THE SOUTHERN MAORI.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21196, 29 November 1930, Page 3

THE SOUTHERN MAORI.

STRAY PAPERS. Written for the Otago Daily Times,

By H. Beattie.

xx -Vl.—THE MATAURA RIVER. The Mataura Elver is akin to ‘the Taieri in possessing' a rather romantic course. Some of our rivers have an obvious course, .but this cannot be said of either of the two rivers named. The obvious course for the Mataura was from the bottom end of Wakatipu to the sea near Bluff, but it starts to one side of Lake Wakatipu, flows across the valley which allows the railway to proceed without a tunnel from Lowther to Kingston, cuts through mountains to emerge on the Waimea Plains, changes its course at Gore, and thence leaves the foot of the hills alnust due south to the sea. Apart from its unexpected course it has another distinction in that it possesses more tributaries with Maori names than any other river in the South Island—that is, of coarse, if the calculations of the writer he based on correct premises. As a result of his inquiry the percentage of Maori' names of the tributaries of the various rivers has been raised as follows:—Taieri 11 to 62; Clutha 33 to 62; Mataura 57 to SO; Oreti 33 to 50; Aparima 27 to 41; Waiau 39 to 55, The average percentage of the six rivers used to be S 3. Now it is 57, but if a systematic inquiry had been instituted when the first surveys were made it would have been nearly 100 per cent. Prom Waitaki to the Waiau the only rivers of any size which have never received English names are. the Taieri and Mataura. These two rivers are about the I same- lengtjh, while other similarities are the gold-producing capacities of their upper tributaries and the rather dubious comparison that both are subject to destructive floods. v Rising in .the Eyre or Takerehaka Mountains, the Mataura soon receives its first contribution in the waters of Robert Creek, followed by those of. Allen and Eyre Creeks, and then the Parawa Creek. The correct Maori name for the heights near Mid Dome and for the creek is Paihercwao,. a chief who will be mentioned later on. The river then takes its winding way through the mountains, iyhieh- one of the old men assured me were called Te Ran by the Maoris, receiving en route the Dome Creek and at its emergence at Cattle Plat the Sheepwash Creek and a little later the Tomogaluk and Tower Creeks. The Tomogalak is a strange looking name and is usually pronounced “ Tommy Galic ” by the casual colonial,” and various explanations were given of its etymology, but after much inquiry at last found an ancient Maori who knew the place „nd said its correct name was Tawakaraki, The largest tributary the Mataura has received thus far has been the Nokomai, which my informants say should be Nukumai, but now comes in the largest supplementary stream which the river receives in its whole course, the Whakaea, commonly, spelt Waikaia or N Wakaia. This river takes its rise near the start of the Barnscleugh River,- and during its Course south to the Mataura receives many additions, notably those of Gow’s, Dome, Steeple/Argyle, and Garvie Burns and Wendon Creek, but the Maori names of none of these were supplied to me. The next considerable tributary is the Waimea, which one of my -old friends pronounced most deliberately Wai-may-ha (Waimeha) every time it was referred to, but it must be admitted that most Maoris delete the “h,” so that Waimea is the common pronunciation. This stream in turn receives the Longridgo, the Sandstone, and the Otamita. The last name should, be Ofainatea, it having been called after that most distinguished chief Tamatea, who came in the Takitimu canoe. Then from the north the Mataura receives the Otama, Okapua, and Gold Creeks and the Waikaka River. The Maori name of Gold Creek is Kaikoura (eat crayfish—the freshwater variety of which is found far inland),, Ajhile the Waikaka’s full name is Waikakahi (the stream of the freshwater mussel), The writer has seen quite big “kakahi”' or mussels taken from this river. We are now at Gore, and an aged Maori told me' an interesting fact about this locality. At Gore the valley narrows through which the Mataura flows and lower down opens out again. The ancient Maoris noticed that in big floods the inundation extended from base to base of the constricting; hills, and to the part for a mile or two above Gore and for a mile or two below it, that bend in fact which runs from the lower end of the Waimea Plain to the upper end of the Mataura Plains they gave the name Maruawai, which may he interpreted “ Water Hollow,” or “ The Valley of Water.” After the disastrous floods 1913, T 914, and 1918 one of the aged men, with a cheerful smile, said to the writer: “My word, the old fellow knew what he was doing when he called that place that name.” The Maori name of the Charlton Creek was Manuka. As there was a celebrated clump of manuka called Pokai-kakariki on the banks of- that stream somewhere about where it leaves the terraces—a clump to which Maoris had recourse when seeking bird spears—a person might he excused for thinking the name had been derived from the presence of the shrub. But ■ such is not the case here. A chief named Paiherewao was making a tour of the south country on one of those sight-seeing expeditions previously described, and the party had arrived at the Charlton Creek. Here, to the chief’s grea,t grief, his small son named Manuka died, and the adjacent stream was named in commemoration of the lad. A tributary of the Charlton from the south is. the Whareoka, which my -informant thought might be a shortening of Whare-koka (house of dried flax). Good bulrushes grew along the tributary in the olden days. On the other, or hill, side the Mataura received a succession of more or less lively creeks, but all comparatively small. The longest is the Otakaramu, and the next south is Tapiri-kiore. Two old men said that the Tapiri-kiore (“two rats walking together") was a tributary of the Waipahi, near Clinton, but Toki Reko, who lived at Tuturau all her life of threescore and ten years, told me that this name was also that of the creek below “The Gums,” which marks the debouching of the Otakaramu into the Mataura. She said this name covered two creeks which joined just before entering the river. The lower of these two creeks seems to be marked on the map as Bushy Creek, and to be the one known to the settlers as Pleura Creek, because a lot of cattle died there in 1861 of pleuro-pneumpnia, which was then epidemic in Southland. The next creek is Tao-huata, and my informant remarked that “ huata ” is the name of the longer of the two kinds of spears used by the Maori, and that “ tao ” is to cook, but that he could not explain the meaning. The-next creek is Wairua-o-te-makohn, usually shortened to Wairua-makohu. My Friend warned me that this man Makohu was not .the famous Tu-te-makohu who lived at Otaupiri, but that Tu-te-makohu is the name of a hill that stands by the road between this creek and Waikana. Another creek here is Otakaretu, sometimes called Te Karetu or merely Karetu, and then we come to the Waikanakana, usually abbreviated to Waikana. The kanakana is the lamprey eel for which this locality is so famous, and there is a song composed

