(All Rights Reserved.) Tales of Rotorua and Legends of the Lakes.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 7, 17 August 1910, Page 52

(All Rights Reserved.) Tales of Rotorua and Legends of the Lakes.

(Specially written for the Graphic ”by

J. Cowan.)

[ln this series ot historical anil descriptive sketches dealing with the Rotorua district, nn entirely new, hitherto unrecorded group of Maori folk-tales and traditions Is brought lo light. Many a familiar spot in the Thermal Springs country abounds with Maori song and store, handed down by word of mouth, but very few of these are known to the white 'visitor. The notes which follow, gathered from the old people of ’he Ngnti-tVhakane. Tuhourangi, and Ngati-Pikiao tribes of the Arawa Country, will, it is hoped, give our readers additional interest in the lakeland scenes with wnlch they deal.]

NO. VII. AN ENCHANTED VALLEY. IN 'HIE FOOTSTEPS OF IHENGA. /eV AILING along the shore of Lake Rotorua, westward and northYGJ ward, from Ohinemutu, and passing the mouths of the Waiohiro and Waikuta streams, and the Ngongotaha River, Taua and I beached our boat one morning at the mouth of the Waiteti ("Cabbage-tree Stream’’), a beautifully clear little troutriver winding down from the fern hills on the western side of Mt. Ngongotaha. On a green hill on the left (northern) bank of the river, close to the lake, is the site of one of the most ancient villages of the Arawa people, the old pa, and little Kainga \\ eriweri. Here 1 saw the remains of what must have been a very strongly fortified pa, in the premusket days. Five hundred years ago the explorer-chief Ihenga settled on this spot, set up his stone altar, or tuahu, as every pious Maori should, and built the great pa, whose massive maioro, or walls, stand even to this day. The. great trench which run across the land «ide of Weriweri is wide and deep, and the top of the earth wall, along which a row of pakeha pine-trees now grow’, is fifteen feet or so above the bottom of the fosse; it must, have been more in ancient days, and it was also formerly crowned by a stout stockade. Within the lines of the old pa is the little home of Matehaere and his wife, two old folks who are mines of information for the folk-lorist. It was Matehaere who took me to see the various places sacred •to the memory of his ancestor Ihenga, and showed me the resting-place in a curious little valley, the very tapu stone “Hine-tua-hoanga,” on which stone weapons and ornaments were shapen by rubbing, by the brink of the sacred stream Wai-oro-toki, of which no Maori may drink and live.

This clear little Wal-te-ti stream winds down like a silvery ribbon through the ferny hills and manuka-clothed levels. A small Maori village, known also as Waiteti, stands on its banks, a short distance up-stream, near the Rotorua-Tau-ranga coach road, from -which a wheeled, vehicle can be driven down to the village or right into the walled marae of Weriweri. The Waiteti is a magnificent trout-stream. It is an incredibly tempting sight for the angler to stand on the bank just above some still, clear pool, alive with beautiful fish, particularly if it be just before the fishing season

opens. In the spawning season the upper parts of the stream are full of tlie big fish; you will see them lying there on the bottom in the sun-warmed reaches, as still as so many rocks, until, perhaps, you are tempted to drop a stone into the stream for the fun of seeing them scatter, like a shoal of mullet before a shark. Up the valley of the Waiteti, turning oft' sharp to the left from the coach road that leads towards the Mangaorewa forest and Tauranga, there are some picturesque little valleys, beautifully sheltered nooks that held Maori hamlets in other days, but now all deserted and overgrown, gone back to the wilds again. Leaving the rockbelted “lightning-mountain” of Te Kauae on the left, we can ride along the old Maori track up to the main source of the Waiteti, where it springs up in a deep puna, or fountain, from under a cliffy wall. These tracks twist in and out all over this lonely country, through the high fern and the glossy green tupakihi within its black clusters of elderberry-like fruit, and the thickets of manuka that in springtime are showered with delicate white blossom till they look as if a snowfall had powdered the face of the country, and diffuse an aromatic fragrance that is the most insistent of the grateful odours of the bush.

