THE WOMEN OF NGATIIRA

Otago Witness, Issue 3768, 1 June 1926, Page 77

THE WOMEN OF NGATIIRA

By

EILEN DUGGAN

(Fob tub Witness.)

Women are treated with honour in Maori chronicles. Thus it is on record that the wife of Tara gave its old name to Wellington Harbour. She begged that it be called Te Whanganui a Tara, after her fearless husband, and he acceded to her request. Another woman gave its old name Motu Kairangi to Miramar. So women were not subservient in the Maori golden age. So among the Ngati Ira, women played no mean part. The Ngati Ira were the tribal sons of Ira, the Heart-Eater. His wife, Pipi, had red hair and a pale glowing skin. She transmitted her fire and her pallor to the children of the race. Ngati Ira had troublous times on the East Coast. There was fighting, fighting till their hearts grew weary. They decided to move on. Their chief, Whakumu, led them south towards his mother’s land. His father had married a southerner, and he turned his face towards the Wairarapa. The old people told him not to go, but lie was stubborn. The Rangitane were only a handful, he said, and as for the Ngati-Mamoe everyone knew that the Ngati-Mamoe were a slow people, and had to be taunted into a fight. They would sit in the sun all the day. They seemed like folk bewitched. He had no fears of Ngati-Mamoe. He crept southward, fighting his way. His tribe was brave, and he was lucky, so lie was not deterred from his first dream of reaching the Wairarapa lands. After a victory he would settle awhile, collect foods for a new journey, and pass on. He was the true adventurer. He had skill and he had craft. He did not linger long in Heretaunga. With that melancholy that is found only among Maoris and Celts he spoke to his people. “Our sun is set. Let us be moving.”

He knew that the injured tribes would unite in their resentment to expel him. He went by the '©a coast, for if hia tribe grew hungry there were nipis on the shore and fish in the waters.

But the malice of their enemies pursued them. The Rangitane ambushed them, and the Kahungurra hung on their flank, cutting off the stragglers. Further, the Rangitane sent word to the Wairnrapans to attack the strangers. Then were the weary Ngati fra m sad .‘trails with enemies to east and to west of them, to north and to south of them. Their chief slipped his tribe through. He made his women line up and dance a halta for their enemies. Now the women of Ngati Ira were very beautiful. Their bronze hair caught the sun as no black hair could catch it. Their fair skins reddened as they danced. Their enemies were lost in admiration, and while they were lost in gazing. Whakumu’s men stole their canoes. Thus did the beauty of the daughters of Pipi nrefit the men of their race. The Maori admired craft, and that stratagem won respect for Ngati Ira. Finally they reached that hill that looks down over the valleys right down to the sea. So might Cortez have stared from Darien. They came down from the heights slowly, for they were weary of that long migration. They chose Palliser Bay,

or Te Kawa Kawa, as it was then called. From Te Kawa Kawa they settled Wellington Harbour. Nine generations they stayed in these lands. The Maori reckons years by generations, which makes it difficult to fix dates for events. Approximate dates, however, would set their coming in the time of the last ef the Tudors. While Elizabeth was wondering fiercely, brokenly, on her sick bed, to whom she would leave her England, the Ngati Ira were plaiting garlands of kawa kawa or planting kumeras here in the sun.

But there was a doom in store for Ngati Ira. In 1819 a war party in the north, having obtained guns from the whalers, were eager to display their skill with them, and curious to test their boasted . power. A fighting section from Auckland, under Tuwhare and two other chiefs, arrived at Kawhia and held solemn conference there with Te Rauparaha, the Maori Napoleon, head of the Ngati Teas. It was they who brought Te Rauparaha down upon Kapiti. It was they who caused his entry into the history of the south. At least thev were the immediate cause, but it is doubtful if Kawhia could have contented for long that fiery old eagle. Together the northern tribes and Te Rauparaha’s with his Ngati Awas, took Waimapihi, the key to the Ngati Ira country.

In the Maori wars of the nineteenth century we find an interesting account of this raid. The raiders suffered badly for want of food. They ate their prisoners, and they ate their slaves. “Fifteen of my slaves were eaten,” said a participator to John White. “Starvation was our food. We remained at Te Whanganui a Tara till all the slaves had been consumed. They then went on up the river to the main pa of the Ngati Ira.” “Te Rauparaha advised that the pa should be assaulted, blit that we should paddle on bevond it and let the people sally forth after us. So we paddled on past the pa, and the people came out and followed along the bank of the river, keeping up with us. When we came to a branch of the main river the people were stopped by it. for it was very deep mud. They said we were impudent, being so few in numbers, to come to attack a numerous people. We remained silent. The tohunga stood forth, to recite his karakias over us. The raiders then commenced execution with their guns. Then sounded a wail, and with a loud shout the peoplo fled. Wo then commenced killing them within the pa until we were tired of it and the pa was full of dead bodies. We remained there three weeks. The Read of one great chief was thrown on the summit of a heap for other heads to be thrown at. It was an

amusement indulged in by our ancestors, but they used stones. We used heads.” One thing the raid did. It filled Te Rauparaha with the notion of emigrating from Kawhia. He co’lected his tribe, and ascending the Hill of the Last Look they wailed their farewell to the lands of their fathers. It is one of the most famous of their laments. “Remain. O Kawhia, remain, 0 ye ancestors of the Ngati Toa remain in peace.” Thus came the Ngati Toas to the south. It took another and another fight to finish the tribe of Ira. Smith has given an account of the Amiowhenua raid that occurred in ’2l or ’22. It was the Ngati Mutunga tribe that finally dispossessed them. One remnant of the Ngati Ira fled to the Wairarapa. One remnant took refuge on the tapu islet of refuge in Island Bay.

In the journal of the Polynesian Society one find this statement: “When the heke arrived at Port Nicholson, the Ngati Ira, though taking no steps to eject them, evidently did not like the state of affairs, but perhaps somewhat undervalued their enemies—one of them making use of the old proverb, “When Poua’s jawbone becomes loose, then the land may be taken.’ Both tribes lived in friendship for a time, constantly seeing and visiting one another.”

This was in reference to the Ngati Awas, but the Ngati Mutunga were even more treacherous. They fell upon the Ngati Ira in Port Nicholson and massacred great numbers of them. The remnant, as usual, fled to the tapu islet. Tamairangi, the thrice-famed chieflainess of the Ngati Ira, was there. Just before her pa fell, she was carried off in a canoe by her people round Sinclair Head. There she and her children were captured by Ngati Mutunga, but were not put to death. She asked her captors to let her sing a lament for her people and her lands. Standing there in her strong wild grace she sang it, and its sorrowful echoes tore the heart of Rangihaeata, who begged that she be given him. It was done, and she was carried off to Kapiti, but she finally escaped to the South Island. She was the last and the greatest of the women of Ngati Ira. She had the mouth of a poet and the heart of a chief.