This old pa site at Aotea Harbour was right at the doorstep of the place where we stayed for two nights. The harbour in front of the pa was named after the Aotea canoe which is said to have arrived around 1300.
The Tainui canoe arrived about 50 years later and the people from that canoe settled at nearby Kawhia, just down the coast. The Tainui and Aotea tribes lived in harmony until the 1600s when battles started because the Kawhia people were expanding.
The two tribes united when their rohe (area) came under attack around 1800 from inland Tainui. The defeated people fled south to take refuge in pa still controlled by Te Rauparaha, trekking to Taranaki and then on to Horowhenua.
For a long time after their defeat this pa site was left empty, until the defeat of Waikato by Ngapuhi at Matakitahi in 1826 when survivors from that conflict settled here.
The book said it was an easy climb to the top – no it wasn’t. The long grass came half way up my body and it was impossible walking through it. Plus there was some dead gorse in the midst of the vegetation. I did not want to disappear into an old kumera pit so I called it a day and came back down.
The pa site is not a “wahi tapu,” a sacred locality like part of the foreshore – but when I gained the ridge I felt I shouldn’t be up there.
Queen Elizabeth park is on the Kapiiti Coast between Raumati Beach and Paekakariki. We parked at the Wellington Tramways Museum at MacKays crossing and took a historic tram to the start of the walk at Whareroa Beach. It was a different and fun way of starting the walk. The tram runs on the weekend.
The central car park at Whareroa Beach is the start point for two loop tracks, one north to Raumati Beach and the other south to Paekakariki. Both have seaward tracks that follow the dunes. We kept to the inland track which is more sheltered from the westerly wind.
I have some family links with the area from the 1800’s. History of the Howell family (my paternal Grandmother’s relatives)
From the 1850s, several Pakeha families came into the Whareroa/Paekakariki area to farm the land which included areas currently within the Queen Elizabeth Park. From 1860, John Telford established a sheep farm know as ‘Wharemako’ and this extended around and south of current-day Raumati and presumably included the northern part of the park
In August 1879, William Bentinck Howell leased much of this land off Telford for £100 per annum for 10 years. The 1,335-acre run carried 800 sheep. In 1884 Howell agreed to buy another 600 acres or so, on deferred payment, with the result that he then held an approximately 2,000 acre farm that extended all the way down to Whareroa Stream. Howell continued leasing and acquired a right of purchase of the whole farm by the late 1880s. He began draining the swamps in between the sandhills and establishing pasture.
Howell Road, Paraparaumu Beach
Named after the Howell family, early settlers. William Bentinck Howell (named after the ship he was born on the way to NZ) settled in Wharemaku, a homestead next to the Wharemauku stream in 1879. This house was demolished in about 1949. The site is now 41 Alexander Road. Source: Kapiti Historical Society – Street names and early dwellings Project
While it’s winter time I’m posting some walks we did years ago. The walks on this page were at Russell / Kororareka in the Bay of Islands. We’ve been to Russell twice, the first time was in early spring of 2011 when we took the ferry across from Paihia. The second visit was in the late winter of 2015, and this time I walked from Okiato near the car ferry at Opua. Despite the lawlessness of the area, for a short time in 1845 Okiato was the site of NZ’s first capital.
Russell began life as Kororareka, and it was a wild town full of whalers, grog shops, brothels and a Maori Pa belonging to Ngapuhi chief Hone Heke.
Tensions grew between the Maori and the British over the imposition of duties and tarrifs. Inspired by talk of revolution by the Americans, in 1844 Hone hacked down a flag pole he’d formerly given the British. When it was replaced in 1845 he cut it down again and actually flew the US flag from his waka (canoe).
To provide further context to the issue, according to the 19th century Pakeha Maori F.E. Maning (see links below) the Maoris associated the British flag with the lack of trade and high-prices. When the duties and tarrifs came off after the first flagpole was chopped down, it resulted in goods becoming affordable again. In the Maori mind, stopping the British flag from flying solved the problem.
The fourth time the flagpole was erected in 1845, the lower portion was clad in iron, but that did not stop Hone from cutting it down yet again – and to follow it up he sacked the town, burning down many buildings including the Duke of Marlborough Hotel.
The Duke of Marlborough Hotel was quickly rebuilt after being burned down and the establishment has been running ever since. We had lunch in the historic dining room overlooking the waterfront during our week’s stay at Okiato in 2015.
