WAIWHAKAHEKETUPAPAKU

Te Ao Hou, April 1958, Page 51

WAIWHAKAHEKETUPAPAKU The difference made by one letter When I was a boy I had a boy's fancy for long words; and when I joined the Lands and Survey Department, Christchurch, in 1887. I soon found how fond the Maori was of long words too, especially in his place-names. The first name which took my fancy was one spelt Waiwakaheketupa-paku; and on my pestering a senior draughtsman who seemed to know a little Maori for the meaning of the name, he made a shot at it. “Wai”, said he, was water, and often a stream was called Wai-something; ‘waka’ is ‘a canoe’, ‘heke’ is ‘down’, and ‘papaku’ a corpse; so the meaning will be something like this: “The stream where a corpse was seen floating down. Which of course it was not. But I had to be content with that meaning for many years. I learned the correct form of the name when I learned the history of the place and of the Maoris living there. The district about there was called by the pakeha the Springs district, because of the many huge fresh-water springs scattered about it. These springs are where the underground streams of the great Waimakariri burst to the surface and make streams sometimes of considerable size. I found that one letter had been dropped from the name of the stream about which I am writing, the letter ‘h’: the correct spelling was Waiwhakaheketupapaku, and this letter made all the difference, but not till I learned its history. Waiwhakaheketupapaku was the name of one of these big springs, and the the stream flowing from it was given the same name. I never liked these big springs, of which I knew a number. Their margin is usually closely grown with the big tussocks we knew as ‘nigger-heads’ because of their black curly appearance when burnt, as they often were. You could get on to one of these nigger-heads and look down into the spring, which might go down for fifteen feet or more before it turned into the course in which it flowed underground before coming up. They looked uncanny, and you took care not to fall in; for besides being deep, their water was very cold. Now the Maori had a kind of waterburial, and this particular spring was used for water-burial. The corpse to be disposed of was weighted by a few heavy stones being tied to its feet, when the corpse was slipped feet-first into the spring and allowed to sink, which it did, disappeared and was never seen again. Now as we boys knew, these deep springs were often inhabited by big eels, and I reckoned the fate of the corpses was not very hard to conjecture. Of course the spring was tapu, so the eels, even if caught, were never eaten by the Maori. The discovery of the use made of this spring filled me with strange mixed feelings which I have never been able to get rid of. “What's in a name?” A great deal sometimes.When I was a boy I had a boy's fancy for long words; and when I joined the Lands and Survey Department, Christchurch, in 1887. I soon found how fond the Maori was of long words too, especially in his place-names. The first name which took my fancy was one spelt Waiwakaheketupa-paku; and on my pestering a senior draughtsman who seemed to know a little Maori for the meaning of the name, he made a shot at it. “Wai”, said he, was water, and often a stream was called Wai-something; ‘waka’ is ‘a canoe’, ‘heke’ is ‘down’, and ‘papaku’ a corpse; so the meaning will be something like this: “The stream where a corpse was seen floating down. Which of course it was not. But I had to be content with that meaning for many years. I learned the correct form of the name when I learned the history of the place and of the Maoris living there. The district about there was called by the pakeha the Springs district, because of the many huge fresh-water springs scattered about it. These springs are where the underground streams of the great Waimakariri burst to the surface and make streams sometimes of considerable size. I found that one letter had been dropped from the name of the stream about which I am writing, the letter ‘h’: the correct spelling was Waiwhakaheketupapaku, and this letter made all the difference, but not till I learned its history. Waiwhakaheketupapaku was the name of one of these big springs, and the the stream flowing from it was given the same name. I never liked these big springs, of which I knew a number. Their margin is usually closely grown with the big tussocks we knew as ‘nigger-heads’ because of their black curly appearance when burnt, as they often were. You could get on to one of these nigger-heads and look down into the spring, which might go down for fifteen feet or more before it turned into the course in which it flowed underground before coming up. They looked uncanny, and you took care not to fall in; for besides being deep, their water was very cold. Now the Maori had a kind of waterburial, and this particular spring was used for water-burial. The corpse to be disposed of was weighted by a few heavy stones being tied to its feet, when the corpse was slipped feet-first into the spring and allowed to sink, which it did, disappeared and was never seen again. Now as we boys knew, these deep springs were often inhabited by big eels, and I reckoned the fate of the corpses was not very hard to conjecture. Of course the spring was tapu, so the eels, even if caught, were never eaten by the Maori. The discovery of the use made of this spring filled me with strange mixed feelings which I have never been able to get rid of. “What's in a name?” A great deal sometimes.