TALES OF TONGARIRO

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15822, 22 July 1913, Page 6

TALES OF TONGARIRO

HOW THE FIRE-PEAKS CAME TO BE A NATIONAL PARK.

THE STORY OF THE RANGIPO.

Written for the Otago Daily Times. Bt Jas. Cowan. Most New Zealanders, I suppose, are aware that the grand trinity of volcanic peaks Toiigariro, Ngauruhoe, and Ruapehu are a National Park, gifted to the Crown by the Maoris. But, very few are acquainted with the exact circumstances which led up to this magnificent wild garden of wonders being presented to the people as a recreation and scenic reserve in perpetuity. Speaking for myself, it was only the other day—though 1 have known the district intimately _ for many years, and have gathered its history from "Maoris and pioneer pakehas alike—that I heard for the first time the real story of the gift-making. It should, I think, be placed, on permanent record; anyhow, I give it here in brief compass. When the Native Land Court was sit'tin;? at Taupo in the vea.r 1887, attended bv Te Heuheu Horonuku and many other prominent Maoris of the Ngati-Tuwhare-toa tribe, the question of the apportionment aaid disposal of the mountains of the Tongariro zone came up for discussion bv those concerned. Amongst those attending the court was Mr L. M. Grace, then M.H.R. for Tauranga, now of the Native Department, who was acting as adviser to and agent for Te Heulieu. Mr Grace is a sen of the celebrated missionary who laboured at Pukawa, Taupo, long before the Maori war, and he is married to a daughter of Te Heuheu Horonuku. When the court came to consider what should be done with the mountains, Mr Grace noticed that Te Heuheu became rather troubled, During an adjournment, upon consulting with the chief, lie found that Te Heuheu was very much concerned as to the disposal and eventual fate of the peaks and the country immediately surrounding them. " If," said the chief—who was a Maori of the real old a tattooed, whitehaired warrior-chieftain, with a ■ mind steeped in all the ancient beliefs of his race—" if these sacred mountains of my people are included in the blockß of laud passed through the court in the ordinary way, what will become of them? They will be cut up and perhaps sold, a piece going to one pakeha and a piece to another; they will become of no account, for the ' tapu' will be gone. Tongariro is my. ancestor, my 'tupuna'; it is my head; my 'mana'"centres round Tongariro. Yo'u, Kerelii, know how my name and history are associated with Tongariro. I cannot consent to the. court passing these mountains through in the ordinary way. What am I to do?" Mr Grace agreed that it wais undesirable to permit these famous mountains to be dealt with in the ordinary way. They should be regared as " tapu " from private hands. "Now," said he to the old chief, '*why not make them a 'tapu' place of the Crown? That is the only possible way in which to preserve them as ' tapu' places out oi which no person shall make money. Why not hand them over to the Government as a reserve and park, to be the property of all the people of New Zealand, in" memory of the Heuheu and his tribe?" ■ 'Ae!" said the old man; "that is the best thing to do! They shall he a park of the Crown, a gift for ever from me and my people." Thereupon Mr Grace drew out a deed of gift, which was ratified by the court and signed by Te Heuheu, with whom were associated for the purposes of the gift a number of his principal co-chiefs. The deed, written upon a sheet of foolscap paper, was thereupon transmitted to the Government. Mr Grace, before the final arrangements were made, wired to the Hon. Mr .Ballance, who was then staying at Rotorua, asking whether the Government would accept the gift, and his reply in the affirmative promptly came. Shortly thereafter Te Heuheu and Mr Grace visited Mr Ballance at Rotorua and explained the circumstances connected with the park-giving. The old chief did not live very long after his bequest to the nation. He died in 1888, at the age of between 65 and 70 years, and his son, the present chief, Te Heuheu Tukino, Mr Grace's brother-in-iaw, is now the head vangatira and largest land-owner of the Taupo district, a Maori of the later generation, but as proud of his ancestral traditions and his family history as his father was. He lias by no means forgotten the ancient "peteha" or clan-motto of the Heuheus: "Ko Tongariro te Ko Te Heuheu te Tangata" (Tongariro is the Mountain, Te Heuheu is the Man"). And from Te Heuheu Tukino, who is an old and valued friend of mine, I have heard many an interesting folk-story and many a stirring bit of tribe history centering around those cloud-circled high places, the smoking and snow-clad vol-cano-trinity. Here is his explanation of the name Tongariro itself:—Tongariro, it must be understood, was originally applied to the whole three mountains; Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu are both included in the general name and for the volcanic heights which go spiring up from the South Taupo tableland.. His famous ancestor Ngatoro-i-Rangi, who was the priest and magician of. the Arawa canoe, came down these parts exploring and land-claiming full five centuries ago, and in the course of his travels he ascended the lofty peak now known as Ngauruhoe, in order to survey the surrounding country. The story of how the South Sea explorer was caught in a snowstorm there on the mountain-top, and was saved by the magic volcanic flames sent him by the gods, has often been told. This, however, from Te Heuheu's lips, has not been written previously—that when Ngatoro-i-Rangi was freezing on the peak he used these words in his prayer to'his. goddess-' sisters in distant Hawaiki: "E Kuiwai e! E Haungaroa e! Kua riro au ite tonga; Haria niai'he ahi Moku!" ("0 Kuiwai, 0 Haungaroa! I am borne away by the sold south wind. Send me fire to warm me!"). From these two words " jiro " (borne away, seized) and "tonga" (south, wind) used in the wizard priest's cry came the name Tongariro. As for Ngauruhoe, the name—possibly Auruhoc or Uruhoe o.riginally—was that of the female slave, a food-carrier, whom the priest| slew on the mountain ' top as an offering to the gods, in order to give additional force and "mana''to his prayer for fire. When the saving flames burst forth from the moutain-heart he' threw his body into the blazing crater, which has ever since been known as Ngauruhoe. Another story of this wonderful warlock and medicine-man of the Arawas, a legend which gives the explanation of a certain well-known place-name hereabouts. When Ngatoro stood on the fire mountain he beheld, approaching from the.eastward, a stranger, a man named Hape-ki-taurangi, This newcomer, a chief, had several companions with him; all had come from Hawaiki. in the far South Seas, in the canoe Takitimu. He was on an exploring and land-hunting expedition, like the Arawa priest. But he was unwelcome to Ngatoro, who would .suffer no rivals in his new-found land. While Hape was slowly crossing the dreary tussock-and-sand desert, now known as the Rangipo, on the eastern side of Mount Ruapehu—a place dreaded by the Maoris of old in winter time, for then it is deep in snow, with treacherous pitfalls—the Arawa medicineman cried to him in a great roaring voice, the voice of a god, saying: "Get you gone stranger! This country is mine, Ngatoro's. Depart whence you came:" But Hape heeded not that God-like command, but came trudging on. And then the high priest's vengeance fell, Ngatoro uttered his most powerful incantations, and besought the gods of the air and of the underworld to obliterate the tooventuresome stranger, And straightway marvellous and terrible things happened. Thunder crashed and lightning flashed, and a vast black cloud descended and from its belly a life-d£6troying storm of hail and snow burst up the sands of Rangipo. And the fire peaks hurled their devastating fires and ashes upon the Rangipo also, and when the storms of snow and fire had ceased Hape. and his company lay there dead upon the drear volcanic plain. They perished everone. And then was this nanie given to the wilderness where they were overwhelmed—Rangi-po, which means the place where the sky is dark.

