MOKOIA MEMORIES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12083, 11 August 1917, Page 2

MOKOIA MEMORIES.

Vr • » ' j When I wad the other day that the Land Court at Rotorua was at •work individualising the Arawa titles "Mokoia's 'mana tapu ' is going; this as I the beginning of the end." For Tbehind that ofScial portioning out of the soctions of Mokoia soil to the here- .- ctitsary owners—l believe there are 11101 e ihan five hundred of them —there is i|hi| desire of white residents of Roto|a| and other pakehas who haw developed a fondness for tho Lakes Cdhntry to obtain a freehold footing on tihe beautiful little mountain-island Ttrhach for centuries has been tho heart eiid oora of Arawa life- "When tho land Is no longer held in common, it as jiot long, under the present Native laqd laws, before the Maori is induced to,' part with his few acres, and tho j •tiine is near when pakeha cottages and summer bungalows will dot the terraces and hill slopes, displacing tho native, j house, and then the life that gave Mokoia its peculiar attractiveness will bo.'gone, or at any rate so Enrcpeanised I that the Motu-Tapu of tho Arawas will Hare lost its charm for those of us wlw fcoew it in its olden unspoiled days of i the dug-out canoe and the raupo- J thatched whare. There are some places in New Zealand where the genius loci 'of the anfcients seems a very real thing. New though the land is from the standpoint of civilised man, it has secluded fpots whioh hold, for those who have inmgination, a soul of immemorial antiquity, a familiar spirit, a perdurable element of mysticism and enchantment, built up of the lives and loves and traditions of generations of mankind. . Inf such places as Mokoia it is tho dead who are of more importance than ■fehe living, in a sense, for the minds oft the people of the brown race are prone to contemplate the past—perhaps more than is good for them. *; j&ere, if anywhere, is a spot saturatwith the earth-magic of the • ancients. It is probably nearly a thousand years since the first family settled pit Mokoia's so fruitful soil. Unnumbered generations of brown people have lived and fought there and been gathered again to Papa-tua-nuku, their Mother Earth. The island is one great cpinetery. All that tread Tie globe *ra bat a handful to tho tribc3 That slumber in its bosom. The ancestors of the Arawa, in their thousands, have become pirt of the apil; and 60 we find tliis sweetly roundefi upjut of volcanic land, in nearly tlje exact centre of Rotorua lake, id through and through. Except for the drowsy, decayed little village Paepaerau, facing the rising sun, and the beautiful rich levels, on which great crops of kumara and potatoes and Ojaiza are grown, the island lies idle—given over to the softly-tinted tangles of . native vegetation, right up to tho ! breezy summit of "Tama's Food Pile." , Everywhere one comes across ruins of old fortifications, ancient earthworks, half-buried in fern and shrubberies; fosses, which once defended populous villages, rounded mounds and | h&lf-decayed fences, palisades that show the last homes of the island people. Tjiere are venerable trees—matai, to- | tiara and karaka—each of which bears ia":name and a history; each is tapu against the axe. Deep and ghostlylobking thickets, wairua-haunted, imbinge on tho scattered dwellings of Ngati-Uenuku-Kopako—a tiny hapu inth a big name—and some of tlie choicest of the cherry groves with Which Mokoia abounds are tapu to the Maori, though the pakeha visitor may feast there as much as he pleases. Mokoia was not only the site of the most venerated symbols of the pagan faith—there are some of these ancient stone images there now. It was, above nil, the place to which the sacred remains of the dead were taken, after the last rites of the tangihanga, for Rccret burial. So the Rotorua Maoris those of the older generation —speak of Mokoia as their an- . jßestor, their mother, and after prolong- ) ed absence, an old man or woman may I .b_e observed gazing upon the little mountain-isle with tearful eyes, as a tangi chant of olden days is softly and Sorrowfully murmured. And its fame has gone far beyond the Arawa country. At the time of a great congres9 of the tribes at Rotorua, when King George was greeted hero by the Maoris, j many of the visiting Natives from other parts, some of them from the South Island, were exceedingly anxious to set foot on this Lakeland Holy Isle. "When ..they readied the island, some of them tangi'd over it, shed tears and murjihured song 9 of greeting, and on leav--ing they took away with them loaves and handfuls of soil, wrapped up in • handkerchiefs, as mementos of the venerated spot. A PLACE OF GHOSTS. . Not far from the little white sandy '.beach of Paepaerau, the usual landingplace on Mokoia, there is a dense, high ] •.-growth of native and pakeha vegeta- J tion, chiefly the acacia, covering theface of Kaiweka hill—the spot whereon Tut-anekai of old built his summer treeb'tilcony—and descending to the quiet "waterside. A narrow winding track, I arched over by tho interwoven trees, | -leads through this grove, a dim and wood even in the daytime. The mouldering timbers of old-time houses , aj-p seen here and there by the trailand the place holds an at.pqsphere of mystgry and of ghostlifcess. It is to the Maori in very a place of ghosts. Tradition in3p%ts the shadowy grove with invisiblo fpresehces; it is. in fact, crowded with 'So'gies—the Maori calls them wairua, ..jkejiua and taepo. And these bogios spirits are very real indeed to the iiljibri. Not even n young Native of this generation can be induced to walk { 'through that grove by night, though the track is the island thoroughfare between the village and Ilinemoa's Bath, a favourite camping place. And truly, . considering tho beliefs ther imbibed with their mother's milk and their environment; of twilight superstition one cannot find it in his heart to blame them or to laugh at them. And there •are places far less uncannv than tho - track to the hot bath. Wai-Kimi-hia, of romantic memory, where the islander hesitates to tread even in broad daylight. Here is tho home and citadel of -Tapu. THE TALES OF TAMATI. v., Bitting one lazy summer day of long j&go on the fiat-topped green mound itajled Kawa-te-tangi, a steep-sided just above; ilinemoa's Bath, JL jheard many curious tales of tho times .old from Tamati Hapimana. Tamati ,w;as a type of the Maori race at its best, jjie was a white-bearded patriarch, ;£.n#th the quiet dignity of the true f'ngatira; holding a simple trustni" ith in the religion of the white man ' pas taught him half a century before by Jbh© llev Thomas Chapman—the pioneer Missionary from whom lie took his —yet at the same time displaying large affection for the folk-lore and Vpoetrv of bis own people. His hapu - Aore rc (" The Do-

