Wrathful Taniwha

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1004, 21 June 1930, Page 10

Wrathful Taniwha

WAIKATO RIVER GUARDIANS HAD the politicians of New Zealand and tlieir advisers ot' the Public Works Department been reasonably superstitious, they would not have incurred the wrath of a fearsome taniwha and the Dominion would not have possessed the irking notion, as it does today, that Arapuni might prove to be a costly and impracticable hydro-electricity scheme. One has to delve into a weird world of Maori superstition—a world teeming with taniwhas, horrible ngarara lizards, the mystic patu-paiarehe people of the forest, kehuas. atuas and all kinds of spectres—-to learn why Arapuni has been interrupted.

This malicious taniwha of Arapuni is merely one of the hundred which lurk in the long waters of the Waikato River, according to one tribal belief. “Waikato of the hundred taniwha” the river has been named. Every bend of the river possesses a water demon knowing only jungle law. The natives living near the Waikato knew all the taniwha by name, and frequently saw them moving up and down the river. One of them still lives, so Maoris say, in the big sandbank near the Waikato Heads. These old taniwha were sociable folk among themselves, and tribes were attached to particular taniwhas. When the taniwha ITreia. of Hauraki, was ambushed and slain by Manukau natives it led to war that lasted a century and changed the history of the Tamaki isthmus. Ureia was the property of the Ngati-Tamatera, and had invited Haumia, the Waikato-Manukau taniwha, to visit the Hauraki. As befits a traveller, Haumia had excellent fish stories to relate, and invited Ureia to come to Manukau to sample the fishing. The invitation was accepted and Haumia let the Tainui canoe people, on the Manukau, know that Ureia was on his way round North Cape. TRIBAL HATE Evil counsels prevailed, and. off Puponga. poor Ureia fell a victim to tribal hate. His death was amply avenged: the great fortress of Mount Eden (Maungawhau) was wrecked and never rebuilt. Alien tribe lorded over Tamaki. Some of the old-time taniwha claimed their m«ed of sacrifice and there is a great story of how a Whanganui tribe managed to rid itself of its man-eating taniwha. Anthropology interprets these stories of water demons as race memories of days far away when the tribes lived where there were crocodile-in-fested waters. The hundred taniwha of the Waikato had a significance more than

mythical. 'Each taniwha was a powerful chief who fortified a bend on the river and demanded toll of any passerbj*. The hundred could never brook ideas of federation or co-operation, and when Hongi, with his musketarmed Ngapuhi, ravaged the country south of the Waitemata, the dreaded taniwha in the river bends fell before him like a row of sticks. When he had stormed the last stronghold of the Waikato, near the Waipa, he laughed and exclaimed exultingly that the Waikato hundred taniwha were really only “bunches of watercress”; food for him. NEW HONG! WANTED Hongi did not go along the Waikato as far as Arapuni, so that perhaps the taniwha there is waiting the fate • that befel his lower Waikato brethren, waiting until some political or engineering Hongi, armed with a modern sj’mbolical firearm, will demonstrate that this last of the taniwha is only watercress. There was a Maori of the people friendly with the Arapuni taniwha who approached the Government seriously, suggesting that a gift should be tosse'd into Arapuni Gorge to appease its guardian. Taniwhas appeared in varying forms. One in Hawke’s Bay was nothing more than a large fish with a larger appetite. An old NgatiPamoana man of one of the Wanganui River settlements used the tell the story of the vanished taniwha of the river. One particularly ferocious taniwha had been displaced from his haunt in rapids near Retaruke when the company operating the first river steamers on the Wanganui, baffled in the beginning by the problem of making the steamers traverse the rapids, had too much stratagem for the taniwha when grapple lines were laid down the rapids. To traverse the rapids the lines were simply adjusted to the steamer's winch and the vessel hauled up the rapids. —T.W.