--- title: The Port Hills and Their Names. — Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury,… · full text with trees · page 2 description: The Port Hills and Their Names., «Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand» by James Cowan: the whole chapter, every sentence with its dependency tree and pragmatics. It begins: It is the Port Hills’ nomenclature, perhaps, that carries the most poetic suggestions of any of the Can --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/10/page/2/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Ca…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/) / The Port Hills and Their Names. # The Port Hills and Their Names. · page 2 [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/10/) **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](../../60/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../61/ "tree and pragmatics") Herbert--with its level top, where a lofty \_pa\_ of Ngati-Mamoe stood three centuries ago.[62](../../62/ "tree and pragmatics") Cooper’s Knobs Dog’s Head Pinnacle Hill[63](../../63/ "tree and pragmatics") View from Cass Peak, showing Cooper’s Knobs, Dog’s Head, and Pinnacle Hill.[64](../../64/ "tree and pragmatics") \_W. A. Taylor, photo\_\][65](../../65/ "tree and pragmatics") Te Whaka-raupo is the ancient name of Port Cooper or Lyttelton Harbour.[66](../../66/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../67/ "tree and pragmatics") This, however, is not correct.[68](../../68/ "tree and pragmatics") “Whaka” here is the Ngai-Tahu dialectical form of “Whanga,” which is a harbour or bay, as in Whangaroa and Whanganui.[69](../../69/ "tree and pragmatics") Whaka-raupo, therefore, means “Harbour of the raupo reed.”[70](../../70/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../71/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../72/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../73/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../74/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../75/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../76/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../77/ "tree and pragmatics") \_Motu\_ in these two names is a tree-clump or grove.[78](../../78/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../79/ "tree and pragmatics") Ri-papa is the full and correct name of Ripa Island, in Lyttelton Harbour.[80](../../80/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../81/ "tree and pragmatics") \_Ri\_ means a rope, the painter of flax by which canoes were dragged up on shore, and \_papa\_ is a flat rock.[82](../../82/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../83/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../84/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../85/ "tree and pragmatics") Quail Island, the dark-cliffed isle of the lepers, is known by the Maoris as Otamahua.[86](../../86/ "tree and pragmatics") Herein is a reference to an era when the island was a birding ground of the olden race.[87](../../87/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../88/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../89/ "tree and pragmatics") \_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](../../90/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../91/ "tree and pragmatics") It is a barbed-wire fence, perhaps, to the average \_pakeha\_, yet abbreviated it is not inappropriate as a Plains homestead name.[92](../../92/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../93/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../94/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../95/ "tree and pragmatics") showing Quail Island.[96](../../96/ "tree and pragmatics") \_W. A. Taylor photo\_ \][97](../../97/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../98/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../99/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../100/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../101/ "tree and pragmatics") They were called “O-Roto-Repo,” or more briefly, “O-Roto-re’,” which means “In the Swamp,” or the “Swamp-Dwellers.”[102](../../102/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../103/ "tree and pragmatics") The upper part of the Heathcote was the O-mokihi or “The Place of Flax-Stalk Rafts.”[104](../../104/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../105/ "tree and pragmatics") Another version of the Heathcote name is Wai-Mokihi, or “Flax-stalk Raft Creek.”[106](../../106/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../107/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../108/ "tree and pragmatics") It means “Red-glowing Headland,” or, let us say, “Rosy Point.”[109](../../109/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../110/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../111/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../112/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../113/ "tree and pragmatics") [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/10/) **2** - ← previous: [page 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/10/) - next →: [“the Crest of the Rainbow.”](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/11/) - ↑ back to [Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/)