THE TAPI3 ISO OF THE MS.

By JAMES COWAN.

(Written for the ,! Star.")

Clouds"), who have 'lived for three centuries on Mokoia and the adioming mainland. And the venerable tv.a's dark features would hcht up a-ai'n with the fire of his vouth as he related something of life in the cannibal times, and the customs o his an-o«tors. and chanted the ; ;" c ; < T nt and the lam™is of old -Mokoia. He took a real del Hit in reciting the Wend- and pr-etrv that came from the far bac-k. d ; m davs when the Turu-m-manki? and til" and other tribes of tho very ancient. Mnruiwi normlo. rtioro hlnck ilinn brown, held all this Lakeland, and the tales and chants of the d:i''?> of the earlv mis r - ; onaries. when the o'' 0 '"!! priests tlio tnpn-uc-stroving faith of the whites. THE MISSIONARY AND HINEMOA'S BATH. As we "sunned ourselves there on the gra.',sy hill, Tamati talked of the storied hot spring bath below, close bv tho lakeside. The uathing pool is divided into two sections. The outer one was, anl stiil is on occasion, reserved for those under the quarantine cf tapu. Across and around the softly steaming stone-rimmed shallow tank gay dragon-flies skimmed and_ swooped, their brilliant wim's and bodies glancing in the sunshine. The Maoris call them kapo-wai, or " water-scoopers ; and one recalls the- old English gipsy fancy of which Mr Theodore WattsDunton tells in his introduction to Borrows's " Romany Rve." that the dra-gon-flies are the "devil's needles" come to sew up prettv girls' eyes. "Sometimes." said Tamati, " spirits of men entered into those kapo-wai." And not only the 'Maoris, hut the white missionary, were fond of that historic bathing place. The Rev Thomas Chapman, a mentor whom Tamati regarded with much afi'eetion, was accustomed in his later years to canoe across the lake from his home at the Ngne in order to enjov ■ o hot- bath. An old woman paddled him across. One day—it was about the year 1870—he was late in returning to the canoe. The old wahine went to look for him, and found him lying dead in the bath. Hp. had passed peacefully and painlessly awav in the soft, warm waters of famed Wai-kimi-hta. Iho sorrowing Maoris carried their missionary's remains all the way to tho coast. His bodv and that of his «'if 0 rest m the shado of the Wharekahu tree groves at Maketn. THE PROCESSION OF THE DEAD. Here, too, there is a haunting niemorj oi the year of the 'J'arawera eruption. Just before that catastrophe sent more thn a hundred Arawa souls c J n g to tho opintland, a certain man of th© Arawas. who was a " matakite." that is, a person endowed with the "ift of second sight—had a vision in a dream by night, iho seer beheld a long procession of people crossing Rorotua Lake Jn, 011 . 1 to Mokoia Island. I-heir heads were bowed, they wore their finest mats, Itheir lieads were plumed with feathers, as is tho way when the dead are adorned to lie in state. Silently they passed across the surface of calm Kotorua, they embarked in no canoe, but trod, as it seemed to the dreamer, the waters of tho lake. As they reached Mokoia they passed up tho southern slope of tho sacred island —" The Holy Isle of Tinirau," as it was anciently called—and disappeared at the summit—where the burial-places are. It was a portent; the figures with bowed heads were the spirits of the.' many soon-to-be dead passing to their last homes in their ancestral funeral isle. THE FORTS OF OLD'TIME. Then, walking through tho tapu groves of shadows