STORIES IN STONES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10440, 20 April 1912, Page 1

STORIES IN STONES.

ORIGIN OF MONUMENTAL ROCKS AT ATIAMURI. A. SIXTEENTH CEinTOY ROSOASTCS AN3 TSAMSDT. (By JAMES OOWAN.) It was the old, old story, a frail woman and her lover. Woman, says the Maori, was the root of most evils; the "wahine" and the " whonua," the lady of the land, were at the bottom of all the troubles that beset the aboriginals in the days when the law of " tapu M and the law of the club were the twin regulators of life and conduct in this land of Aotea-roa.

Away up there on the banks of the deep, strong Waikato River, where it sweeps in blue curves down past the old half-way house between Rotorua and Taupo, at historic Atiamuri, with the mighty lava rock of Pohatu-roa rising like a black castle of the giants six hundred feet above the -pumice plains, there is a curious little lonely valley, which for three hundred and fifty years has been tapu to the memories of a vanished people. A littlo stream called the Ongarue flows windingly down the valley to join the Waikato. The place is almost level and is sparsely clothed with fern and manuka. Dowi* the valley comes theold track from the Whakamaru Ranges, the Shady Mountains, which-interpose a rugged backbone between Atiamuri (or Te Ate-a-muri) and the plains that slope northwards towards the town of Cambridge. Here in this valley you may see to this day a singular array of large stones, mostly up-ended, so disposed that it is evident they were set there by tho hand of man. "There are a great many of them—tradition says there were originally a hundred and seventy; some as tall as a man, the others of lesser size. Along the flat they are irregularly strewn, some hidden in the tangled fern. It is a solitary place, little disturbed except by the fern-root-hunting wild pigs and a stray mob of. the wild horses that roam "about these wide and fenceless plains. The occasional traveller who rides that way—the Whakamaru track joins the old Rotorua-Taupo coach road a mile or so north of the' Waikato bridge at Atiamuri—hears vague,' brief legends from the Maoris and the rabbiters about those grey old stones: how they were set up to mark the site of some long-ago battle and that tho big stones mark where the chiefs fell and the small ones the death-places of the common man. But beyond that the average Maori of tbe country knows nothing; only in tho memories of one or two very old men are stored the traditions of ths Stones of Ongarue, the Druidic mementoes of a day when all this long valley rang with the battle-cries of wild brown men, and when huge naked warriors fought each other to the death with spear of manuka and club and axe of stone, and when the fires of ferocious mau-eaters lit up the plain. These are the stones that Professor Macmillan Brown, in his book on primitive man in Polynesia, supposes to have been set up by soma prehistoric race, memorials, in fact, of megalithic man of immeasurably ancient times. However, they are not so ancient as the Professor imagined. Their authentic history, which I will give, shows that they come well within the Historic Maori period in New Zealand. But a little colour is given to Professor Brown's fascinating theory by the fact that the warriors whose corpses dotted this ferny valley that battle-day of long ago were most probably of 'a different race from the present Maoris. They may have been in part descended from the very ancient Maruiwi nation, the dark men who used manuka bows and arrows, and whose manners and appearance were uncouth and displeasing, whom certain unpublished Maori traditions speak of having covered the land seven or eight hundred years ago. Probably they were half-Melanesian and so of a seminegroid typo. But all we know of them now is that this particular tribe was called the Ngati-Kahupungapunga and that they were vassals or tributepaying serfs (tribute being in the form of preserved birds and other food supplies) to their stronger and more warlike Polynesian neighbours.

Three hundred and flftv years ago there lived at the base or 1 the graceful vo'canio mount called Kakenuku, in the valley of the Waipa—the 'Main Trunk railway runs hard by now —a young, fine-looking and enterprising chiefv jyiicse name was Te Whaita. Pie came of the Tainui stock, great warriors all. Also, he appears to have had an eye for a. handsome woman. It came to pass that he and a party of his followers made a frirndly visiting expedition to the Rotorua country. They took with them many presents, such as finely-woven flax cloaks, gifts of "•rolia," to the Arawa people. And one of the pas or palisaded villages visted was Pari-karangi. which stood a few miles south of the now celebrated geyser va'ley of Whakarcwareva. The chief of that place was Ruamano. He -had a wife who was famous for her beauty; sho wna tall and very enct, deeo-bosomed and strong; her eyes shone like stars, and when she stood forth in the haka3 that were danced to entertain the visitors they gleamed like the full moon, as the Mscri has it. Her name . was Waiarohi.

THE UNLAWFUL LOVERS. Te "VVhaita straightway conceived a groat desire for the handsome wife of his host. And the fickle Waiarohi was Hot slow in returning his passion. The two met and loved surreptitiously in the dark night. But these illicit affairs of the heart could seldom be lonj; concealed in the -Maori commune. "The" liaison was soon detected and then there was a tremendous " raruraru ■' — trouble, confusion, bustle, botheration, a pretty how-d'ye-do, in fact—in that kaanga"of Hot-spring Land. The tattooed Lothario from the distant "Waipa was in an awkward corner. Ha could very properly have been called out on tho marae, the village parade-ground, and speared for his basT conduct in seducing the wife of his host. Tin.- angry ituanuno- —who would probably have done the same, tiling himself had he been in To Whaita's place—debated with his relatives whether he should slay tho offender. HoweVer, it was decided that as he had come as a friondly visitor and had partaken of tho tribe's hospitality, ho could not rightly bo killed. So he was quietly told he must leave the pa at ones and depart for Ids home. In tho meantime some ol the younger men determined that the Waipa chief should not escape. They went out to the end of the iable-topped Horohoro range and then.' by the trail-side laid a kokoti or ambush. Euamano, bearing of this, warned Te "\Yliaita. X"