Christ Church is the oldest surviving church in NZ. It actually has bullet holes from the Battle of Kororareka. Hone Heke told his warriors to leave the church standing but its old timbers still bear the scars from the battle. It has a historic graveyard that we walked through. Among the graves in the churchyard are those of Tamati Waka Nene (a Ngapuhi chief largely responsible for the Maori’s acceptance of the Treaty of Waitangi and who fought for the settlers against Hone Heke), members of the Clendon family (James R Clendon was the first honorary United States Consul), and the men from the HMS Hazard who fell in the battle.
We went to a church service on the Sunday we were there in the winter of 2015. That was special. There was no minister, the parishioners kept the church running by themselves. After qualifiying for a degree in theology from an institution in Melbourne they all took turns at preaching. The hymns were played by MP3 through a sound system. We were impressed at their commitment and quiet ‘can do’ attitude. I met a great-granddaughter of Hone Heke at that church, she was a very elegant and well spoken woman.
On our first trip to Russell in 2011 we visited Flagstaff Hill. We strolled along the historic waterfront and then climbed the path through regenerating bush to the hill overlooking the town. A new flagstaff was erected in 1857 as an act of reconciliation by those involved in cutting down the old flagpole and it still stands today.
Back then on our first visit we were more interested in the panoramic views of Russell, Paihia, Waitangi and the islands of the Bay. Our interest in NZ history came from later walks.
Walk 4th August 2015
This was the walk from Okiato to Russell / Kororareka I did in 2015. The exercise was ruined after eating and drinking decadent chocolate at the Newport Chocolate shop in Russell. The chocolate was worth every calorie!
Orongo Bay on the walk impressed me the most, with its mangrove boardwalk and Mt Tikitikioure, a small mount rising 180m above the bay. The hill once belonged to a local chief named Ure and it meant ‘Ure’s top-knot. The Maori people there used a blue pigment found deep in the mountain for painting their faces. It turned out be be manganese which was mined until 1887.
Old New Zealand: A Tale of the Good Old Times by Frederick Edward Maning. This book written by Maning, a Pakeha Maori, gives an insight into the time surrounding the war against Hone Heke in 1845. After the battle the maori were plundering the town “because they believed the fight was over, and the people were only quietly plundering the town which had been left for them, and which they had given fair payment for.”
That custom was called ‘muru,’ to plunder, confiscate, take ritual compensation – an effective form of social control, restorative justice and redistribution of wealth among relatives. The process involved taking all the offending party’s goods. The party that had the muru performed on them did not respond by seeking utu.
“At last, all the town people and soldiers went on board the ships, and then the ship of war fired at the Maori people who were plundering in the town. The noise of the firing of the ship guns was very great, and some of Kawiti’s people were near being hit by the lumps of iron. This was not right, for the fight was over … so in revenge they burnt Kororareka, and there was nothing left but ashes ; and this was the beginning of the war.”
The Wairau Lagoon is a vast salt marsh of interlacing waterways covering an area of 2000 ha. It stretches from the mouth of the river to White Bluffs in the south.
The wreck of the SS Waverley was to be sunk at the mouth of the Wairau River to form a breakwater, but floodwaters swept it into the lagoons instead.
Wairau Bar, a gravel bar on Marlborough’s Cloudy Bay coastline where the Wairau River flows into the sea, is a place so historically significant that it is referred to as the birthplace of our nation.
Walk: Blenheim 11
The Moa Hunter Artifacts from Wairau Bar
The Wairau Bar is the site of ancient Moa hunter grave relics. It is said to be one of the oldest occupied sites of NZ.
In 1942 about 2000 artefacts and 44 human skeletons were removed and examined in detail. These early colonisers were tall compared to most Polynesians. The skeletons were all found in shallow graves, with the heads pointing towards the east and the feet to the west, as was the practice in eastern Polynesia.
Of the extinct birds found in the middens, there were at least six species of Moa, the flightless NZ swan, the NZ crow and the gigantic Haast eagle. Evidence suggests that over 8000 Moa were slaughtered and over 2000 eggs consumed.
Necklaces were found as well as adzes and Moa eggs. The necklaces consisting of cotton reel shaped pieces held together by cord in a style common to the Marquesas Islands. A similar necklace was found at Whitianga Pa in the Coromandel Peninsula of the North Island.