Walking up this quiet valley, old Matehaere took me to the old home of his hapu, where generations ago burned the home-fires of his tribe, where their raupo huts dotted the river banks, and human voices livened the now desolate places. About two miles up the valley from where the stream intersected the main road we came to a place where the little river took the character of a mountain-stream, and ran in rapids quite excitedly, whitening itself in cataracts and spray; on either side the banks were clothed with fern and flax, and here and there with groves of the cabbage palms, from which the river took its name. On a ferny knoll that commanded a good view of the stream, bending round in an arc below, and sending its water-music far through the still summer-day air, my old guide halted and said:

“Let us rest here awhile, and I will show you the sacred place of my ancestor Ihenga.” Pointing across the valley, he indicated an unusually’ large ti-palm, or whanake, as it is more often called here, that grew on a tiny flat on the opposite or right bank of the stream. It was really a monster of the cordyline tribe, a palm w’ith a trunk of remarkable height and an immense bunchy head. “See yonder whanake tree,” he said, “and the smaller 'trees that grow around it, in a clump? That spot is called Te Motu-tapu-a-Ihenga (the sacred grove of Ihenga). It was close by there, by’ the foot of the palm, that Ihenga once had his dwelling-place; and in that grove of trees was his sacred place, where he, as an Ariki and priest of his tribe, retired to invoke the gods and to work divinements. That great palm and tree is said to have been planted there by the hand of man; this our people frequently did, because the whanake gave a pleasant shade, and a kind of rough pueru, or garment, was made from its long leaves. That tree is tapu to the Maori, because of Ihenga, and also because the place was afterwards used as a burial place by’ Ihenga’s descendants.”

Then, turning to the right, Matehaere pointed down into a little valley that dipped abruptly’ at our feet, a palmdotted dell through which a tiny stream crept down and searched its way to the Waiteti. The valley was shaped very like a shallow cup; one side opened to allow the creeklet to reach the river. That little stream, said the old man, was the sacred river Wai-oro-toki. On the opposite side rose a steep fern-covered hill; its name was Te Whakaeke-tahuna; it was the first fortified hold which Ihenga built in this Lakeland, and was occupied by him for some time before he went to live at Weriweri and constructed his waterside fortress there.

“Now, friend,” Matehaere continued, “Ihenga the chief had three treasure*.. One was his god Utupawa, a stone carved in the semblance of a human being; it was brought to this country from Jflawaiiki. Hither Ihenga brought his god, and he sought for it a resting-place, and he set it up on yon ferny hill above the Waiteti, not far away from his home. His second treasure was his mokai or pet, called Kataore, which was a creature in the form of a taniwha or lizard-like monster. He fed and cherished this strange creature, and it lived in a foun-tain-well which you will see in the bed of the Waiteti. Long afterwards it was killed at Lake Tikitapu. And his third treasure was the sacred rubbing-stone, Hine-tua-hoanga, which I will show you lying by’ the brink of that very tapu stream in the valley below us. And Ihenga’s friends and neighbours here were the fairies, the Patupaiarehe. They belonged to the fairy’ tribe of Mount Ngongotaha. “But now let us go down into the valley and look upon the sacred waters and the hoanga stone of power.” The old man led the way down through a tangle of shrubbery to the bottom of the little cup-valley’, till we reached the Wai-oro-toki. The name means “Axesharpening Water.” It was a rivulet of coolest, clearest water that welled up —'like most other streams in this district —from a little gushing fountain spring under the side of the hill, where a thicket of native shrubs almost hid it from, view, and invested it with a mystery and gloom that to the Maoris heightened its mana-tapu, its sacred character. Tall whanake palms rose over all, and gently swished their (long fewtord-leaves, and now and then a soft air stirred the grey and dried dead leaves that drooped in bunches below the crown of green. The stream, only a few .feet wide, but deep and still, flowed very silently, just moving the cresses and waterweeds that fringed it: it was so clear that y’ou could see every stone and pebble on its sandy floor. It was a slumbrous spot; and old Matehaere, as he stood on the bank, seemed half-afraid to break the supernatural quiet of the sacred valley. “No Maori will drink of this stream,” said he, after a while. “Its waters are tapu, for two reasons. One is that the sacred bones of Whakaue, one of our great ancestors, from whom the-Ngati-Whakaue tribe takes its name, were buried in its source, dropped down into ■the puna, the river-well there under the hill. The other reason is that the very sacred axe-rubbing stone Hine-tua-hoanga lies by the river brink. It is death to drink of this water, though it looks so clear. The tapu would kill any Maori. Once two men drank of it unwitting of its history’, and they quickly died when they discovered what they had done. You Pakehas would say it is fear,

