🧚 Rapaki: a Village By the Sea. · page 2

That old ribbonwood tree that quite overshadows the little Rapaki church holds memories of the vanished forests that once clothed all these Port Hills and of the “flitting generations of mankind” it has so long outlived.61 It is a dignified survivor of the woodlands of the Rapaki-a-Te Rangi-whakaputa.62 Once upon a time the indigenous timbers thickly covered all these now-grassy slopes slanting quickly from the rhyolite hilltop crags to the quiet waters of the Whaka-Raupo.63 There were big trees--_totara_, _rimu_, _kahikatea_ and _mataii_--but all have gone long ago.64 Remains there but a remnant from the general slaughter with fire and axe and crosscut saw--a copse on yonder rocky point on the Lyttelton side of the hamlet, where the poetically named _ake-rautangi_, the _ake_ of the “crying leaves” and a few other shrubs hold their little stony fort; and in Taare Tikao’s garden the _kaumatua_ has some treasured plants, such as the handsome _rau-tawhiri_ shrub, and the flowering _hakeke_, a variety of _ake_, the leaves of which when crushed in the hand have a lemon-like perfume; the Natives used to boil them for the _hinu kakara_, the fragrant oil expressed.65 But the old ribbonwood, or lacebark, or thousand-jacket, as the bushman variously calls it, is the tree that takes the eye.66 The Maoris of the north call it _whauwhi_ and _houhere_, here it is _houhi_ or _houi_.67 It takes its _pakeha_ name from the peculiar characteristics of the inner bark, which is tough and strong of fibre and beautifully netted and perforated.68 The early colonists have been known to use it for the trimming of ladies’ hats and bonnets.69 I have seen a war-dance party of Taupo Natives, more than a hundred strong, kilted with short _rapakis_ made of this lacebark, deftly twisted and woven by their womenfolk for the ceremonial leaping parade.70

_E. Cowan, photo_ ]71

That is the tree that extends its Maori _mana tapu_ and its twisting flowery branches over the village church, with a little spire like an old-time candle extinguisher, and it was under its shade that Tikao told something of the past of these parts.72 The church itself, as he remembered, was built in 1869 by the Wesleyan Natives, but the Anglicans used it also, for in those days there was no _puhaehae_, no violent jealousy of sects.73 And in its very shadow, when the sun westers, is a tangled grassy spot sacred to the memory of a heathen chief who would have none of the white man’s church or the white man’s beliefs.74 Mahuraki was his name, a shaggy tattooed pagan of the first half of the last century.75 He was exceedingly _tapu_, steeped in wizardry and mysticism.76 Often the missionaries besought him to become a Christian, but the grim old warlock scoffed at the Rongo Pai.77 “Hu!” he grunted, “what is your Karaiti?78 Who was he?79 My god is Kahukura, the god whose sign is the rainbow.80 As for yours, your Karaiti--he is a _poriro_, a misbegotten!”81 And at last the sorely pained missionary abandoned in despair the hopeless task of plucking the ancient man from the burning.82 Mahuraki died sixty years ago and was buried in a hole dug in the floor of his thatched hut, which was left to decay.83 As he lived, he died, a sturdy unregenerate pagan, and the faith of Ihu Karaiti prevailed; the bell of the Rongo Pai calls the _kainga_ to prayers within a few paces of Mahuraki’s grave, and the _tohunga’s_ mumblings are a forgotten creed.84 The _tohunga_ himself is by no means forgotten, for one of the names of yonder lofty arrowhead of a crag that overlords Rapaki is “Mahuraki’s Head.”85 The original name, as we have seen, is Te Poho-o-Tamatea, which means “Tamatea’s Breast,” so named by this barefooted pioneer of Maori land surveyors by way of claiming the land for his tribespeople.86 In about 1849-50, when the commander of a British surveying ship made the first survey of Lyttelton Harbour and named the landscape saliencies, his Maori interpreter asked the name of this sharp peak, whereupon our old savage claimed that it was named after himself, “Te Upoko-o-Mahuraki.”87 It was his way of perpetuating his name and fame.88 But long-distance pedestrian Tamatea fairly has prior claim.89

