NEARLY A HUNDRED.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 18, 2 November 1910, Page 6

NEARLY A HUNDRED.

RAHERA TE KAHUHIAPO: HER LIFE AND TIMES.—SOME SONGS OF THE MAORI.

(Special to the “Graphic.”)

/TT\ ANY a tangi-song of old, and ■ IB many an ancient love-chant, 1 7 too, were sung over the re- • / mains of the venerable Rahera (Rachel) te Kahuhiapo, who was laid to rest the other day at Ngapeke, on the shores of Tauranga Harbour. 'For Rahera was a famous woman in her day, and a great beauty of the Bay of Plenty and Lakeland kaingas. She •wa.s a “wahine whai-mana,” a “woman of power.’’ Indeed, she seems to have been an unusual woman altogether. Her word was law with many a hapu, and when she died lately, aged somewhere between ninety-five and a hundred years, hundreds of tribes-people from all over the Bay of Plenty country, and from Maketu, and the sea coast, and inland to the Rotorua villages, gathered by the waters of Tauranga to cry over her, and to chant t heir poetic farewells to the last of the great Maori chieftaineeses of the East Coast. Such a woman as Rahera was a leader of her hapus in more ways than one. To her the people came for advice when in trouble; her word “went’’ when there were disputes over land; but, above all, her “whakapapa” or pedigree gave her a position of high degree. For the tribes she was connected with were many, and she could trace her descent from several of the chiefs who commanded the Hawaikian vikingcanoes which landed their Polynesian crews on the East Coast of New Zealand between four and five hundred years ago. And further back than the days of the Arawa ami the Mataatua canoes, too, she could go; she could recite her genealogy from the ancient people of the land, the aborigines who were already settled here a thousand years ago, and with whom later immigrants fought and inter-married. •As 1 an example of the aristocratic Maori family-tree, here ie Rahera’s line of direct descent from Toroa (“Alba-

tross"), the captain of the Mataatua canoe, which landed her Eastern Pacific crew at Whakatane, Bay of Plenty, ba? tween four and five centuries ago—Wairaka (daughter of Toroa), whose son wan Tania-ki-te-huatahi, who begat Tane-moe-ahi, whose son was Pukenga (founder of the celebrated warrior elan Ngati-Pukenga), whose descendants were father to son —Whetu, Tuhokia, Te Aomatapiko, Tamahahape, Te O, Te Maire, Rarunga, Hine-marama, and Te Nia, whose daughter was Rahera te Kahuhiapo. And one of Rahera’s daughters is Ka (Katarina) te Atirau, of Tajranga, whose eldest daughter is Te Rongokahira (wife of Mr. Charles R. Parata, of Wellington); and one of the many great-grandchildren is little Kahureremoa, a tiny girl, who bears an illustrious name from her ancestress, the original Kahureremoa, who lived many generations ago, and was a celebrated beauty and a “puhi”—that is, she knew no man until she was regularly married by tribal consent to the chieftain chosen for her.

Rahera witnessed more thin one cannibal feast in her time. For her young days were spent in scenes of frightful savage war. For years there wits fighting between the Ngaiterangi and the Arawa tribes, and- as Rahera was connected with both tribes she was in the thick of it. She saw the inter-tribal battles at Maketu, and she also saw the capture of the celebrated stockaded “pa’’ Te Tumu, on the sea eoast, near Maketu, in 183(1, when an army of Rotorua warriors stormed the fort and slaughtered many scores of its defenders, whose bodies went into the oven. She witnessed, too, the last patriotic stand of her warrior tribes against the Queen’s troops in 18(14.

And Rahera had her love adventures, too. lit her youth she lived with her father, Te Nia, on the beautiful hilltop Motutawa, which is a high islandlike peninsula jutting out into the blue

waters of Lake Rotoiti, in the Geyserlaud Country. Motutawa was a palisaded stronghold of The’ Ngati-Pikiao tribe, to which Te Nia belonged. A great carved-meeting-house, whieh-stood on Motutawa hill, was called “Tuan,” after Te Nia’s warrior father. Well, Rahera fell in love with Te Ngaru (“The Wave”), a young chief of the Ngati-Te-takinga hapu, and he with her. And they loved each other right well. But the twain were violently- parted. Te Nia and his people took the sorrowing Rahera away, and completely broke up ithe little affair of hearts. She was taken across the lake to Pukurahi, another Ngati-Pikiao fortified • village, whose beautiful commanding site you may see to-day, at the entrance to an almost landlocked placid bay on the north side of Rotoiti, So the width of the lake separated the lovers. And Te Ngaru used to sit on the cliff-top at Motutawa when evening came, gazing across the waters at the northern shore, and as he gazed and sorrowed, he used to play a plaintive little air on his “putorimo’ (wooden flute) —another Tutanekai playing to his Hinemoa. And he composed and sang this love-lament for Rahera: — (Translation.) Lonely I sit On Motuto-wa’s cliff, Ever gazing towards Pukurahi, Where dwells my love. The fires burn low On Pukurahi hill; By their dim light We'd take our fill of love. The moonlight beams On Pukurahi hill. By that pale light Would we could love again!

My sad ftate-song Floats out across the Lakef Biit ” thy lament ” J Ne’er falls upon mine ear! So chanted Te Ngaru hie love-song t* the sleeping lake. " It reached Rahera’s ears at last by tribal messages, though the lovers were never reunited; and whenever she visited lake .Rotoiti in after years the people ’ delighted to chant .the little “waiata” in her’ honour. It was chanted again and again at her tangi, and now her little great-grand-child, Te Kahureremoa, of Karori-road, Wellington, is learning to sing it, too. Some of the laments lately composed for Rahera are finely poetic in their imagery. The Maoris likened her to the bright star of the morning, to Tawera (Venus), “te whetu marama o te ata,” now gone from their sight. I translate brief pasages from one or two of the laments: Lo! On the distant waters Sweeps along Te Whatarail’s canoe, Oh! that he’d hasten to the shore! And by his kindly magic move this load That weighs my spirt down. The Southern breezes blow, And every gust that comes Seems but to increase my sorrow, And to renew my tears. I look for some warm robe To shield me from t»he blast; And trembling, sore, forlorn, 1 seek in . vain, < And comfortless I lie. See, over yonder mount The morning breaks; ’ Perehanee my chieftainess returns to me Clothed in that shining cloud. Ah, me! I wait in vain.