🧚 The Port Hills and Their Names. · page 2

Beyond again are the peaks of Otuhokai and Te Tara o Te Raki-tiaia; below the harbour head curves into the bay of Te Rapu.60 Next as we go up to meet the hills of Banks Peninsula is the bold precipice of Te Pari-mataa, or “Obsidian Cliff,” with the great volcanic dyke of Otarahaka, and then our present pilgrimage ends, for we are right under the hugely parapeted castle hill of Te Ahu-patiki--Mt.61 Herbert--with its level top, where a lofty _pa_ of Ngati-Mamoe stood three centuries ago.62

Cooper’s Knobs Dog’s Head Pinnacle Hill63

View from Cass Peak, showing Cooper’s Knobs, Dog’s Head, and Pinnacle Hill.64

_W. A. Taylor, photo_]65

Te Whaka-raupo is the ancient name of Port Cooper or Lyttelton Harbour.66 The name sometimes has been given as Te Waka-raupo, which means “The Canoe of Raupo reeds,” otherwise a raft or _mokihi_ of the type so often used on the South Island rivers.67 This, however, is not correct.68 “Whaka” here is the Ngai-Tahu dialectical form of “Whanga,” which is a harbour or bay, as in Whangaroa and Whanganui.69 Whaka-raupo, therefore, means “Harbour of the raupo reed.”70 The _tino_ or exact place from which the harbour takes this name is Governor’s Bay, at the head of which there was a swamp filled with a thick and high growth of these reeds.71 It was here, at the head of Governor’s Bay, that the stockaded pa Ohinetahi stood; it was occupied by Te Rangi-whakaputa’s son after the dispersal of the Ngati-Mamoe tribe in these parts more than two hundred years ago.72

Corsair Bay and Cass Bay, as the _Kaumatua_ of Rapaki tells us, have Maori names which contain a reference not only to the ancient forests which clothed the slopes of the Port Hills and descended to the sandy beachside, but to one of the vanished practices of the native people, fire-making by wood-friction.73 Corsair Bay was named by Te Rangi-whakaputa, Motu-kauati-iti, meaning “Little Fire-making Tree-grove,” and Cass Bay was Motu-kauati-rahi, or “Great Fire-making Tree-grove.”74 The bays were so designated because on the shores and the slopes above there were plentiful thickets of the _kaikomako_ (pennantia corymbosa), the small tree into which Mahuika, a Polynesian Prometheus, threw fire from his finger-tips, so that it should not be extinguished by Maui’s deluge.75 A myth which to the Maori quite satisfactorily accounts for the readiness with which fire can be obtained from the _kaikomako_ by the simple process of taking a dry block of the wood and rubbing a groove in it with a stick of hardwood--with, of course an incantation to give more power to the elbow--until the dust and the shavings become ignited.76 The _kaikomako_ wood is used as the _kauati_, the piece which is rubbed; the pointed rubbing stick which the operator works to and fro is the _kaurima_.77 _Motu_ in these two names is a tree-clump or grove.78 There are none of the ancient fire trees on the bay shores nowadays; the _pakeha’s_ pinus insignis and cocksfoot grass have long supplanted them.79

Ri-papa is the full and correct name of Ripa Island, in Lyttelton Harbour.80 It is an historic and appropriate name, carrying one back to the ancient days when the brown sailors hauled their long canoes up on its little shelving beach.81 _Ri_ means a rope, the painter of flax by which canoes were dragged up on shore, and _papa_ is a flat rock.82 Ripapa is a white man’s fort these days, but centuries before a British gun was planted there it was a fortified place, though the weapons of its garrison would hardly carry as far as those of the present coast defence force.83 The Ngati-Mamoe three hundred years ago had a small village on this rocky islet, commanding the harbour-gate; it was defended with a palisade.84 But when the Rangi-whakaputa conquered the inhabitants of Te Whaka-raupo, he took the island and named it Ripapa--its first name is forgotten--and he built a _pa_ on the spot where the fort of the _pakeha_ artillery-men now stands.85

