Centennial reunion at Maori home

Press, 5 June 1982, Page 15

Centennial reunion at Maori home

This week-end, members of one of the South Island’s most distinguished Maori families are gathering at a 100-year-old farmhouse at Taumutu, near Lake Ellesmere, for a family reunion. JOHN WILSON was invited to stay at the house, called Te Awhitu, and travelled with members of the family to Moeraki and Otakou, in Otago, to learn the history of the family and of the house at which they are gathering.

Ellesmere County, south of Christchurch, abounds in gracious old farmhouses, many now entering a second century of life with long records of occupation by the same family woven into their histories. But of these one called Te Awhitu at Taumutu, on the southern side of Lake Ellesmere (Te Waihora), near the outlet to the lake, has the longest historical associations of all.

It is owned now, and has been since it was built 100 years ago, by a family whose connection with the land on which it stands long predates European settlement of Canterbury. The family’s lineages run back to the ariki families of Ngai Tahu, the Maori tribe living on the South Island at the time European settlement began. The house is occupied today by Mr Riki Te Mairaki Ellison-Taiaroa, his cousin, Mrs Ruku Te Kauki TaiaroaArahanga, and her youngest daughter, Te Awhina Rangimarie. Both Mr Ellison and Mrs Arahanga are greatgrandchildren of the man who built the house in 187980, Hori Kerei Taiaroa.

part of the South Island passed from Maori hands. He pursued these interests — in education and in the land claims of the Ngai Tahu — as a member of the New Zealand Parliament. He sat in the House of Representatives for the Southern Maori district from 1871 to 1878 and from 1881 to 1885. In 18791880 and from 1885 until his death in 1905 he was a member of the Legislative Couuncil, the old upper house.

Born in 1839, he was the oldest son of the great chief Te Matenga Taiaroa (17831863), who took a leading part in the defence of the pa at Kaiapohia in 1831. • He escaped when Kaiapohia fell, to Otakou, on the southern shore of Otago Harbour. From there he continued Ngai Tahu resistance against the Ngati Toa forces led by Te Rauparaha. After taking' part in this last great tribal struggle, Te Matenga Taiaroa went on to play a prominent part in pakeha- , Maori relations in the early ■years of European settlement of the South Island. His son, Hori Kerei, was disposed to welcome the pakeha. He educated himself,, under missionary influence, and was a notable member of the Parliament of New Zealand. But he became notable in the pakeha world without abandoning his Maori identity and without relinquishing Maori claims to land on the South Island. He was active in promoting inquiry into the land claims of : - the Ngai Tahu and into the circumstances in which the title of by far the greater

Hori Kerei Taiaroa’s family home, where he grew up, was at Otakou, to this day one of the most important marae of the Ngai Tahu. He is buried in the cemetery at Otakou, along with his father Te Matenga and other members of his family. In 1879, however, Hori Kerei decided to move his family to Taumutu, where'he had ancestral claims to land which had been set aside as Maori reserve land. He made the decision to move to Taumutu possibly to be nearer Wellington, where he spent much time as a Parliamentarian.- . Taumutu was also nearer to the centre of his far-flung electorate than Otakou,

The house Te Awhitu was built in 1879-80, mostly of black pine brought from Little River, part way down the Kaitorete Spit by tramway, then by paddlew'heel steamer across the lake to Timberyard Point, Lakeside, from where it was • only a short haul to Taumutu. Hori Kerei Taiaroa was a man who kept meticulous records. In his notebook he recorded that the house itself cost £lO5B-18-0, furnishings, bought in Christchurch and at Otago, £1043-18-1 (including £25-4-4 for wooden Venetian blinds), and stables and fencing, £lOB-7-0. The cost of moving his family from Ota'kou to Taumutu, along with his stock, was £350. The transfer of the family was completed by 1884, although some members of it at least were living at Taumutu by 1879 when one 1 of the sons, Riki Te Mairaki Taiaroa, is recorded as having began attending the Sedgemere School. The wife who moved with Hori Kerei Taiaroa from Otakou to Taumutu was Tini

Kerei Burns, the daughter of an early whaler and his Maori wife, Pukio, whose family came from Moeraki, on the North Otago coast. Pukio later remarried Natanahira Waruwaru, of Tuahuariri (Tuahiwi), giving the family a Canterbury branch.