And there was another man of ancientry who came to a terrible end in theee ravage parts of the Island heart, His

name, says Te Heuheu, was Taka. He was a chief of Mataatua descent, and ha came adventuring up this way with several comrades and food-bearers and a number of Maori dogs of the old' Hawaikian breed. When he was crossing this desert of the Bangipo a snowstorm came on, and he and hie companions took refuge in a shallow lava cave on the rocky slopes ci Mount Ruapehu. It snowed, and it hailed and snowed again, and lata and his friends crouched all the time in their miserable half : shelter without fire or food. One after another they died, frozen to death'; tbcy died there'on the cold stony shoulder of Ruapehu, hundreds of miles from their homes and tribe. But their do"i survived. These dogs, says my word-of-mouth historian, were long-haired animals with sharp-pointed noses; they were white or light-reddish in colour, and their long soft hair was prized because it was useful for cloak-making purposes. When Taka ar.d his companions died the dogs fed upon the corpses, and when at last the missing men's friends came .n search of them, after the lapse of many months, and happened upon their cave of death, all they found was a heap of close-picked bone's. The "kuris" ran wild, and increased until their descendants roamed in many hundreds over these plains, and that was the origin of the wild dogs of the Ruapehu tableland, a breed that only within the last few years has become extinct.

Such are some of the tales with which this territory of tire and sword abounds. It is little wonder, that in the course of time these death-dealing mountains were personified by the Natives, and in the aboriginal fancy became endowed with some of the attributes of human beings. The fire peaks were gods in themselves, sav the Maoris. Also, the high places of the earth became the last resting-places of some of the sacred and,illustrious dead. Thus were the bones of the Heuheu'who was killed in 1846 laid in a cave on the northern slope of Mount Tongariro, a sepulchre whence they were removed only three years ago or so to the grandson's lands at Waihi, near Tokaanu. Today, a,-; Te Heuheu and his elders will tell you, the bones of Tia, the famous pathfinder, after whom Lake Taupo is named (Taupo-mri-a-Tia), repose in a cave on the sharp a,nd lofty summit of Titiraupanga, away to the 'north yonder, in the Hills of Birds, Should 'one, approach that cavo, which is in a dark" and gloomy thicket, the gods will of a surety give a sigh,, for the skies will, grow black and lowering, the mists will descend, lightning will flash, and thunder will roll, crashing along the ranges. That is the way in which the seds make manifest the sacred "mana" of the chiefly dead. ____^