Quail Island, the dark-cliffed isle of the lepers, is known by the Maoris as Otamahua.86 Herein is a reference to an era when the island was a birding ground of the olden race.87 Many sea-birds, gulls and puffins and divers, bred in the crannies of its fire-made rocky shores, and the mainland Maoris canoed across on fowling expeditions.88 The eggs (_hua_) of the sea-fowl were esteemed delicacies, especially by the children (_tamariki_), who were fond of roasting them on their island expeditions.89 _Manu-huahua_, or birds cooked and preserved in their own fat, and done up in sea-kelp receptacles, as is the way in the Stewart Island mutton-bird industry to-day, also formed a large portion of the native supply of winter food in these parts.90

Looking out from the Port Hills the olden Maori wayfarer surveyed the far-spreading Plains and the name handed down from the days of the Waitaha tribe, the forerunners of the Ngati-Mamoe, came to his lips: “Nga Pakihi Whakatekateka a Waitaha.”91 It is a barbed-wire fence, perhaps, to the average _pakeha_, yet abbreviated it is not inappropriate as a Plains homestead name.92 In the long ago, before water-races and artesian wells, the trails across the Plains from the Waimakariri to the Selwyn and the Selwyn to the Rakaia and the Ashburton were weary and thirsty tracks, for there were very few springs of drinking water and the Maori disliked the water of the cold glacial torrents.93 So the tired and thirsting trail-parties, swagging it across the wastes of tussock and cabbage trees, came to call the district “The Deceptive Plains of Waitaha,” for they discovered that it was unwise to rely upon springs and streams on the long tramp.94 They made water-bags of seaweed, the great bull kelp, which they split and made watertight, and these _poha_ henceforth became as necessary to the kit of a trans-“Pakihi” traveller as a water-bottle is to the soldier in the field to-day.95

showing Quail Island.96

_W. A. Taylor photo_ ]97

The Heathcote River, whose native name has been abbreviated to Opawa, was originally the Opaawaho, which means “The outer, or seaward, _pa_,” otherwise “An outpost.”98 A tribe-section or _hapu_ of the Ngai-Tahu, about two hundred years ago, built a village on the left bank of the river, on a spot slightly elevated above the surrounding swampy country; the exact spot must have been close to the present Opawa Railway Station.99 The name of the village was Poho-areare, or “pigeon breasted,” after some chief of those days, and it was because of its situation, the outermost _Kainga_ of the Plains and swamp dwellers, commanding the passage down the Heathcote to the sea, that the river became known as the stream of “The Outpost.”100 Here it may be recalled that the _hapus_ who lived where Christchurch City now stands were given a nickname by the outer tribes at Kaiapoi and elsewhere.101 They were called “O-Roto-Repo,” or more briefly, “O-Roto-re’,” which means “In the Swamp,” or the “Swamp-Dwellers.”102 They lived in a marshy region which had its compensations in the way of abundant food, for the swamps and creeks swarmed with eels and wild duck.103 The upper part of the Heathcote was the O-mokihi or “The Place of Flax-Stalk Rafts.”104 The _tino_ of the name, the place where it had its origin, was an ancient lagoon-swamp at the foot of the Cashmere Hills, which the river drained.105 Another version of the Heathcote name is Wai-Mokihi, or “Flax-stalk Raft Creek.”106 Lower down the Heathcote, where the broad tidal shallows are, the Maoris gave the place an equally appropriate name; they called it O-hikaparuparu, which may be translated as “The spot where So-and-so fell in the mud,” or “Stick-in-the-mud,” which serves equally well to-day.107 About Redcliffs, where the tramline passes round from the broads and under the great cave-riddled lava precipice, there belongs a rather beautiful name, Rae-Kura, which is more modern than most of the other Native designations.108 It means “Red-glowing Headland,” or, let us say, “Rosy Point.”109

Immeasurably more ancient is Rapanui, which is the name of Shag Rock, in the Estuary; a place-name that could very well be appropriated by some of the near-by residents.110 It is a far-travelled name, for it was brought by the first Maori immigrants from Hawaiki, just as our white settlers brought their Canterburys and Heathcotes and Avons with them.111 We find it on the map of the Pacific some thousands of miles away; it is one of the Native names of Easter Island, that strange relic of a drowned Polynesian land in Eastern Oceania.112 And further out still, there is Tuawera, the Cave Rock at Sumner, to which belongs a legend of love and wizardry and revenge, to be narrated at another time, in which the chief figures were a girl from Akaroa named Hine-ao or “Daughter of the Dawn,” the chief Turaki-po, of “The Outpost” village, and Te Ake, the _tohunga_ of Akaroa.113