LEO FOWLER RAKAU TAMATEA REKE

Te Ao Hou, December 1956, Page 11

LEO FOWLER RAKAU TAMATEA REKE Somewhere between eight hundred and a thousand years ago, while events of great importance were shaping the destinies of Europe, somewhere, that is about the time the Saxons and the Danes were contesting for a foothold in England, a tiny puriri seed fluttered on to the forest floor in a river valley on the east coast of the north island of New Zealand. As time passed and its branches began to spread, it began to harbour more and more of the bush birds until it knew them all. Kahu the hawk flew high above it, but kokako the crow, kakariki the parrokeet, koko the tui, korimako the bell bird, and many another, visited it and made their nests in it for countless bird-generations. Year after year it saw kohikora and pipiwharauroa, the cuckoos, bring in another spring, and saw them lay their eggs in the nest of poor riro-riro the robin. Kou kou and ruru, the owls kept it company by night. Pihere the robin and pihipihi (which pakehas were later to call the blight bird) were among its especial favourites, for they devoured the minute insects which moles

ted its bark. It knew the ground birds, also, huis, weka, kiwi, kakapo and the others. Except for an occasional swooping raid from the hawk species, they grew rapidly and lived fearlessly, so that even keruru the pigeon had nothing to fear. About the year 1350 the great migration of canoes reached Aotearoa from Hawaiiki and the peace and solemn quietude of the East Coast were invaded and shattered. Paoa and his men found their way down the coast, settled a little lower down at a place they called Turanga and began to press around up the coast and inland. They became the Rongo Whakaatu and the Aitanga Mahaki and they occupied all land around what is now Poverty Bay. Paikea came and landed at Whangara, a few miles from our tree. The peace of the forest was broken. These strange new creatures called men, preyed upon the children of Tane, the birds. They made snares and cut spears to take the birds of the forest, disdaining not even the smallest of them miromiro the wren. They turned loose the kiore, the rats they had brought with them from Hawaiiki, until they were well established in the forest, and then laid snares on their tracks and took them as they took the birds. What they did not eat at the time, they stored in gourds for the winter. Trees they felled, with stone adzes and pokai, and with fire, to build their canoes and their houses and their stockaded forts. Many cast a covetous eye on our tree, which was now grown a giant some 6 or 7 hundred years old, a youngster still and in the prime of life, but a stalwart trunk, straight and true for some thirty feet from the ground to the lowest branch. But some forgotten chief of Ngati Konohe put a small tapu on it to preserve it and it was left to grow. Somewhere around the 1500's when Britain was being torn in strife with Scotland and with Wales, the descendants of Paikea in turn also had their differences to contend with. Porourangi, great-great grandson of Paikea had two wives, and one of them turned from him to his brother. So it was from his second wife, Tamatea Toi, that there descended the main line of Paikea, the tribes Whanau a Iri te Kura, Te Aitanga a Hauiti, and Whanau a Rua-Taupari which collectively are still known to men as the Wahineiti signifying their descent from Porourangi's smaller or second wife. From Porourangi descended the great tribes of the coast, those we have mentioned and those who sprang up further north, Ngati Uepohatu, Ngati Pokai, and Ngati Ruawaipu, all of whom are collectively designated by the title of Ngati Porou. Still our tree gathered the years in her branches. In the reign of King James I, in the land of Ngati Porou, there was Tamahai, mighty toa of Whanau Apanui, and unbeaten master of the Taiaha. He came down the Coast from north of Hicks Bay, which men in those days called Wharekahika, as far as Turanga where he fought and bested the great red-haired chief Kuriteko. He paused at Whangara almost within sight of our tree, to make a friendly pact with Konohe, ancestor of the present Ngati Konohe. Back up the coast he pressed, to fight, or exchange insults with, a variety of chiefs. He had many adventures, a bout with Makahuri at Waiomatatini, and a skirmish at Ruatoria wherein he, accidentally some say, slew the Queen Hine Tapora and buried her body in the pit of the slave Toria, thereby gaining the locality its name. At Tikitiki he attacked the small dark ugly man Putaanga, who bested him in wordy warfare. At Rangitukia he had differences with Hikutaia, another small man who, however, likened himself to the small greenstone adze which felled even the mightiest of totara. These belligerent junketings of Tamahai are part of the story of our tree, for because of his slaying of Hine Tapora there took place one of those wars which the Maori so enjoyed. The story of that war is too long a story to be told here. Many great chiefs were involved in it, among them Konohe, Pona Patukia, Karuai, Mahiti and Rerekohu. Rerekohu spoke out of turn and made himself unpleasant, with the result that he found himself at the wrong end of the fight and, to escape ignominy and perhaps a haangi, gave to Konohe his daughter Tataingaoterangi.