Hori Kerei Taiaroa died in 1905, but his wife, Tini Kerei, lived on until 1934, bringing up several generations of children in Te Awhitu. In her own family there were six sons, several of whom made their mark in the world, of sport. Te One Wiwi was in the New Zealand rugby team which toured Australia in 1884. Hoani Korako represented New Zealand as a hurdler and sprinter, and Riki Te Mairaki Taiaroa played in the Maori rugby team which visited England in 1888-89.

After the early death of his wife, Riki T e Mairaki Taiaroa continued to live at Te Awhitu with his mother. Just before his death, in 1954, at ’the age of 88, he was awarded the 0.8. E. He is still remembered with enormous affection as "Poua Dick”' by Mr Ellision and Mrs Arahanga (he was in fact their great-uncle, brother to the father of their mothers, who were sisters.) One of the families Tini Kerei. brought up in Te Awhitu were the six children of her eldest son, Te One Wiwi. and his wife, Rakapa Potaka, both of whom died young. Two daughters of tbis family, Ria Moheko and Maaki Rakapa, are still alive, aged 83 and 78. Two other daughters of this family, Tini Wiwi and Mekura Te One Wiwi, both now deceased, were the •mothers of Mr Ellison and Mrs Arahanga. The two other children in this family, also deceased, were Peti Hinewetea and Huri Whenua, the only son. Mr Ellison himself, Tini Kerei’s great-grandson, was one of the children this remarkable woman brought up .in Te Awhitu. Mr’Ellison has lived at Te Awhitu most of his life. He is -now retired ’ from farming the property, which he has done (at first together with his Poua Dick) since returning from Canada where he served wth the Air Force during the Second 1’ • '

World War. He is active in Maori affairs, maintaining the. traditions of his greatgrandfather, ' Hori Kerei, being a member of the New Zealand Maori Council.and of the New Zealand Anglican Maori Bishopric Council. He is a respected elder of the Ngai Tahu and Ngati Mamoe.

Te Awhitu is not the only building of historical interest at Taumutu. Not far from the house is the small Maori Church, Hone Wetere, built in 1885, for which Hori Kerei Taiaroa raised. the funds locally. Close by, too, is the hall. Ngati Moki, built in 1891; Hori Kerei Taiaroa also made strenuous efforts to have a school built at Tau-

mutu. The authorities decided, however, that the school should be at Sedgemere, a few miles away. For many years, until the school was closed in 1969, the annual school picnic on the lawns- at Te Awhitu w-as a major event in the district. Loyalty to the school is still strong in the Taumutu district.

Both church and hall are built on sites still marked by remnants of ancient earthworks (fortifications), and on the beach nearby have been discovered artefacts from the moa-hunting period. of Maori pre-history. The house thus stands at the centre of some of the most historic ground in Canterbury, whose human past stretches back

many hundreds of years further than that of any other old house in the district. That it is still lived in by mem-' bers of a family whose whakapapa (genealogies)

As the family’s “papakaika” it is the place to which many of them come when they have important personal or family decisions to make.

reach back into that past makes Te Awhitu unique among Canterbury houses. But Te Awhitu is not a house of the past only. It is’ not even the house just of those who occupy it at . present, Mr Ellison and Mrs Arahanga, for it draws to itself members of the family who are scattered throughout New Zealand. It is in a real sense the centre of the family life of the descendants of Hori Kerei and Tini Kerei Taiaroa, a place where members of the family drop in casually at any time. ■

There are four. surviving grandchildren of Hori Kereiand Tini Kerei—the two Te One Wiwi, mentioned earlier, who were brought up in Te Awhitu by Tini Kerei, Ria Moheko Wineera (Ngati Toa) and Mhaki Rakapa Haddon (Wanganui), and two children of Te Oti Kerei, another son of Hori Kerei and Tini Kerei, Rakapa Pearl Winter (Wellington) and Turumaka Korako Taiaroa (Otakou). Three of these four grandchildren ■will be present at the re-, unibn. 1