🧚 Rapaki: a Village By the Sea.

In the little Maori _kainga_ of Rapaki, folded away in a valley-fan of Lyttelton harbour-side, there is a tiny, steep-roofed church, of old-fashioned build, and by the side of this church stands a twisty-branched old ribbonwood tree, that in summer showers over porch and steeple its sweet, snowy blossoms, scented like the orange tree.1 On the lowermost bough of this knotty ribbonwood, the _houhi_, or _houi_, of the Natives, that stood here before the church was built, over fifty years ago, hangs the bell that calls the remnant of Ngati-Irakehu to worship; and it is this sylvan belfry that symbolises for me the intermingling of modernism and ancientry in the Rapaki of to-day.2 Like the other _hapus_ of the Ngai-Tahu tribe, the Ngati-Irakehu and their kin are now half-_pakeha_ in blood; they have intermarried with their European neighbours, and their little township, with its sixty odd souls, is scarcely to be taken at first sight for a Maori settlement.3 The communal house, of characteristic Native build, with its carved frontal barge-boards and its gargoyle-like _tekoteko_ perched above the entrance, familiar to travellers in the Native districts of the North, is wanting here; but a survey of the village scheme, with its tree-shaded cottages grouped sociably about the central green space, and the hall and school-house and church, soon makes it plain that here stood an old-time Maori _kainga_, of totara slabs and raupo thatch, with maybe a tall stockade guarding its landward side and stretching from cliff to cliff of the little boulder-beached bay.4 The plan is the same; the buildings have changed, for Rapaki to-day believes in5

ribbonwood tree.6

_E. Cowan, photo_ ]7

sanitation and modern comforts.8 Here and there a Maori tree, like our ribbonwood yonder, and a tattered clump of light bush in the gullies or on a rocky cliff-top, to remind us of the different setting when Rapaki was tumultuous with wild Maori life; when tattooed Ngai-Tahu were in fighting flower, and when dense and beautiful forest covered the feet and shoulders of all those dark volcanic crags and tors lifting above us there like so many ruined castles battered by the artillery fire of the gods.9 A remnant, a _morehu_, now are tribe and forest; alike they have dwindled to a shadow; “as the woods are swept away,” says the Maori, “so shall the people vanish.”10 The young people are so Anglicised that they use the _pakeha_ tongue chiefly; the older ones only cling to Maori among themselves.11 Yet a brave little remnant, with a fighting heart worthy of their warrior ancestry; for of these descendants of fierce old Rangiwhakaputa and Wheke every eligible young man went to the Great War, and some salted with their bones the world’s greatest battlefields.12 (No Kipling monopoly in the phrase: “Bury me here,” said old Major Pokiha, of the Arawa, a fighting chief of the last generation--“bury me here as salt for the lands of my heroes”).13 One-eighth of the population of little Rapaki voluntarily enlisted.14 The well-plucked Ngati-Irakehu and their kinsmen have title to say, as Nelson said of old of his fighting sailors, “We are few, but the right sort.”15

The _Kaumatua_ of Rapaki, the pleasant-mannered kindly greybeard, Hone Taare Tikao, a gentleman of true _rangatira_ breeding and demeanour, is the best informed man of his tribe-remnant on the Peninsula and Port Hills history and legends and genealogical recitals--_whakapapa_ in the Maori tongue.16 Tikao was born at Akaroa over seventy years ago.17 He is of the Ngati-Irakehu _hapu_ of the Ngai-Tahu tribe, and he is descended by several lines from Te Rangiwhakaputa and other of the warrior chiefs who wrested the Whanga-raupo and the Whanga-roa--Aka-roa is the modernised contraction--from the dusky men of Ngati-Mamoe.18 From his parents and from Paora Taki, a picturesque old _rangatira_ who once was Native assessor at Rapaki, and kindred people of the generation that has gone, he learned the history and legends of these parts.19

The old man tells us first how this village came to be named Rapaki--not Raupaki, as it is erroneously spelled on the maps.20 The full name of the place is Te Rapaki-a-Te Rangi-whakaputa which means “the waist-mat of Te Rangi-whakaputa,” and to it, obviously, there hangs a story, which when told leads on to the tradition of the conquest of this district from the Ngati-Mamoe a little over two centuries ago.21 The Rangi-whakaputa’s name in these parts is associated with Homeric exploits with the weapons of old.22 This long-gone tattooed hero was the Hector of the Whaka-raupo, and this well-hidden valley curving down from the crags was the spot where he settled awhile when the harbour-side fighting was done.23 He was one of the northern invaders, a kinsman and contemporary of Moki, Tu-rakau-tahi, and other baresark warriors of the end of the seventeenth century.24 On the beach below the present village he left his waist-garment, a kilt of flax or _toi_ leaves, probably in connection with the act of _tapa_-ing the place as his possession, and from the fact of this _rapaki_, which would be a _tapu_ one, being cast there the place received its name.25 Te Rangi-Whakaputa’s name has been translated as “Day of Daring,” or “Day of Energy.”26 It suited this enterprising warrior, who is described by his descendant Taare Tikao as a great _toa_ or brave.27 He was indeed a fine figure of a man, nearer seven feet than six feet high, it is said, very powerful, and a most skilful man in the use of the _taiaha_, the Maori broadsword of hard tough _akeake_, and the spear and the stone _mere_.28 All these harbour-front villages and camping-grounds he captured from the Ngati-Mamoe who, as Tikao says, were the fourth _iwi_--race or tribe--to occupy the29