about the Waikaua by a Maori poet, the words of which I have heed unable to collect. This stream is now adorned with a fish hatchery, and after a short i but merry life tumbles into the Mataura just below the falls, which were known to the Maori as Te-au-nui (the great current). All the creeks mentioned from'Otakaramu onward, with the possible exception of one, are crossed by the old Dunedin road from Mataura to Clinton. One of the old people said that the first creek below the . falls was Tu-te-kawa., named after a great chief of the fighting days, and that it was now called Whisky Creek by the white residents. Another drew me a rather skilful plan of the river for some miles below the falls. The rock wall that hems the river in below the falls on the eastern eide ho has marked Rerepari, and the rocks at the head of the small island below the bridge are named OrauMwa, and alongside this he has written “the place for the eel or tuna.” The Mataura here receives the Waimumu on its western, side, and then on the eastern side come in order the creeks Te-awa-maraki, Te-wai-purapura, Paparoa, Pikiraki, and Te-kai-rere. The last name is rendered Kairererere by other Maoris. Probably, therefore, “Kairere” is a short cut. Puru was the olden Maori name of a big rock at the mouth of the Paparoa Creek, where the old ford went across the Mataura River. The European name of the Kairere is said to he Glover’s Creek. Sam’s Grief is the gully where the celebrated Sam Perkins nearly met his doom at the hands of a large crowd of infuriated _ diggers whom he had led on a wild-goose chase to a bogus goldfield in 1861. Its Maori name is Upoko-papaii, the papii being a kind of edible speargrass. Of course, the name may be a personal one in this case. The next creek is the Marairua, and across on the other side enters the Otu, after receiving its tributary the Lowbum, .which my aged' friends called Waihoa., The derivation of this name seemed to be obscure, the only meaning my principal, informant could give for “hoa” being “a couple” or ‘ two people.” ' There appears v to be only one more tributary on the Western side and that is the Oteramika. This word should be Oteraumaka and is really the name of the bush near Edendale where the creek commences, the correct name of the stream itself being Waitaka. Down the eastern side of the Mataura there is a plethora of creeks of all kinds of lengths and dimensions, so much so that the writer has not yet succeeded in “ placing ” two of them named Tutaewiwi and Oniho. Of the remainder the wellknown Mimihau receives a tributary which is distinguished by the variety of ways its name is spelt, certainly half a dozen in number, although its real name is as simple as Waibarakeke (flax stream). The Wyndham River was called Makoruta by my principal informant, and Mokoruta by another. Where it enters the Mataurq there is a big rock called Pohatu-a-te-rakitierea—the stone of Te Rakitierea, a chief whose name also figures in a riverside spot near the mouth of the Cliitha), The tributaries of the Mokoruta are the Owhare and the Makarewa, and as the latter is defined as behind Dr Monsies’s old place it is evidently the Redan Burn. The next tributary of the Mataura is the Kuriwao, and then comes the Titiroa, which in turn has two contributors in the Waimahaka and the HabuMnini, This last word has been written in many ( forms, but the writer appears to have omitted to inquire after it. On a map dated 1853 it is down as Opurakanini, which seems to be more intelligible Maori than its present form. The river widens out into an estuary to the east of which is XJretura (Portrose), and then it finishes its course by swirling through a . narrow outlet into the sea.