We are expected to believe that these Moa hunter remains date from the 13th century – see my page How NZ is ‘mythtaken’ over the year 1350 – and belong to the Rangitane tribe who came from the Heretaunga (Hastings) area. Rangitane travelled south and occupied Dannevirke, Wairarapa, Wellington, and Wairau in the South Island. They displaced the Ngati Mamoe who had in turn displaced the earlier Waitaha people.
The remains at Wairau Bar predate the arrival of Rangitane
Initially, in 1939 the Rangitane tribe who later settled the area were unaware of the site. “It’s nothing to do with us,”’ and ‘“he’s not one of us,” they truthfully asserted when they saw the remains.
Excavations of the site undertaken from the 1940s through the 1960s identified three distinct burial groups, from which 42 individual burials were identified. These human remains and many of the artifacts recovered from the site were held at the Canterbury Museum as part of its permanent collection until 2009, until they were repatriated to Wairau Bar and Rangitane. Nothing more can now be learned.
In 2003 Rangitane made formal claims to repatriate the remains through the Waitangi Tribunal, asserting “they had been stolen.”
The Ohaki Māori Advisory Board acknowledged the significance of Māori spiritual beliefs and their significance within their cultural history. It conceded that the remains predated the arrival of Rangitane, but recommended a scientific study be undertaken in consultation with Rangitane, a decision which the iwi criticised.
Rangitane eventually got the burial relics from the Canterbury Museum after a compromise was made between “obtaining scientific knowledge and ‘respecting the cultural integrity’ of the remains.” Source: Re-excavating Wairau: A study of New Zealand repatriation and the excavation of Wairau Bar, By Shaun Hickland
In other words the science and the cultural integrity of the artifacts is compromised. And this from a site referred to as “the birthplace of our nation.”
What the mitochondrial DNA research reveals
At least DNA testing was done on the skeletons.
The results from the sequencing of four human samples from the site were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in October 2012. The results revealed there was a greater level of genetic diversity than expected in the early settlers of New Zealand, compared to the uniform Polynesian DNA.
Mitochondrial DNA is only inherited through the mother’s side and can be used to trace maternal lineages and provide insights into ancient origins and migration routes. Lead author Professor Lisa Matisoo-Smith said, “We found that three of the four individuals had no recent maternal ancestor in common, indicating that these pioneers were not simply from one tight-knit kin group, but instead included families that were not directly maternally related.
So different population groups once lived together peacefully and were buried in the same burial group with similar grave goods. The results, which run counter to the narrative, were published quietly and without fanfare. The Moa hunter people were probably the Waitaha, who lived peacefully in NZ before Ngati Mamoe and Rangitane.
19 kms of hand dug canals
In 1903 CW Adams surveyed Wairau Bar and noted the existence of 12-miles (19 kilometres) of hand-dug canals. These linked the waterways of the alluvial plain together, bringing abundant fish resources into the region, as well as enhancing gardening. Extensive canal building and intensive wetlands gardening went hand-in-hand in other parts of ancient New Zealand as well.
The south side of the Wairau River mouth was settled by Europeans in the 1840s, who set up a port to service Blenheim.
A pilot house was built in 1868 to guide ships across the bar. Today, it is the only pre-1900s building left in the area around the river mouth.
The southern end of Wairau Bar can be viewed from across the river, accessed by Wairau Bar Road.
My forefathers arrived from Scotland in 1840, and were among the first settlers in the area. All my grandmother could tell me was “some bad Maoris tried to kill is but some good Maoris saved us.” It’s probably an explanation given to her as a child. The family left the area after my Gran’s Great-Grandfather James Gilbert went missing, presumed drowned.
For more info see ‘James Gilbert’ in the links below.
Roadside Stories: Trouble at Tuamarina | Today a sleepy settlement between Picton and Blenheim, Tuamarina was the site of bloody conflict in June 1843. The New Zealand Company believed they had bought the Wairau plains – but Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha considered that the area had not been purchased. He evicted surveyors from the Wairau, and when a party of settlers arrived to arrest him, conflict broke out.
Cobb Cottage, Blenheim
This historic building from 1865 or earlier can be seen while driving to the walk.
Cob Cottage is located on State Highway 1 in Riverlands near Blenheim.
DNA: Complete mitochondrial genome sequences of the remains from the archaeological site of Wairau Bar was done and compared against Polynesian DNA. Polynesian DNA is uniform. The settlement of most of East Polynesia occurred rapidly, in the period from A.D. ∼1190–1290 which explains the uniformity of the Polynesian DNA.
