🧚 The Port Hills and Their Names.

It is the Port Hills’ nomenclature, perhaps, that carries the most poetic suggestions of any of the Canterbury place-names, and here, perhaps, the dwellers on the heights in the days to come when all these Plain-ward-looking slopes are dotted with pretty homes, will seek inspiration in such legendry and history of the soil as we of the present generation have preserved.1 There are names of dignity and beauty clustered about those old lava-built crags and ruined towers and tors past which the Summit Road goes a thousand feet above the city.2

Finest of all is the Maori name of Castle Rock, that from one point in the Heathcote Valley looks like a colossal howitzer threatening the Plains.3 To the old Maoris it was Te Tihi o Kahukura, “The Citadel of Kahukura,” otherwise “The Pinnacle of the Rainbow.”4 The explanation brings in a reference to the religion of the tattooed pagan pioneers who explored those hills and plains, and planted their palisaded hamlets by creek-side and in the sheltered folds of the ranges.5 Kahukura--Uenuku in the North Island--was the principal deity for what may be termed everyday use among the ancient Ngai-Tahu.6 He was the spirit guardian most frequently invoked by the _tohungas_, and he was appealed to for auguries and omens in time of war.7 Each _hapu_ had its image of Kahukura, a small carved wooden figure, which was kept in some _tapu_ place remote from the dwellings, often a secluded flax clump, or on a high, stilt-legged platform or _whata_.8 The celestial form of Kahukura was the rainbow; literally the name means “Red Garment.”9 Omens were drawn in days of war from the situation of the arch of the “Red Garment” when it spanned the heavens.10 The name is sometimes applied to that phenomenon of days of mist in the mountains, the “sun-dog,” from which auguries were drawn.11 So when the Natives gave the term to the Castle Rock they were conferring upon it a name of high _tapu_ befitting its bold and commanding appearance.12

And this is not the only Hills name that holds a memory of the cult of the Rainbow-God.13 On the tussocky slope where the track goes over from the St. Martins tram terminus to the Summit Road above Rapaki, joining the hill track near Witch Hill, the _tohungas_ kept in a sacred place one of the wooden figures representing Kahukura, for _karakia_, consultation in time of need, and the spot became known as “Te Irika o Kahukura,” or “The Uplifting of the Rainbow God.”14 In time the name was applied to the Cashmere Hills generally.15 And the lofty Sugarloaf peak immediately to the north of Dyer’s Pass, was Te Heru o Kahukura, which being interpreted, is “Kahukura’s Head-Comb.”16 So the olden folk occasionally displayed a fine taste in names; and although some of those names may be a trifle long for _pakeha_ use it would be well to save them from oblivion.17

_C. Beken, photo_ ]18

_W. A. Taylor, photo_ ]19

Otokitoki--“The Place of Axes”--is the name of Godley Head, the lofty cliff upon which the lighthouse stands; its early-days _pakeha_ name was Cachalot Head.20 Working south from the lighthouse we presently come to the deep bay of Te Awa-parahi, where a little farmstead stands in its well-hidden nest, between the lowering peaks.21 Nearer Lyttelton, just where the Zigzag Road goes over Evans Pass to Sumner, are the precipitous summit rocks of Tapuwaeharuru, “The Resounding Footsteps,” a place-name met with in more than one locality in the volcanic country of the North.22 Far below is the little indent of Te Awa-toetoe, or “Pampas-grass stream” near the artillery barracks.23 Mount Pleasant, where a Ngati-Mamoe _pa_ once stood, was known to the Maoris as Tauhinu-Korokio, a combination of two names of shrubs common to the ranges.24 Passing Castle Rock--Te Tihi o Kahukura--just on the right hand or west as we travel towards Dyer’s Pass, we have on the other hand Te Moenga o Wheke, or “Wheke’s Sleeping Place” and Ota-ranui, or “Big Peak,” the towering rough-hewn crests of the Range looking down on Cass Bay and lying east of the Summit Track.25 Then comes Witch Hill, with “The Ashes of Tamatea’s Camp Fire,” of which a legend later, and Te Poho o Tamatea, or “Tamatea’s Breast,” overlooking the Rapaki native settlement.26