on Kaiweka slopes, "lamat-i took me to some of the old pas, the hillside forts occupied by clans of the Arawas. A beautiful green spot, dotted with karaka trees and whanako palms, was Arorangi, a parapeted hold, whose chief was also named Arorangi, and who. in a, famous encounter, was fatally speared in the forehead by Ue-nuku-Kopako with a ko, or sharp-point-ed wooden digging implement. (This name Arorangi is a. wide-pread one throughout the Polynesias, and could we but trace it Ito its original home we would havo to go very far afield. There is a native town in the island of Rnrotonga, :n the Cock Group, called Arorangi, and there is also an Arora'i. equivalent to Arorangi, as far off as the Gilbert Islands, near the Equator.) Above on the fern-ridge, were the lines of (the great pa- Rangiahua, whioh Honed tool: in 1823. Bevoud was tho older pa Tokanui, a little nearer at hand the deserted site of the fenced villake Puke-maire. THE GIANT OF THE ISLAND. On the steep eastward slope, towering aboVe the present village, were the ruined parapets and terraces of .'the large pa hului-rahi. Upon the eastern slopes of Pukurahi pa woro buried tho gigantic bones of luluwangi, the ancestor of the present tribe of Whakarowarewa. The Maoris declare that Tuhourangi was nine feet high and that he was six feet up to lihe arm-pits. Tamati said that the: bones were still buried there, deep in the ground, enclosed in stone slabs. His storv was that Sir George Grey, having'heard that there were bones there of a man of enormous size, obtained jthe consent of tho natives to dig for the skeleton. The Maoris whom he employed purposely dug in a wrong place,' and the relics were never brought to light. Ihere are conflicting statements however, for it is said that mam' years ago Sir Georgo Grey sent to England to Professor Owen some bones of a man of great size, who must have been ovof nine feet in height, and winch were obtnincd on Mokoia. But they can hardlv have been those of Tuhourangi, fo r George Grey once wrote that when Mokoia. was stormed bv Ngnpuhi iii IR'23 the invaders probably carried off the bones of the giant, " for they have not: since been seen." It may he, however, that .thev still rest 'in MokoiVs soil. The bones were to bo set up in the .sacred places on the odevsion of the planting and harvesting of the kumara. THE GRAVEYARD ON THE PEAK. And now, r'ght above us, see tho ferny hill which crowns the island Olimbine up to it, nasi: Rangitu_'s ruined walls,_ we find the hill-top crowned with a little four squaro redoubt-like earthwork. This pa is a tribal ceraeteiy. a grand and lofty resting-place indeed, six hundred feet above the waters of th© lake. Here the greatest of the tribe are laid in their lasij beds. The name of this island summit is Te Tihi-o-Tania-whakaikai— " The Citadel of the Sons of Abundant Food." This name was bestowed three hundred years ago by the warrior-chief Rangi-te-eorere—he who conquered the island from the original holders, the ancient Maruiwi stock—because of the fruitfulness of 3lokoia. He likened the whole island to a great pile of food heaped up for the feast. Tho island was very closely cultivated in older times. Rangi and his people grew food all over Mokoia, even up to this lonely hill-|ip. Now all around lies desolate and waste the -forest and the fern have reclaimed their own above the quiet homes of thq uncounted dead. "THE PILGRIMS OF TU." To the most tnpn spot of all the. old

