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

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 12, 21 September 1910, Page 44

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

(Specially written for the ‘ Graphic ” by J. Cowan.)

an" entlnTvbu.w ’hH i a * dealing with the Rotorua district, l.rou-.t to li"l, ’x , .Kpnip Of Maori f.,|k tales and traditions is Maori soil- n.d «t<>rv i' A"! s| ’" t llm 1 hernia I Springs country abounds with known to tlu‘ wI.H -Vish ■ru "" ,' ,y '"""th. but very few of these are of 1 • X"' i \VI i' i ■ te ? l,lll " w ' gathered from the old people will it is h. Cd : ? "*•„ ; trang l , and Ngati-Pikia.. tribes of the Arawa Country ’ it is in.pid, gne om leaders additional interest in the lakeland scenes with which they deal.J

>IOKOIA : THE HOLY ISLE OF TINIRAU. IT is a glorious experience to go into camp on tin* shores of these lakes in the lino summer weather. You see the sun drop down, a disc of dazzling lire, over .tin 1 purple shadowed ranges, and the evening hazes ste.il round the hills and dim with a grey blue blur the wooded highlands: and you watch the wild duck taking their arrowy-tlight straight for their reedys nests in some distant swamp, and listen to the voices of the night—the rustle of the trees, the mournful crake of the weka in the ferny hills, the call of the morepork, the plaintive scream of the tarapunga, the little lake gull. Then you attend to matters of kai, for the billy is boiling under the trees by the beach side and the bacon is frizzling, and the camp-lire sends through the falling night a pleasantly bright glow. And afterwards— you lie stai gazing 'through the crevices of the leafy roof, or out on the soft dry sand with a llax whariki mat and your mackintosh under you, and your blankets over you (there’s no need to go to the trouble of pitching a tent in spells of rainless weather), and you smoke and “swop lies*’ with your Maori visitors. And you have a large feeding of pity for tiic good people in “boiled* 5 shirts and light black coats, who are just about this time sitting at dinner in swell hotels and highly respectable boardinghouses across in Rotorua town, a few miles away. I he day breeze 4 is gone, and you lazily’ listen to the ripple of the sleepy waters, ami overhead the starry lamps hang down wonderfully near in the clear pure a t mosphere. “Steady the eta r-refieef ions, every flake T.ike dropping arrows, golden, motionless. Hang on the shadowy polish of the Lake." In the deep vault above burns glittering Rehua, the “Dog-star*’ Sirius. Mere-mere-tu-ahiahi, the bright evening star, beams out beneficently over the grave of the dead sun. To the northwards is brightly’ twinkling Whakaahu and his fellow of the Twins which the OldWorld astronomers named Castor and Pollux. Higher still, as your eye makes for the zenith through the bright maze

of worlds, in the grand constellation of J bion (called by 'the Maoris Tautoru—--1 he three Friends”), the “Boetian liinitsmaii upside down,” with brilliant J’uanga, or Rigid, burning above. Shift the compass of your eye, and there is the gorgeous star-sown arch of the Milky Way, “Te fka Mango-roa,” “The Long Shark-fish,” as the Maoris call it; and at its tail hangs “Te Whai-a-Titipa,” which we pakehas rail the Southern Cross. It was on just such a soft alluring evening that my old b.-ating-mate Riri I a ma ra hi a ml 1 hauled up our fourteeniooter on the sands close by the sacred strand of Matariki, and went into camp on Mokoia Island for the night. Upon the long flat on this nor’-east side of the island the firelight glimmered in one or two of the Maori dwellings; a long plaintive waiata from the village bioke out, but rather harmonised with the brooding spirit of the night. After tea we spread our wharlki sleepingmats on the sand by’ the fire, and “turned in, ’ and yarned of many things. A song cairn* through the night, a chant so weird and wild in the- rise and fall of its cadence that it might have been the wailing lament of some of those disembodied spirits of Maoridom that hover thick about Mokoia. Such mournful songs tin* dark-shunning Maoris like to chant when abroad at night, to show the wandering ghosts ami “taipos ” that they are not a bit afraid. There was a shout of “ Tena-korua”—“There a on are the two of y oil ” —and two barefooted Maoris stalked softly into our circle of light. One, Tamarangi, was a <n*ey old fellow. with an owl-like air of wisdom, trouserless and kilted native-fashion, with a much-worn shawl. The other, a picturesque figure in his long blanket, was Rapaere, a man with keen deep-set eyes like a hawk's, and a strong hooked • Jew ish nose, “iku-kaka,” or parrot’s beak, the Maoris call it: narrow blue lines of tattoo marked his thin brown cheeks. We had a supper, by way of hospitality to our Island landlords, and then came the korero over the pipe and cigarette of pea co. And when the old follows got fairly going, tales of the times of old came forth, and song after song. They told of their tribal god, Makawe, who. is by no means forgotten amongst the Arawa; Kiwi himself believes his life was once