The DNA from the Wairau Bar people was unexpectedly diverse. At least three of the four individuals sequenced from the Wairau Bar site were not recently maternally related. Burials 1 and 2.1 were recovered in the same burial group (Group 1) with similar grave goods, presumed to be of high status, yet these two individuals belonged to two different haplotypes. Source, NIH : Complete mitochondrial DNA genome sequences from the first New Zealanders
Marlborough historian Barry Holdaway releases book on Wairau Bar village | The Wairau Bar is a well-known archaeological site, but Holdaway focused on the early Pakeha involvement with the area, beginning with the Wairau Massacre in 1843 and following the settlement through to the 1860s.
James Gilbert, the Scottish tailor at Te Awaiti | “In some places the sun was penetrating the clouds. “Kei puta te Wairau.” (The sun always finds a hole to shine through at Wairau.) In spite of the threat of inter-tribal war, and the depopulation that had taken place in the previous twelve years; in spite of the fear of further fighting; in spite of the cosmopolitan population that arrived every whaling season and the prostitution of Maori women; in spite of the drunken habits of Europeans, the sun was shining through several holes in the clouds.
A handful of Maoris from the northern mission stations had created a thirst for knowledge of the Gospel; some well-disposed Europeans welcomed anything that would help in the cultural advancement of their Maori partners and half-caste children; here and there a European became a self-appointed religious teacher, as did the Scottish tailor at Te Awaiti.
These people were not a large group among the residents, both Maori and Pakeha, but they were enough to give a missionary some hope of success. This was the Cloudy Bay for which Samuel and Sarah Ironside were preparing to set out in December 1840, and in which they were to spend the next three years of their lives.” Samuel Ironside in New Zealand 1939-1858, page 110
The walk began at Rarangi Beach, where the Monkey Bay track is. It climbed steeply through regenerating coastal forest where the trees had recovered from a fire. We came out on the Port Underwood road for a short distance, then descended through an area of pine forest to Whites Bay.
Whites Bay is named after a negro American whaler, Black Jack White.
In 1866 the first Cook Strait telegraph link between the North and South Islands began operating with the southern end coming ashore at Whites Bay. The telegraph operator’s cottage is preserved as a historic building. Source: Marlborough Online, Pukatea / Whites Bay
It’s a solid grind back up to Port Underwood road from the beach. We saw a black fantail while climbing back up the pine needle covered zig-zag track.
This is our first South Island walk, an old pa site on a headland near Picton.
The pa was built by the Ngati Mamoe as a defensive pa as it was protected by cliffs, and they could see who was approaching from Queen Charlotte Sound. There’s now a fenced pathway down the once impregnable cliff-face.
The site is part of the Maori Musket Wars.
In 1829-30, Te Atiawa swept into the sound to attack the resident tribes who had never before met with muskets. As news of disastrous attacks elsewhere in the sounds (East Bay and Endeavour Inlet) was received from lucky escapees, large numbers of Rangitane and some of their Ngati Apa allies retreated to the pā at Karaka Point, believing it to be impregnable.
The attackers drew near in their canoes and started picking off the defending chiefs and warriors with their muskets. The defenders tried to escape up the hill but the hidden assailants in the scrub then joined in the attack, and the occupants of the pā were effectively ambushed and totally annihilated.
The pa was never again occupied. For some years the land on the deserted headland was cleared and farmed, but was later gifted to the nation and the site became a Scenic and Historic Reserve in 1953.
It was a place where terrible events occurred but the land overlooking the beautiful sound is peaceful now. The InterIsland ferry was cruising down the calm water of the Tory Channel just as we arrived at the reserve.
Walk: Marlborough, Picton 1
Notes
The Ngati Mamoe are an ancient tribe who were there before the explorer Kupe –
“Kupe and his people discovered people at various places. These people were the Mamoe, the Turehu, the Tahurangi, the Poke-pokewai, the Patupaiarehe, the Turepe and the Hamoamoa. They lived on the fronds and berries of the trees, and the roots of the earth.”
Source: Volume 28 1919 > Volume 28, No. 110 > The account of Kupe and Tainui, by George Graham, p 111-116
The Ngāti Māmoe were the original people on the Heretaunga Plains, Hawkes Bay but they were driven south by the Ngati Kahungunu.