was an ancient t*uahu, an aboriginal Shekinah, down under the willows thai drooped over the white beach at the north end of the island. Matariki, it was called—the Maori name for the Pleiades constellation. Here the great c]:;ef pries!: Unuahu had his altar sixty vears ago, and there, under the willows wo saw the decaying remnants of his iitf. 1 -.- canoe, a thr;ce-tapu re he '' which no Maori dares to touch. The I clear waters that lap the shmmg sandy beach were tapu also; no man might enter them but the toliunga and warriors just returned from the battle, wno in this wai tapu were cpremon.ia.Hy freed from the quarantine of blood. It was here that the priest stood to welcome the Arawa war parties bound 'homewards in their great canoes from i their expeditious of slaughter and maneating ; on this sandy shore ho stoow and waved a leafy branch m and cried his war chant to the God 01 War, which began: I hacro mai i whea, Te-c lnii 11 a. TuV (" Whence come ye. )( Great pilgrims of Tu? to which the war-priests in the great canoes made loud and rhythmic response. And the warriors, when their craft were drawn up on the shelving beach, leaped into tho sacred water, and the tohunga freed them from the tapu of battle with sprinklings and exorcisms. To-day we saw the tops of tome ancient totara posts above the surface of the water close to the beach. I These venerable stakes marked the | bounds of the pagan Wai Tapu. j Other stories and thickly tapu d posts there were about these sandy fhores. Tamati showed two stout, toiara stakes driven into the lake bottom, one of them near the Paepaerau landing-place, the tops projecting like 1 a tooth two or three feet above the water. X T pon these sharp-pointed timbers the island warriors used to set the severed heads of their The stump of an olden moari (a Maori maypole or swinging-tree) stands out in the clear waters where once the beach line ran. On the north-east side, facing Rot.oiti, there wore certain famous battered and moss-encrusted carved posts, ; which bore the names of ancient chiefI tains, To Roro-o-te-Rangi, Tu-te-whai-jwha, Te Okotahi and Tamakari. Two | of these were sot up as memorials of 'men who met their deaths by drown- : ing in the lake. Tainakari ; who was killed in a fight, was the son of Tu- ; tauekai and Hiuemoa. A inana-tapu, !a. sacred spell, hangs about these I fitakns, as the skipper of a lake steamer ' discovered when he happened one day i to make fast his noi.=-y fire-canoe to Te Pioro's rudely sculptured shrine. And many another fragment of the i wild old days, each called forth by I some tree or hill or rock, or carven j post, romei from the ancient man of Mokpia. But the sun is westering low on Ngongotaha, and as the rays set the old clematis-wreathed cliff-face of Taupiri aglow, the little steam clouds rise from tho village, where the women are uncovering tho cooking hangi.s, ano presently a loud call comes to the old i man from the kainga, and the patriarchal rangatira, girding up his blanket, j worn kilt-fashion, strides along the : track that, winds between the food gari dens to his raupo-thatched hut. | Good old Tamati Hapimana lias been dead these dozen years and more. The ; Kaumatua takes his rest on a hillock 'on the green hillside, near by Arorangi's parapets, beneath the rustling ; shade of a tall ti-palm. His widow, j with lier white, thick hair cropped short in mourning, piously weeded tho littlo graveyard within the square white fenco which held the chief's narrow bed, and softly chanted her waiatas to her deep-sleeping partner. She did not remain behind him long. When again I visited Mokoia I went to the wharo under the cherry tree to see old Miria; hut the raupo hut was closed, tho ouce-tidv garden deserted and weed-grown. A woman in the near-by plantation took her pipe from her bluetattooed lips and pointed with its stem to the lone cabbage-palm on the hillside. "There she is," said she, "up there with Tamati. Kua hoki kite oneone." ("They have returned to the earth.") So to Papa's bosom return all her son?; and daughters; and can we wonder that to Tamati's people the mother soil of Mokoia teems with the "waking ghosts" of the immemorial dead?