saved in time of danger by Makawe, whose help he supplicated. And Tama* rangi told of the strange spirit-tree of the Lake:

“ Rongomai was an atua, a tipua, (supernatural being) that formerly lived in the waters of this Lake Rotorua. He assumed the form of a kaponga, (ferntree), enchanted and magical, ami he could travel around the lake, floating about with one end sticking up out of the water like a snag. It was an aitua (evil omen) for mortals to gaze upon Rongomai. Should a canoe be crossing the lake, and the paddlers see that de-mon-tree travelling through the waters °. r floating, then it was to them a sign of impending death.” And many another story of folk-lore and of mythic romance, to tell of which would take many a page. It was a fitting time and place to hear them, by that lake-side camp fire; they belong not to the garish day. But at last our visitors left us for their whares, and the pakeha camper-out slept a dreamless sleep on the storied sands of old Mokoia. There is not a spot in all New Zealand which holds for me a greater flavour of antiquity than this little mountain-isle of Mokoia. Pakeha history’ it has not, but it is saturated with the folk-talk and the traditions ami the tapu of the Maori. Think of the thousands of longgone ribespeople who have in their day and generation lived and loved and fought and been gathered to their Mother Earth again on this round green citadel of Lakeland! For the Maori has inhabited this Island, to say nothing of other parts of the country, for probably more than a thousand years. The Arawas ■were but newcomers; their Maori land chronology goes back only’ five centuries. For a thousand years and more this for-tress-island held ward over the blue lake of Rotorua—peopled first by one tribe, then another, as the fortunes of war went in that age of stone. And I am

glad to know’ that it is still purely Maori, and is likely to remain so. an inalienable reserve for the descendants of M hakaue and Uenuku-Kopako and Ran-gi-te-Aorere and other ancient gentlemen of long names and longer pedigrees. It is a delightful spot, this Mokoia Motu, with its wealth of verdure and foliage, its silvery beaches, its wooded hill slopes, and its bold out-jutting rocks. As the visitor approaches from the Rotorua side, -he cannot but be charmed with the beautiful tints of the wooded island. The pohutukawa, that seldom strays far from the smell of the salt sea, here environs the shores of Mokoia (it also abounds at Rotoiti and Tarawera), and at Christmas time decks itself with rich blood-red blossoms. The weepingwillows that fringe the sandy’ beaches are the offspring of the old mission station willows at Tc Ngae. On the hill-slopes grow in luxuriant tangles the karamu, ma hoe, and tupakihi, deepened in colour here and there by the. foliage of the graceful totara and the fruit-bearing karaka, or enriched by the drooping fronds of the tree-fern. In places the bare basaltic rock, grey’ and lichen-grown, with shrubs rootl'd in its time-worn

cracks, exposes itself through the fore** foliage or the bracken fern; and on every hill-top the outlines of oldeil trenches and parapets and fighting ter* races, softened by the growth of thick fern and flax and tupakihi, tell thafc this peaceful spot was once a strongly fortified island, each little pa with its watchful garrison, in the days when men were all trained to arms, and skill in war was no mere amusement, but stern necessity. Here on this happy’ islet one could spend long pleasant days—lounging under the trees on the hill-sides, “careless of mankind, watching the far-off steamjets and the fishers on the Lake, while the summer -breezes stray lightly through the foliage and the long, rank grass “A soft air lifting like a sigh Some tree-fern’s fan, as if in sleep It stirred in the moon stillness deen

Then sank in drowsy trance x>rofound’” A life that exactly suits the Maori, eating the lotus day by day—or its local equivalent, the kumara—with intervals of planting and fish-trawling and fruitgathering.

