KARITANE

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 75, 21 December 1929, Page 33

KARITANE

ORIGIN OF THE NAME

(By Rev. M.

All the world knows of the work of Sir Truby King in the interests of child life, and the Karitane homes and the Karitane nursing system have won for the eminent physician and for New Zealand fhme that is widespread. Not everybody knows 'that the name Karitane” employed by Ur. King was taken from Karitane Peninsula that forms the southern arm of Waikouaiti Bay, and on which for years Sir Truby King made his home.

The question has sometimes been raised as to the meaning and source of the word “Karitane.” The pemusula bearing that name was not always socalled. Until the late ’forties of last Cf.*ntury it was known alike to Maori and Pakeha as “Huriawa.” Various attempts, more or less unsatisfactory, have been made to find a meaning for the word “Karitane.” It has been translated “swamp ground.” Mr. W. H. g. Roberts refers to the uncertainty of its meaning, and says it may be trans51ated “a man to dig” or “a bruised man or “a maimed busband,” whilst some have rendered it “where men dig.” Tn the year 1919 the present writer, in the course of a conversation at Waikouaiti with a Mrs. Mary Ann Thompson,. who was the half-caste daughter of a Swede, named Thomas Tandy, and who had been baptised at Waikouaiti by the Rev. James Watkin, the pioneer missionary, on March 24, 1844, was told by Mrs. Thompson that she recalled perfectly the circumstances of the changing of the name of the Peninsula from Huriawa to Karitane. . It was decided upon at a korcro on Hautekapakapa Hill, on which the old Wesleyan Mission

l. Rugby Pratt.) House stood. Rawiri te Maire, a noted chief who had been baptised by James Watkin on January 22. 1840, and on whose proposal the name of Hikororoa mountain had been changed to Mount Watkin, proposed that the name of Mr. Creed (called “Karita” by the Maoris) should be perpetuated by changing the name of the peninsula on which the Wesleyan Mission Station was established from Huriawa to Karitane ' (Creed the rmjn). In making this proposal, the chief referred fo the good work done by both Mr. and Mrs. Creed in instructing the children, and especially by Mrs. Creed in teaching the girls to sew and the mothers some simple lessons in hygiene, ever since they had come to .Waikouaiti in April, 1844. The chief’s suggestion was acclaimed and unanimously adopted by the gathered tribe. , . , It is interesting to note that this decision received official recognition in the early ’sixties. When the locality was being surveyed by Mr. Walter Mantel), two reserves, each of sixteen and a half acres, were laid off. One was called Marine Reserve. and the other Karitane Reserve. Mr. Mantell, in his report to the Colonial Secretary concerning Native reserves, stated that Mr. Creed had declined the offer of the site of the Mission Station, and had begged him, if possible, to include it in the reserve, a request with which he complied. The story is told in Vol. 2 of the Official Reports on Native Affairs in the South Island. It is singularly fitting that the name of the Rev. Charles Creed should thus be unintentionally perpetuated in a notable work on behalf of child life. — Rev. M. A. Rugby Pratt, in the ANew Zealand Methodist Times.”