I suppose, but we know it is the tapu. And see, yonder is the axe-sharpening stone of our ancestor lhenga. You are the first white man to look upon it.” The old man pointed out the historic stone, one of the most venerated relics of ancient Maoridom in the lakeland district. 1 examined it. It was a fiat block of grey stone, apparently a kind of sandstone, about three feet in diameter, lying on the creek edge, half in and halt out of the water. In its smoothly-polished upper surface were three deep grooves, worn by generation after generation of men in their works of “orooro-toki” or axe-rubbing. It was a whetstone, u-ed by the natives of the stone age for the polishing and sharpening of their azes, adzes, and chisels. Many such whetstone or “hoMnga” weie in use, but this one is regarded by th ■ Maoris as exceptional because of its antiquity, and because many generations of high chiefs aud priests had used it for the polishing and sharpening of their stone weapons. it is “Tino Roiigonui,” farfamed indeed, amongst the Ara was. Said Matehaere, as he stood at a safe distance from “ Hine-1 ua boa ng a”: “My forefathers, it is said, brought that axe-sharpening stone hither in the cance Ai’awa from the distant islands of Hawaiiki. away in the land where they say it is always summer. W hat though it be very heavy as you say? The explanation is easy: it was veiy light when first it was brought to this pl-ace. but through continual resting there, and through the tapu, it has Laconic heavy, as it, no doubt, is, though I will not touch it to try its weight. True, pakeha! Though you don't look as if you believed it! It is not a stone of this land, ’and it bears the name of wonderful mana, for Hine-tua-lloanga, the Woman of the Whetstone, after whom it is named, was a goddess of our remote ancestors; she was a stone, and it was upon her sacred iback that the gods and our great ancestors did grind sharp the edges of their stone axes. And we have a very ancient and sacred karakia chant which is used when sharpening axes in this way; it was first used for the sharpening of the stone ■tools with which the trees were felled in far Hawaiiki for the building of the canoe Arawa to convey my ’ancestors across the Great-Ocean-of-Kiwa to this country. But I care not to repeat that chant here in the sacred valley, for fear the stone 11 ine-tua-hoanga should hear me. It is so long since the priests last used it here. Let us climb to the hill above.” So we crossed the sacred river—the Maoris evidently consider the tapu is well diluted when its waters mingle with the main river, for the Waiteti is under no ban as to drinking—-and breasted our way up through the manuka and fern to the clear hill-side above. And there, close by the tutu and fern-covered earthworks of the ancient pa. Whakaeketa.hu na, Matehaere, the last chief of Ngati-lhenga, reci tod his pt range fold chant, the song of lhenga, for this very tapu relic of neolithic man. The karakia dates back about six centuries; it was composed in Hawaiiki and recited by the priests over the stone axes; every step in the process of felling the forest-trees and working the timber was sanctified by the Polynesians with appropriate ritual, for the propitiation of the spirits of the forests of which T'ane was the father and the guardian. This is a translation of the chant as repeated by Matehaere: There is no road, O friend, no way to the far South I.ami, save by the will of the gods, save by thee, O Whakarewa-in-the-sky, our guide to the distant places. Thou it wert who hither brought Pout ini ami Wharaua, axes made of the sacred green jade stone; brought them o’er the ocean far. There, in that distant land, we’ll see, flashing and shining in the waters, the sacred treasure-stone of Tangaroa; the lightning flashing stone, the bright and glistening stone. Banished be the tapu’s spell, eie I place the sacred stone on lline-tua-lloanga, the goddess of the whetstone, that the axe blade may be sharp to fell the great totarn tiee. Oh come, ancestral shades! Come hither, ancient spirits, spirits of the distant places, come sharpen me my stone axe-blade to hew me down the woods of Taue, to make fly the chips of Tu kehu. the son of Mumuwhango, the forest child for whom we sought, to cross the flowing waters. This ancient rune requires an explanatory note or two. Tang iron, mentioned in the chant, is the god of the ocean, ami of fish and all other creatures of the .sea. The greenstone is spoken of as the sacred stone of Tangaroa because it was in Maori legend originally a fish, turned to stone by some magical power. Tu Kehu is apparently a name for the totara pine, which in Maori mythology was. the offspring of Mumuwhango, who was one of the wives of l ane Ma-

liuta, the creator and guardian of the forests, and of all that dwell therein. Tane is often used in Maori song as an emblematical term for a canoe; “the narrow path by which the ocean is crossed ” is a canoe made from Tane’s forest-child. Our totara pine does not grow in the South Sea Islands; the word totara may possibly have been an ancient name for some Hawaiikian tree of another kind, such as the tamanu, one of the best of the South Sea timbers, or else it has been introduced into the karakia since the Maoris came to New Zealand. (To be Continued.)