Long, long ago, Mokoia bore another name, a classic name from Polynesia. It was called Te Motu-tapu-a-Tinarau, which means “The Holy’-lsle-of-Tinirau. 73 St mien ts of Polynesian mythology will remember the wonderful old tale of Tinilau and his island and the whale and a« dozen other things; the original Motntapu was somewhere away in the East-, ern Pacific, probably’ in the Samoa Group, The reason why the name was changed to Mokoia has not hitherto been put on record. Here is the story, as told to me by' several of the old men of NgatiM hakaue and kindred hapus of Rotorua:] Some four hundred years ago, when Mokoia was still occupied by some of the aboriginal tribes, the tangata-whenua, whom the Arawa people found living there when they first explored This dis.trict, a little war arose between I enuku-Kopako, a chief of the Arawa, and one Arorangi, the chief of the Kawaarero tribe, who dwelt in the Arorangi pa, a hill fort on Mokoia. The quarrel arose over the killing and eating of arf‘ dog belonging to Uenuku’s clan—were dogs ’in those days. Arorangi killed by the other chief. The manner of his death was lather peculiar; he was slain by being stabbed just oveii the eye with a sharp wooden “ko,” or digging implement. The wound was ill

a closely tattooed part of the face, the “ko" point took him in the “moko.”The name Mokoia, given by UenukuKopako to this fight, and afterwards to. the island on which it took place, is a punning play’ on, or combination of, thei words “moko ’ and “ko.” “Mokoia’’ literally means “tattooed.” Arorangi was very ungently tattooed with th® “ko” edge. ’ In Mangaia Island, Cook Group, according to Tregear’.s “MaoriPolynesian Comparative Dictionary, spear wounds were called “the tattooing of Kongo.” So much for the name Mokoia. If any of my Maori pundit friends have a better interpretation, let theni come forward with it: in the meantime, the foregoing can stand as having a historical incident to back it up. The Kawa-arero tribe of Arorangi pa 1 were of the ancient people who had already’ been in the land many centuries'. The principal aboriginal tribes which in* habited Mokoia prior to the Arawa werQ called the Raupo-Ngaoheohe, and tho. Tin uru-Maiiku. Some of the Arawa in* t«'rmairied with tlw*>e tribes, and dwelt with them on the island. They were coil* quered about twelve generations, or three hundred years ago, in this wise, as re-4 la ted to me by old Tamarangi and others: “The chief Rangi-te-Aorere (“Sky-of* the-Flying-Clouds”), who was in tho direct line of descent from our ancestor Tama-te-Kapua, came to Rotorua with, his war-party from the Urewera country'. They crossed to Mokoia in theitcanoes. The islanders rushed into thej water to drag the canoes to the but Rangi-te-Aorere had cunningly mopiA ed them by the stern to poles, just las| enough oil the beach to keep afloat, A\ hile the islanders were in the watefj hauling at the canoes, the “Sky-of-the* Fly ing-Clouds” and his men, with thcllS weapons of whalebone and wood amt stone in hand, jumped out. rushed on thej island-dwellers, and defeated, slew and conquered Mokoia. The TangatiVw henna, The ancient race of Maui, word not strong enough to keep their land, so it passed to the brave. After thd fight Rang! cut out the heart of tha niata-ika (the first slain) lying od tho beach, and took it to his tuahu, hii altar, in the mountains of the UrewetJ