_W. A. Taylor, photo_ ]30

South Island; the first people were the Hawea, the second the Rapuwai, the third the Waitaha and the fourth the Ngati-Mamoe, whom the Ngai-Tahu dispossessed, in their turn to be supplanted by the white-skins with their bags of gold sovereigns and their land-sale deeds.31

And this Homeric figure of two centuries ago, great of stature and terrible in fight, had a son whose name is scarcely less famous in the little-written traditions of the conquest of the Whanga-Raupo.32 His name was Wheke, which means “Octopus,” and like his father he spread terror among the Ngati-Mamoe.33 With his war parties he scoured all these ranges and tracked the frightened fugitives into their most secret valleys and caves.34 One of his camping-grounds on a war expedition was yon fort-like nest of basalt towers and upjuts above Cass Bay, overlooking our Lyttelton road; he slept one night near the summit of one of these crags, a wild hard camping place, and it is still known as “Te-Moenga-o-Wheke” or “Wheke’s Bed.”35 And over the doorway of the large meeting hall in the village of Rapaki you will see the name of Wheke painted, in memory of a brown hero whose bones have been dust these two hundred years.36 [3]37

[Footnote 3: The following note describing the occupation of these localities after the first conflict between the two great tribes of the South Island was written by Mr. T. E. Green (Tame Kirini) of Tuahiwi, Kaiapoi, who died in 1917, and who was an authority on the history of his mother’s clan:--38

“The Ngati-Mamoe were subdued by the Ngai-Tuhaitara section of the Ngai-Tahu tribe under Moki, an account of whose expedition is given in Canon J. W. Stack’s contribution to “Tales of Banks Peninsula.”39 Te Raki (or Rangi) -whakaputa was of the Ngati-Kurii section of the tribe; Ngati-Kurii carried their conquest no further south than Kaikoura.40 From there southward is the conquest of Ngai-Tuhai-tara.41 The second daughter of Te Rakiwhakaputa was the wife of Tu-Rakautahi, the founder of Kaiapoi Pa, so Te Rakiwhakaputa came to Kaiapoi after the settlement of the Ngai-Tuhaitara, here accompanied by other Ngati-Kurii chieftains, namely, Mako, Te Ruahikihiki and others, and dwelt in the vicinity of Kaiapoi for some time.42 There is a spot on the eastern bank of the Whakahume (the Cam), about half a mile from the Kaiapoi Woollen Mills, named Te Pa o Te Rakiwhakaputa.43 Some occurrence there enraged Parakiore, youngest son of Tu-Rakautahi and grandson of Te Rakiwhakaputa, and he declared that he would have no interloper in his midst, referring to his grandfather Te Rakiwhakaputa, (to whom, for brevity, I shall now refer by his short name Te Raki) and Mako (Mango) who was married to his aunt (Te Raki’s eldest daughter).44 As a result of this attitude of his son, Tu-Rakautahi said to Te Raki, ‘You must go out to the Whaka-raupo (Lyttelton Harbour); there are sharks there for us two.’45 Mako he sent to Little River, to Wairewa, saying: ‘Yonder are eels for us two.’46 To Te Ruahikihiki he said, ‘Go to Taumutu (at Lake Ellesmere); there are patiki (flounders) for us two there.’47 Kiri-Mahinahina he sent out to Paanau: ‘Go yonder and catch hapuku for us.’48

“Now this is what the present generation living at these places object to, the idea that their ancestors were sent there to procure food supplies for Kaiapoi.49 As Moki, the younger brother of Tu Rakautahi, headed the Ngai-Tuhaitara clan who conquered the Peninsula, you will readily perceive that no chief would deliberately go and settle on the territory of another, and particularly one so powerful as Tu-Rakautahi, without his permission--which in this case was given--and without tribute being paid annually for the privilege.50 This was strictly carried out by them until the advent of the _pakehas_.51 Of course Kaiapoi gave them _kauru_ generally in return, merely in Maori etiquette; some are now trying to make out that the _kauru_ (the sugar extract of the _tii_, or cabbage tree) was the payment for their fish.”]52

When first I went round the high bend in the harbour-side road from Lyttelton and saw Rapaki village a-slumber in the afternoon sun below, all in its green and gold of groves and flowers, grassy fields lapped about it in soft folds, the sea coming up in gentle breathings at the foot of the little cliffs, and the grand old crags above, with one huge _taiaha_-head of a peak lording it sentry-wise over all, I thought that for beauty of setting very few Maori _kaingas_ even in the romantic bushlands and highlands of the North Island were peers of this hamlet of the Ngai-Tahu, almost jostled off the map by the crowding hordes of the _pakeha_.53 Down the bend into the hollow, where the ghost of a mountain stream goes tinkling through the little gully, and the towns that are so near seem a hundred miles away.54 The mat-kilted conquistador of old who gave his name to the place had an eye for a secure, well-hidden site for his _pa_.55 He could scarcely have chosen a spot more snug about these savage Port Hills.56 The dominating tors and marline-spikes of fire-born rock and the great up-swell of land on all sides but the sea ward off the cold winds.57 Loftiest of all and nearest is that towering spear-head Te Poho-o-Tamatea, a dark grey triangle of rhyolite, thrusting its naked apex into the warm sky a thousand feet and more above the groves and dwellings of Tikao’s people.58 It looks what it is, the mountain guardian of Rapaki; its presence, grimly grand on dark lowering days when the mists trail about it and give it added height and dourness, is no less overpowering in the night, when it leans over the deep-cut valley of dreams, a huge rugged blade of blackness etched against the sky.59 And even in this day of sunshine, when every cave and cranny in the Poho-o-Tamatea were searched by the golden light and when the mystery of its fiery birth stood revealed, the great spear-rock still seemed a place of eeriness and _tapu_.60