principal men took canoe across the lake on a ceremonial visit to the Tuhourangi. The aged warrior slowly climbed the steep track to the hill pa, where the dwellings of .the tribe enclosed the marae, or village square. There, on mats spread in front 'of the largest house, old Te Rangipuawhe was seated. It .was "the early forenoon, and thechief was enjoying the first meal of the day.. It was a meal of human flesh; in fact; it was the flesh of one of Te Takinga's grandchildren killed in the recent fighting. And Te Takinga, as he sat down opposite his old enemy, perceived at once the nature of the food. It was a delicate situation. Although each old cannibal hated the other with a deadly hatred, neither desired to give the other needless offence, or a take, a pretext for further battle. The Maori was intensely punctilious in matters of ceremony and rangatira etiquette; and both secretly desired to live at peace after the long series of forays and frays by land .and water. Te Rangipuawhe, embarrassed at being discovered feasting on the flesh of his visitor's people, deprecatingly pushed his basket of food away. But Te Takinga, grimly smiling through his corrugated blue-black mask of tattoo, made a generous gesture. "E Ran°i," he said, with a courteous motion °of his hand, "do not cease eating." For (as friend Tamarahi explained) the flesh which the Tuhourangi chief was eatin°was not "murdered food," but man slain m fair fight. So Te Rangipuawhe's face was saved, his heart relieved. And the chief of Motutawa was in no way behind his chivalrous foe in generosity and courtesy. Indeed, he outdid his visitor, in his gratitude for chief tainlike _ considerations. To the chief of Ngati-Pikiao, squatting opposite him on the Whariki mats, in the warm sunshine of Motutawa-top, he said: le Takinga, listen! I have no payment to give you for the killing of your grandchildren, no adequate utu for the meat I have been eating. Nothing but one thing, and that is the land. That shall be the payment. You may have this land for your own for ever! Come and live upon it. I shall leave it, I and all my people; we will give it up to you and go elsewhere to find a home." Good-Bye to Rotoiti. And so it was settled. Te Rangipuawlio and his tribe, after chanting their farewell songs and making their tearful farewell speeches, left Motutawa for ever; left their last stronghold on the shores of fair Rotoiti. Their grief at abandoning the villages and the fishing grounds, and the graves of their ancestors was tempered with something of relief, for their position there had become precarious, almost untenable. Giving up their old home to Te Takinga and his tribe, they migrated in their canoes to Rotorua. There they settle'- 1 for a while in Pukeroa Pa, the hill overlooking Ohinemutu and its boiling springs. Then they removed to TaraWera and Ro+nVoVahi, built their new homes on the shores of those lakes, and 'f"»-e remained for a hundred and fifty years. They would have been there still, on Tarawera's wooded sides, amidst their cultivations, had it not been for the volcanic eruptions of 1886. That disaster drove them from fruitful old Wairoa village, and they sat down in the geyser valley of \ TV "karewarewa, where they live to-d*—• and the hapus of NgatiPikiao, with sundry pakeha neighbours, are the overlords of lovely Rotoiti.