Rangitāne: At first Rangitāne lived in the Heretaunga (Hastings) area. Later, they travelled south and occupied Dannevirke, Wairarapa, Wellington, and Wairau in the South Island. They also moved west to Manawatū and Horowhenua, the tribe’s main centres today.
Ngāti Apa: The people of Ngāti Apa live in the Rangitīkei region, towards the south-west of the North Island of New Zealand. Their traditional lands extend between the Mangawhero, Whangaehu, Turakina and Rangitīkei rivers. This area is bounded by Whanganui River in the north-west, and Manawatū River in the south-east.
There are four short walks around the North Egmont Visitor Centre.
The Nature Walk led on to the Ngatoro Loop Walk, a walk through sub-montane forest called “the Goblin Forest.” The ferns and mosses flourish because of the high rainfall.
Just behind the Visitor Centre is a historic camphouse, which was originally a military barracks during the land wars in the 1860s. It was moved to the site in the 1880s.
After lunch we did the Veronica Loop Track.
Before going uphill we passed the Ambury memorial, a memorial to climber Arthur Ambury who gave his life in 1918 in a heroic attempt to save his climbing partner.
The Veronica Loop track is a well-formed track. It goes up the mountain for half an hour and then there’s a junction for Holly Hut. The return walk via the loop track is harder.
Holly Hut Lookout
At the junction of the Holly Hut track, there’s a lookout ten minutes further up the mountain. We chose not to do it because of the lack of visibility.
There were no birds to be heard on either track, the forests were silent.
This ancient pa was a familiar sight in my childhood, when every other week we’d go past, crossing the Tutaekuri River on our way to the Hawkes Bay Milk Co-op. I remember the pa being a bare hill with deep defensive scarps and a quarry at the bottom. The lower part was almost quarried away. The site became a reserve in 1972, the year after I left. The site looks different now with the trees and pallisading.
The Otatara Pa reserve encompasses two pa, the upper level is Hikurangi Pa, the lower one marked by the pallisades is Otatara Pa proper. The pallisades had been erected in 1990 by the Maoris at Waiohiki to make it look more like a pa from the 1800s, to provide “an interpretation of the defensive structure.” The Ngāti Paarau of Waiohiki Marae are now the site’s guardians.
The pa site from the road, 2006The back of the pa site, 2025Family visit 2006
Waiohiki Marae is just across the bridge over the Tutaekuri River. Otatara pa didn’t belong to that tribe as they were never able to take it, so their ancestors settled in Waiohiki Pa on the other side of the river instead.
A brief history of the area is on the boards as you enter Otatara Pa. The wave pattern on the entrance carving depicts the migration of groups to Otatara over a long period of time.
As a child I didn’t realise how how much land (33 hectares) the pa site covered. Now I’ve learned it was one of the largest and most significant archaeological landscapes in NZ. In keeping with today’s ‘right-think’, the timeline at the entrance only goes back to the 1500s with the descendants of Awanuiarangi, the eponymous ancestor of Te Ātiawa (see below).
Also mentioned on the timeline is “Te Tini” which would be the people of Toi. Toi (an explorer from around 1150 AD) is widely acknowledged as the principal ancestor of many North Island tribes.
There is more information on the board displaying these artifacts: “The people who lived in the pa were descendants of Awanuiarangi. They were known through the generations as Te Tini o Awa, Ngati Kouapari and Ngati Mamoe (or Whatumamoe). Ngati Ira also lived on this pa. Te Tini o Awa (descendants of Awanuiarangi) also lived at Heipipi Pa at Bayview.”
The Ngāti Māmoe were one of the original people groups on the Heretaunga Plains (see the links below) but they were driven south by the Ngati Kahungunu who are now the dominant tribe in Hawkes Bay.
Artifacts from the info board at the entrance
Number 2 and 3 of the above artifacts look pre-Maori. Ngati Mamoe from the info board were settled in the land before the explorer Kupe. (Note, there are two Kupes.) Before them were the Maruiwi.
Otatara Pa at Taradale and Heipipi Pa at Bayview, Napier were once on the shores of the Ahuriri lagoon until the land lifted after the Napier Earthquake in 1931. Our farm was once on the edge of this lagoon. The neighbouring farm was Park Island, so-called because it used to be an island, and beyond was the Napier Harbour Board Farm. The Harbour Board got the land from the sea after the Napier earthquake.