take Efnother track; his ideas of chivalrous behaviour would not suffer him to see his guest taken unawares. Te Whaita did so but he and his men were seen by the warriors in ambush. The latter rushed across the ferncovered plain and attacked them at the Taungatara stream, killing several; but To Whaita escaped and safely reached his home at hakepuku's foot. After Te Whaita had left Parikarangi, the lady Waiarohi went mad with love for tho young chief of Waipa. She became insane; and this is the origin of tho name given to her pa, " Karangirangi " ("demented"). She used to go up yon lofty, fire-fused mountains, now called Hapa-rangi, and sit there talking to herself; hence the name Hap*arang>a-Waiarohi. There is, too, a place named Te Hereherenga behind Pari-karangirangi which was so called because in her madness the people had to "herehers" or tie her up there. THE BURNING OF WAIAROHI. After a time Ruamano sent his mad wife Waiarohi away to To Whakamaru—the range on the Atiamuri, Cambridge Road—where the NgatiKahupungapunga tribe lived. They were a clan of " tangata-wheuua " ' or aborigines, and were vassals, or rahi, of Ruamano. Into their charge the lady was given; a fine house was built for her and every kind of delicacy was provided for her maintenance. But her madness increased, until at last the people decided to end the trouble they had with her. So one night they set fire to her thatched house and burnt her in it. Waiarohi apnears to have been a relative of Te Whaita, for tho " tangatawhenua '*' 'people sent a message to him, informing him that the mad woman had set fire to her house, and that she had disappeared. But Te Whaita. and his people suspected treachery. They raised a strong war-party to investigate the matter. They had just planted their seed kumera for the season's supply, and some of them asked Te Whaita: " Where- shall we get food for this journey?" Ho replied, " Take those in the cultivation." So tho soed kumara were duo- tip and packed in baskets, and they started on their expedition of inquiry and. revenge. THE AVENGING.

The Waipa war-party quickly reached the bush-girt settlement of the aborigines on tlio Whakamaru hills. _ Their inquiries tended to confirm their suspicions as to tho death of Waiarohi. Presently To Whaita, in mourning for his lost love, after singmg a dirgo, rolled in the ashes of the nouse, as was an olden custom. Feeling something hard under his body, he raked it out, and found it was the jawbone of a woman. Upon this jawbone the impress made by the sharp tattoo-needles was still to be seen, and he recognised the pattern of Waiarohi's tattoo. Now he felt certain that the woman had been done to death bv N'-Kahupungapunga. ' The guilty tribe, upon learning of Te Whaita's discovery, were overcome with terror. The Waipa chief, they felt certain, would attack and destroy them on the morrow. So, in the midnight hours, when the kainga was seemingly asleep, they quietly stole out of the village, men, women and children, and in vast fear and trembling struck into the forest and down over the plains southwards.

But the avenger was quickly on their trail. Hot on the fugitives' tracks came the Whaita's warriors, primed for slaughter. The Ngati-Kahupunga-punga were not fated to cross the Waikato River. In this valley of the Ongarue they were overtaken, and here they fell. The battle was sharp and short. Spear and sharp-edged club and taiaha and stone hatchet laid the treacherous vassals low. Men, women and children were slaughtered, even the infant borne on tho parents backs. A few escaped, perhaps, but the tribe was practically annihilated. The polysyllable name of Ngati-Kahu-pungapunga was wiped out from the land.

On the scene of this fight in later days the Maoris—-probably Ngati-Raukawa, kinsmen to the victorious Te Whaita—set up 170 stones in the ground, some the height of a man, others of smaller size, to mark the chiefs and people who fell there. These aro the stones, as Mr Percy Smith reminds me, that Professor Brown supposes to have been set up by a former race. These events occurred fourteen generations* ago, or, approximately, 350 years—the middle of tho sixteenth century. To Whaita was the grandson of Motai-tangat-a-rau, a Tainui chief about whom is tho famous saying: "He kotahina Motai, e takalna te one i Hakirikiri!"—" ,: A. single descendant of Motai shall yet tread the sands of Hakirikiri." When the celebrated fighting chief Rewi Maniapoto visited Auckland city twenty years after the Waikato war, he quoted this crvptic saying in a public speech, and many were the speculative interpretations placed upon it.

So that is the true story of the old grey memorial stones on the ancient cannibal battle-ground of the Ongarue. They were reared by no prehistoric mcgalithic race, but they carry down through the centuries a tale of the strong arm that calls up a rune from the grand old pages of Ossian: " Speak to the people, 0 stone! after Selma's race have failed ! Prone, from the stormv night the traveller shall lay him by tny side; thy whistling moss shall sound in his dreams; the years that were past shall return. Battles rise before him. . . . He shall burst with morning from dreams, and see tho tcmbs of warriors round. He shall ask about the stone, and the aged shail reply 'this grey stone was raised by Os.iiau, a chief of other years!' "