Walk #82, 23rd February 2022
This is a small bush remnant between Wanganui and Wellington overlooking Lake Waiwiri, a dune lake. This area is a rare example of an uninterrupted transition from coastal wetland to mature, dry terrace forest. The whole coast was once covered in this dense and luxurious bush and sadly it’s all gone.
There are two islands on the lake, the larger is Papaitonga and the smaller is Papawhārangi. The smaller island was constructed by the Muaūpoko (Ngati Tara) people in the late 18th to early 19th century.
The reserve is home to the endangered birds like the elusive bittern and spotless crake.
People from the Muaūpoko tribe lived on the islands in the lake but they were wiped out in a battle against Te Rauparaha.
After the local Muaūpoko tribe attacked a group including Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha, they became a target for reprisal raids by Ngāti Toa. Despite retreating to artificial islands they had built in Lakes Papaitonga and Horowhenua, large numbers of Muaūpoko were killed, and survivors fled to the nearby Tararua Range.
Roadside Stories: Lake Papaitonga
Walk: Manawatu 30
Links
The Evening Post published this item on Papaitonga on 6 November 1911:
Papaitonga – NATIONAL RESERVE?
Everything is eerie and silent; there are kiwi on the islet, but you only hear them at night, and the doleful morepork keeps them company. At a turn in the path, in the glooms of the tapu grove, an eerie thing confronts one — a human skull, stuck up on a short pole, grinning as if in menace, a silent warning to “keep off the grass !” This, one finds, is an isle of skulls, a Maori Golgotha, and over the ancient battle-ground and burial-ground that skull on its tapu stick mounts guard. A few yards further on, and in a little open space on the summit of the island, a memorial of another and more picturesque kind is found. A great canoe, an olden war-canoe, carved and painted, rears itself above the trees; one end is sunk firmly in the ground and stoutly braced to keep it upright. It is a stately memento mori, tapu to the manes of the tribal dead.
Sitting here on this thrice-tapu island with a Ngati-Ruakawa companion from the little village of Muhunoa, a mile or so away, one heard some thrilling tale of Papaitonga’s pact. For this quiet island was a lively spot in the cannibal days, the early twenties of last century, when Rauparaha and Rangihaeata and their musket-armed Northern warriors happened along. Papaitonga, like. Horowhenua, and in fact all this country from Paekakarikei to Manawatu and Rangitikei, was owned by the Muaupoko and Rangitane, and some kindred tribes. The Muanpoko had a stronghold on this islet; a stockade, or “tuwatawata,” encircled it There were many canoes on the lake; when danger threatened the people withdrew to the island, taking all their dug-outs with them.
It was in about the beginning of the year 1823 that Rauparaha and his Ngatitoa-and Ngati-Awa invaded and captured this district. Muaupoko brought their fate on themselves, to a certain extent, by a massacre in this vicinity; but the wily Rauparaha had intended to take the place anyway, so the murders only brought matters to a head a little quicker.
Papaitonga Scenic Reserve walks
Roadside Stories: Lake Papaitonga
Papaitonga Beaches and Dune Lakes
Te Takinga pataka, originally from Lake Rotoiti
It is believed this pataka was built at Taheke on the shores of Lake Rotoiti in the 1870s.
It is said to have been built out of a large war canoe which was drawn overland from Maketu, on the coast of the Bay of Plenty, to Rotorua, Lake, a distance of about thirty miles, by Hongi, when that great Nga-Puhi warrior attacked Mokoia Island, in Rotorua Lake, in the year 1822. Source: THE DOMINION MUSEUM. Evening Post, Volume LXXXII, Issue 56, 4 September 1911, Page 6
In 1886 the pataka was purchased by Gilbert Mair, a soldier and government agent who lived among Te Arawa. He bought it for his brother-in-law Sir Walter Buller, a prominent naturalist and politician.
After being exhibited in London and Melbourne during the 1880s Te Takinga was erected on Sir Walter Buller’s estate. When he died the Buller family donated the house to the Dominion Museum.
Old photos
Maori storehouse Te Takinga at Lake Papaitonga, near Levin
History
Horowhenua Land Dispute : The arrival of other tribes in the Wellington region from 1822 onwards led to a number of conflicts over land ownership. Shown above are the opening lines of an article that was published in the Māori newspaper Te Waka Maori o Niu Tirani in December 1873. The article, printed in Māori and English, outlines a dispute over land at Horowhenua between the Muaūpoko and Ngāti Raukawa tribes.
The Encyclopedia of NZ
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Muaūpoko were drawn into the wars over land and authority in the 1860s, under the leadership of Te Keepa Te Rangihiwinui (known to Pākehā as Major Kemp). Te Keepa saw the conflict as an opportunity to exact revenge on tribes that had humiliated Muaūpoko in the past. After the wars he used his influence to regain lands at Horowhenua through the Native Land Court. Some of this territory was sold in the 1880s for railway and settlement land, but subsequent intertribal disputes about its ownership led to protracted court hearings, parliamentary debate and finally a royal commission in 1896. In the process, Muaūpoko lost more land. Some was taken to pay for the commission costs, and Walter Buller, who had acted as Te Keepa’s lawyer, took Lake Papaitonga in Horowhenua as his fee.
Te Ara
Lake Papaitonga – Sir Walter Buller and history
NZShortWalks 