ONE TREE HILL

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 72, 21 September 1940, Page 10

ONE TREE HILL

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —In yesterday's issue you had a local concerning the name of One Tree Hill at Auckland, which name it is locally desired to change to the original Maori name—Maunga-kiekie.

Wai-o-Hua was a numerous and powerful tribe who owned and occupied the extensive area including Tarnakai and extending north from a line drawn from Tauranga to the Waikato and along both coasts to a line across the island westward from Cape Rodney. The tribe subdivided during the course of years into many strong sub-tribes. The parent tribe took its name from Hua, who lived at Maunga-kiekie (One Tree Hill). Maunga-kiekie had also another name—Totara-i-ahma C?Totara-i-a-Hua), and the Maori history of this name shows what a place of note it was to the Maori, and how he must treasure the associations connected with it. As recorded by S. Percy Smith, the story of the totara referred to in the name was as follows:—

When Ngatiawa were passing southward to Taranaki, it is said that a child

lof that tribe was born there, during the time its parents were living at Maunga-kiekie. The ceremonial cutting of the umbilical cord was done on a 'twig of totara, and that twig, being ! planted after the ceremony, grew into the tree referred to. It was a common custom thus 'to plant the twig of a tree; if it failed and died, the child would likewise droop and die; if it survived and grew, so would the child. Such a tree was called kawa. The name of the child whose tree grew so vigorously was named. Korohi. The tree enters a good deal into Maori story, and further details are given by Percy Smith, but all that it is necessary to note at present is that this solitary tree was growing on Maungakiekie in 1740, and was still growing there at the time of European occupation, when a pakeha vandal cut it down. It was no good omen for the Maori when the tree was felled by a pakeha. It was this tree which caused the name One Tree Hill to be given, and the name was given by Sir John Logan Campbell. An obelisk, to the Maori race has been erected on the hill by the Campbell trustees. Might I suggest that the Maori race would be^. even more honoured, and the evil omen .above I nullified, by the planting of another totara, when, should it be done by the people of Auckland, the thoughtfulness of a whole city would wipe out the result of the thoughtlessness of a citizen. Maunga-kiekie is the name of the hill where the tree stood; restore the ! name and the tree, and the act will draw the Maori and the pakeha yet i closer together.—l am, etc., JOHANNES ANDERSEN. | September 18 I