Oketeupoko, or, to divide it into its component words, O-kete-upoko, is the Maori name of the rocky heights immediately above the town of Lyttelton.27 It means “The Place of the Basket of Heads.”28 A sufficiently grim name this, remindful of the Whanga-raupo’s red and cannibal past, for the heads were human ones.29 When the olden warrior Te Rangi-whakaputa set out to make the shore of the Raupo Harbour his own, he encountered numerous parties of Ngati-Mamoe, who put up a fight for their homes and hunting-grounds.30 One of these parties of the _tangata-whenua_, the people of the land, he met in battle on the rocky beach of Ohinehou where the white man’s breakwaters and wharves now stand.31 He worsted them, and the heads of the slain he and his followers hacked off with their stone _patus_ and axes.32 Some, those of the chief men, Te Rangi-whakaputa placed in a flax basket, and, bearing them up to the craggy hill-crest that towered above the beach, he set them down on a lofty pinnacle, an offering to his god of battles.33 There they were left, say the Maoris, _he kai mo te ra, mo te manu_--“food for the sun and for the birds.”34 “_O_” signifies “the place of,” “_kete_” basket and “_upoko_” head, and thus was the place named, to memorise the tattooed brown conqueror of old and the ancient people whom he dispossessed on the shores of the Whangaraupo.35

_W.A.36 Taylor, photo_ ]37

Orongomai, a melodious name when properly pronounced, is the old Ngai-Tahu name of Cass Peak, the rhyolite height which lifts 1780 ft. above the waters of Governor’s Bay, overlooking the remnant of the ancient forest at Kennedy’s Bush.38 It means “The Place Where Voices are Heard,” or, literally, “Place of Sounding-hitherward.”39 The name has fittingly enough been given by Mr. Ell to the stone house for visitors which stands under the ribbonwood trees at the head of the Kennedy’s Bush Valley.40 The story is that when Te Rangi-whakaputa and his followers landed, in their search for the Ngati-Mamoe, after taking the _pa_ at Ohinetahi, in Governor’s Bay, the scouts entered the bush, and at the foot of Cass Peak heard the voices of a party of men in the bush; these men were Ngati-Mamoe, who had come across from their _pa_ at Manuka, on the plains side of the range.41 Led by the scouts--the _torotoro_--the invaders rushed upon the Ngati-Mamoe some of whom they killed.42 The survivors fled over the hills to Manuka, a large _pa_ which it is believed stood on a knoll at the foot of the range not far from Tai Tapu.43 (Mr. Ell, on being told of this tradition, said that he believed the site of Manuka would be found to be the spur running into an old swamp upon which Mr. Holmes’s homestead is built, on the old coach road south of Lansdowne, and about two miles from Tai Tapu.)44 The Manuka village, although a strong defensive position, was stormed and taken by Te Rangi-whakaputa.45 In the vicinity, it is said by the Maoris, there was a shallow cave under the rocky hillside which was used by some of the Ngati-Mamoe as a dwelling-place; it is known in tradition as Te Pohatu-whakairo, or “The Carved Rock.”46 No doubt it was so called from the natural markings sometimes seen on the faces of these overhanging rock shelters, such as were used as dwelling and camping-places in many parts of the South Island by the ancient people.47

Ohinetahi[1] _pa_, defended with a palisade of split tree-trunks and with ditch and parapet, stood near the shore at the head of Governor’s Bay two hundred years ago.48 After the place had been captured from the Ngati-Mamoe by Te Rangi-whakaputa, his son Manuwhiri occupied it with a party of Ngai-Tahu.49 This chief Manuwhiri had many sons, but only one daughter, and he named his _pa_ after his solitary girl, “The Place of the One Daughter.”50 The Governor’s Bay school now occupies the spot where this long-vanished stockaded hamlet stood.51

[Footnote 1: This name was adopted by the late T. H. Potts for his stone house at Governor’s Bay, directly below Kennedy’s Bush.]52

_W. A. Taylor, photo_]53

The name of Cooper’s Knobs, the highest of the three tooth-like crags lifting abruptly above the head of Lyttelton Harbour to an altitude of 1880 feet, memorises, like so many others, an incident of the head-hunting cannibal days.54 After the Rangi-whakaputa and his merry men had conquered the various Ngati-Mamoe _pas_ around the harbour, they found frequent diversion in hunting out stray members of the fugitive _hapus_ and converting them to a useful purpose through the medium of the oven.55 Often there were bush skirmishes, and although the Ngati-Mamoe frequently put up a good fight, they usually got the worst of the encounter.56 Mawete, the chief of Ngati-Mamoe, and a party of men from Manuka _pa_ were on their way across the range to Lyttelton Harbour to fish for sharks when they were ambuscaded in the bush just below Cooper’s Knobs by a band of Ngai-Tahu warriors.57 The Ngati-Mamoe chief and most of his followers were killed in the skirmish that followed, with the Maori weapons of wood and stone, the spear, the _taiaha_, and the sharp-edged _patu_, and their bodies went into the oven, for the Maori’s commissariat in that age was the flesh of his foeman.58 And the Mamoe leader’s name still clings to that wild craggy spot where he met his death blow, for the peak which the _pakeha_ has named Cooper’s Knobs was called by the Ngai-Tahu conquerors Omawete, meaning the place where Mawete fell.59