country, as an offering to the god of war. So our ancestor Hangi-te-Aorere gained this island, ami it has belonged ever since to his descendants, Ngati-Rangi-te-Aorere, and to Ngati-l/ennkukopako, and other tribes of the Arawa people.” Another incident, though a more recent one, of the old man eating days on Mokoia : About eighty years ago there came to Rotorua, two wandering Europeans — pakeha-Maoris —who startl'd trading on this Island. They set up their w harehoko (trade-house) on the green lawn called Kerikeri, near the foot of the shady palm-clad hill at the northern end of the Mokoia Hat. Their names were, say the Maoris, “lletni” (James), and “ Kapil i’’ (Cabbage). Now. one would have thought that such a valuable bird as a white trader, who furnished the people with such golden eggs in the form of muskets and powder and bullets, 'would have been prized and carefully tended by the Maoris. But one Tarakawa and some of his followers killed one of the stray pakeha geese in a quarrel and drove the other away. The slain pakeha (“Cabbage” it was) was not wasted, however, for Tarakawa and his friends stewed and ate him. And touching that cannibal least, I bethink me of my quondam man-eating acquaintance, old Patara te X’gungukai, the tattooed saturnine tribal bonescraper of Ohinemutu. Patara is now gathered to his fathers (he died in 1901. aged over 90. and no one will scrape his bones). Patara was one of those who by right was entitled to a share in the division of tie' murdered trader’s stores and body. But he happened to be away from the island at the time, and so missed his feed of pakeha llesh, which was a real delicacy in those days, in spite of the salt and tobacco which those inconsiderate white men would use to such an inordinate extent. The old man would lament to his last days that he was 100 late for the feast, and didn't even get a linger. “Aue!*’ ho would say. with a mournful introspective gleam in his red's freaked eyes, “Aue!” Oh dear, just my luck! What a. pity, what a pity!” Nowadays Mokoia is famous amongst the Arawa for its fertility and its abundant food-crops. Many* families of Ohinenuitu. Te Ngae. Awahoii. and oilier villages of the mainland. have cultivations of kumara. potatoes, etc., on the beautiful Hat on the (‘astern side of the island, and there they arc to be seen in summertime carefully weeding and hoeing up their kumara, and again in March harvesting them. When food is scarce on the mainland, the people fall back on Alokoia, where the kumara and potato always yield abundantly, and blights and fronts never come. Ihe ancient maiiri or talismanic emblem of fertility, the stone-carved god of the kumara, tin' venerated “Matua-tonga,” which is preserved to this day on the island, still seems to guard a< of old the food-gar-dens of the people, though tin* Maori no longer pioudy invokes it in the sacred ceremonies and chants of ancient A number of Rotorua native -ones extol the fruitfulness of the beautiful island and it- fame as a place of abundant food. Ihe following are translations of two haka songs still to be heard in praise of Mokoia and its bountiful crops of kuma ra :—• Bring, oh brinj* Your calabashes to M'dcia. To the hind of food and life. In the fiuilful sumin<-r time, 'lhe seventh and eighth months of the Thither here, <) people of ' \Vhaknno. Come to the pl.ice uf (lie full calabashes.

Who will feast upon The etores of dried fish yonder? The throats of the people of Mokoia, The place of the well-tilled ovens. ’Twill be a relish for us To go down with the Kumara. Aha! how sweet it will.bet The Rotorua Maoris have over forty names for different kinds of the kumara. The only old Maori varieties now cultivated here are the toroa-mahoe, hutihuri, and pehu. The kuniaras grown, ■which were introduced by EuropeanSf are known as the waina (a red tuber) and kai-pakeha (white). The hutihuti is regarded a<3 the best. In former days not only the Maoris on the island, but also the tribes living on the mainland invoked the help of the sacred stone, “Matua-longa,” when planting their seed-kumara. and performed ceremonies to ensure a plentiful crop. When the season came each year for the planting of the kumara, each tribe sent a number of its tubers across ■the lake to Mokoia, so that they might be taken to the shrine of the atua, and there touch “Matua-tonga,” while the priests recited the necessary karakia to preserve the plantations from harm and send a bountiful harvest. The expression in an old kumara-planting chant, “Kia tutangatanga l te ara ki Mokoia”—“Let the way be open to Mokoia"—is in allusion to this olden custom of taking the seed-tubers across to the island so that they might absorb some of the mana-tapu of this Ceres of Maoriland.