As well as being a historic site the views over Taradale and Hawkes Bay are just beautiful.
Walk: Hawkes Bay 31
Links
DOC, Otatara Pa Historic Reserve – A series of tribal groups (iwi) once occupied these sites: Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Whatumāmoa, Rangitāne, and (most recently) Ngāti Kahungunu. All have distinct perspectives on events. Elders say that a chief named Koaupari built the original Ōtātara Pā.
Ngati-ti-Koaupari were exterminated at Mohaka, Hawkes Bay. [See “the end of this people“ Journal Polynesian Society, Vol. XV., p. 25.]
Early Māori History of Napier
Tribal traditions, whakapapa and archaeological evidence all indicate many centuries of Māori occupation in Ahuriri (Napier), centrally located within the wider area of Te Matau-a-Māui (Hawke’s Bay). Te Matau-a-Māui translates to the ‘fish hook of Māui’ and is an allegorical reference to the legendary explorer and ancestor Māui who fished up Te Ika-a-Maui (the North Island).
Early Māori tribes in the region descended from Māui and down through Toi-kai-rākau, and included Ngāti Hotu, Ngāti Mahu and Whatumamoa. When Ngāti Kahungunu arrived in the region in the sixteenth century, Whatumamoa, Rangitāne, Ngāti Awa and elements of Ngāti Tara were living in Pētane, Te Whanganui-a-Orotū (the Napier Inner Harbour, also known as Ahuriri Harbour) and Waiohiki. These groups are all ancestors of the current hapū within Te Matau-a-Māui.
Ngāti Kahungunu became the dominant tribal group in the region through both warfare and strategic marriage though large numbers left the area in the 1820s due to armed raids from both the west and north, and most sought refuge at Māhia. They started ‘filtering back’ to Ahuriri-Heretaunga in the 1830s and 1840s with the Treaty of Waitangi providing the prospect of ‘being able to return to their ancestral lands in peace’.
Te Awanuiarangi is recognised as the founding ancestor of Te Āti Awa. According to Te Āti Awa traditions, he was the product of a union between Rongoueroa and Tamarau, a spirit ancestor. Awanuiarangi is also an ancestor of Ngāti Awa in the Bay of Plenty. However, while Ngāti Awa trace their ancestry to the Mataatuacanoe, some Te Āti Awa trace their origins to the Tokomaru canoe whilst others remember the connection to the Kaahui people or the people that walked here before the floods (?)
Kupe and his people discovered people at various places. These people were the Mamoe, the Turehu, the Tahurangi, the Poke-pokewai, the Patupaiarehe, the Turepe and the Hamoamoa. They lived on the fronds and berries of the trees, and the roots of the earth.
Source: Volume 28 1919 > Volume 28, No. 110 > The account of Kupe and Tainui, by George Graham, p 111-116
Kāti Māmoe (also spelled Ngāti Māmoe) were originally from the Heretaunga Plains of Hawke’s Bay. Early migration stories say the Ngāti Mamoe were forced out of their home in the Heretaunga, and took refuge in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington) with the permission of Ngāi Tara‘s ancestor and namesake, Tara. Later after they had moved down to the South Island, they defeated Waitaha along the east coast of the South Island.
The pa is described in page 393 of The art workmanship of the Maori race in New Zealand as “an ancient pa of great size, the earthworks covering many acres, and extending over three of four spurs of the hill.”
Section of a large pa at Taradale, Hawke’s Bay. The sketch section of the ditches and banks show the strength of the defensive works ; such was the extent of the pa that a very large number of men must have been required to repel a large attacking force. This pa is only one of many visible from this place. It is situated on a high spur above the river, and covers several acres.
Heipipi Pa at Bayview, Napier is described in page 303 of The art workmanship of the Maori race in New Zealand as, “A celebrated pa of the autochthonous people overlooking the outlet of the Petane Valley, near Napier.” Autochthonous means “native to the place where found; indigenous.” In 1896 it would have meant the pre-Maori people, Ngati Mamoe or Maruiwi.
The Ngati Kahungunu then moved south into Hawke Bay, first overcoming the Maruiwi in the Heipipi Pa on a hill at today’s Bayview, and in the Otatara Pa above Taradale. Tawhao settled by the Ahuriri estuary (at Napier) and Taraia settled along the Tukituki (near Hastings). Full story
According to T.M.R. (Boy) Tomoana, a Waipatu elder who was interviewed in 1971, the original inhabitants of the Otatara area were the Ngati Hotu and Ngati Apa tribes. The former tribe is now non-existent and the Ngati Apa is reduced to a very small number.