So by the foot of the greenwood tree was begun the talk of olden days that ended, as the sun declined behind the historic crags of Tamatea, on Taare Tikao’s hospitable verandah, overlooking the little village and the soft blue placid waters of the Whaka-Raupo.90 It was a rambling _korero_, wandering deviously from _pakeha_ times into romantic ancientry, when the wild men lived in the woods and when war canoes filled with fierce tattooed eaters of men swept up and down this shining harbour of ours.91 The _Kaumatua_, describing the old industrious age of his people, told by way of example of the tribal communistic energies how great flax nets fully a quarter of a mile long used to be made for the catching of the shark in this sea arm.92 These immensely long seines were six or eight feet deep, and were worked by canoes, which would take one end out into mid harbour, the other being made fast, and sweep the great _kupenga_ round the shoals of fish making their way up the harbour with the flood tide.93 Huge quantities of sharks and other fish were caught in this manner, a fishing fashion which was only possible under the old tribal system, when the whole strength of the _hapu_ was available for such tasks.94

Lest readers should question the dimensions of that quarter of a mile seine, let me say that in quite recent times, up to within the last thirty-five years or so, an old Ngati-Pikiao chief, the late Pokiha Taranui (better known as Major Fox), had a net nearly a mile in length, which was used on special occasions, such as the gathering of food for native meetings; the locality was Maketu village, on the shores of the Bay of Plenty.95 But those enormous _kupengas_ will never again be hauled through the fish-teeming waters.96

From Tikao, too, we hear something of the poetic legend and nature-myth that steep those swart hills above Rapaki.97 Yon savage Poho of rhyolite, and the peaked and pinnacled cores of old volcanoes that break through the grassy hills for mile after mile, all have their tales of pre-_pakeha_ years, of which we shall chronicle something again.98 Just now we may content ourselves with the gentler scenes in Rapaki valley, where the kowhai has shed its showers of gold and the _pakeha_ fruit trees in blossom sweeten the soft air deliciously.99 That patch of ploughed land behind the settlement before long will show the first shoots of _kaanga_, or maize; there is not much grown in this island except by the Natives.100 The water-front, in spite of its smart new jetty for the launches, is lonelier than in the old days; for there was a time, long after the war-canoe era, when three long whaleboats were hauled up on the sand where the boulders are piled aside yonder and often these could be seen pulling down to Lyttelton laden with potatoes, corn and fruit.101 That bit of beach is over-rough; but a little way to the north, under the lee of a wild bit of a rocky headland thick with beautiful light bush, is a gem of a white beach, clean and hard and shining, a sandy alcove that must have been made for picnicking.102 And from this hillside turn in the road where we get our first glimpse of Rapaki, we may also most fitly take our sunset farewell of the _kainga_ of an artist’s dream.103

The sun is over the range, and Tamatea’s gloomy peak is outlined in sharp symmetry against the burning west.104 In the deep gullies between the spear-head and the ridge of the Sacred Fire the smoky-blue mists are already forming, and wreathing and creeping around the tangled shrubberies of bush that have escaped the general massacre.105 The harbour lies a sheet of scarcely moving tender turquoise, just a shade lighter than the face of the famous Tikitapu, inaccurately called the Blue Lake by the _pakeha_; high beyond the shark’s-teeth of the peaks that someone has named the Seven Sleepers are drawn in soft blue upon the rose of the heaven above, their feet are bathed in violet, and the purple mists swim wraith-like from their hidden hollows.106 The sun goes, and the delicacy, the tenderness of colour, the fading of landscape details into a haze like the camp-fire smokes of the legendary _Patu-paiarehe_, weave a veil of faery over the valley and the darkening sea.107 The little boys and girls of the settlement are still at play around the meeting-hall, and every call and every laugh come clearly through the velvet soft air.108 Down in a nearer dwelling, a girl is rehearsing a _poi_-dance song, and the lilt is familiar, the half-sad chant that begins,109

“Hoki-hoki tonu mai, Te wairua o te tau.”110 (“Return, return again to me, The spirit of my love.”)111

It is the song crooned by the women and the children in every _kainga_ that, like slumbrous little Rapaki down yonder, sent its young men to use rifle and bayonet beside their _pakeha_ brothers-in-arms on the thundering battlefields half a world away.112