Whitianga Pa is just a short ferry ride across the channel from the main shopping centre. At one time the pa was ringed with stone terraces and strongly fortified. The historic wharf which is still in use was built in 1837 from the stones.
The pa was once occupied by Ngati Hei but in the mid eighteenth century it was ransacked by a war party of Ngai te Rangi. It was long burnt and abandoned when Captain Cook visited Whitianga Rock in November 1769.
Cook was greatly impressed by the pa, he said, “the Situation is such that the best Engineer in Europe could not have choose’d a better for a small number of men to defend themselves against a greater, it is strong by nature and made more so by Art”
You can still see a defensive ditch, the post holes in the rock and the middens.
Walk: Coromandel 12
Notes
Ngati Hei date back to the arrival of the arrival of the Arawa waka in 1350 but this site may be older than that. From the placenames people of Maui and Kupe were there before them …
The Māori names of Hauraki places tell the story of discovery and settlement, beginning with the exploits of the mythical Māui.
Coromandel Peninsula: Te Tara-o-te-Ika a Māui (the jagged barb of Māui’s fish), or Te Paeroa-a-Toi (Toi’s long mountain range)
There is a petroglyph at a ritual site in nearby Flaxmill Bay. I didn’t see it but I know it was there from the archaeologist’s report AINZ32.4.182-192Furey.pdf, T11/109. Flaxmill Bay is situated between Cooks Beach and Ferry Landing.
It consists of a face in relief on the edge of a small pool within a stream bed. Together with another small pool, these were cut off from the main water flow by a diversion channel.
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Image below: Is this Maori? This ivory reel necklace from Whitianga is at Auckland Museum. Similar necklaces, consisting of cotton reel shaped pieces held together by cord, were found at Wairau Bar near Blenheim in the South Island.
Links
Incised stone at the high tide level of a nearby beach at Whitianga. The question remains… Ancient??? or contemporary?
This is a walk along the banks of the Waihou river in the delightful town of Te Aroha. The tree planting in the reserve is a bit chaotic with kahikatea, oaks, willows and other trees all scrambled in together but it’s a pleasant place. It was green and shady, all that is wanted on a hot summer’s day.
Don’t leave without going to the town domain.
Walk: Waikato 4
Te Aroha, Jan 2006
Te Aroha is an Edwardian spa town. The domain where the hot springs are was decked out in the fashion of the European Spas in the 1880’s, and it hasn’t changed. It is a unique place, the only complete Edwardian Domain in New Zealand, and the site of the Mokena Geyser, a geyser of hot soda water … the only one of its kind in the world.
The geyser comes up from a depth of 70 meters and plays every 40 minutes. It was named after the Maori chief, Mokena Te Hau, an early Christian convert who gifted the land to the town. His memorial Cairn is next to the No.8 Drinking Fountain, where you can drink the soda water for free.
The water is nice to drink, naturally carbonated without the sugar or preservatives. Coke’s not the real thing, THIS is the real thing. The pools are nice too.
The word ‘Spa’ is an acronym for Salus per Aquam or healing through waters.
In order for this unique fountain to be found at the Spa, it needed two things – a gift to the people from a chief, and for the people who discovered the healing power of the water to have enough faith in it to dig a bore 70 meters down to find the well.
The geyser plays every 30 minutes. These are photos from a visit in 2006. This is our third visit to the area.
The mountain has two names, one for each of its two peaks, ‘Te Aroha-ki uta’, and ‘Te Aroha-a tai’, respectively meaning ‘love for the land’ and ‘love for the sea’. The names originated in Hawaiki, the memory of which is fostered by Tainui, Arawa, and Mataatua waka which all incorporate Te Aroha as part of their respective traditions.
Chief Mokena Te Hau, benefactor and peacemaker was of the Ngāti Rāhiri Tumutumu tribe.
The original inhabitants of the Aroha lands are believed to be the Tino-o-Toi. Various tribes subsequently settled the area. According to Ngāti Rāhiri Tumutumu tradition, Te Aroha is a dwelling place of the ‘patupaiarehe’ or ‘fairy people’. The mountain is important in many stories, karakia (prayers), and waiata (songs).
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