--- title: Rapaki: a Village By the Sea. — Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury,… · full text with trees · page 2 description: Rapaki: a Village By the Sea., «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: In the little Maori _kainga_ of Rapaki, folded away in a valley-fan of Lyttelton harbour-side, there is a --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/12/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/) / Rapaki: a Village By the Sea. # Rapaki: a Village By the Sea. · page 2 [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/12/) **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](../../61/ "tree and pragmatics") It is a dignified survivor of the woodlands of the Rapaki-a-Te Rangi-whakaputa.[62](../../62/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../63/ "tree and pragmatics") There were big trees--\_totara\_, \_rimu\_, \_kahikatea\_ and \_mataii\_--but all have gone long ago.[64](../../64/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../65/ "tree and pragmatics") But the old ribbonwood, or lacebark, or thousand-jacket, as the bushman variously calls it, is the tree that takes the eye.[66](../../66/ "tree and pragmatics") The Maoris of the north call it \_whauwhi\_ and \_houhere\_, here it is \_houhi\_ or \_houi\_.[67](../../67/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../68/ "tree and pragmatics") The early colonists have been known to use it for the trimming of ladies’ hats and bonnets.[69](../../69/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../70/ "tree and pragmatics") \_E. Cowan, photo\_ \][71](../../71/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../72/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../73/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../74/ "tree and pragmatics") Mahuraki was his name, a shaggy tattooed pagan of the first half of the last century.[75](../../75/ "tree and pragmatics") He was exceedingly \_tapu\_, steeped in wizardry and mysticism.[76](../../76/ "tree and pragmatics") Often the missionaries besought him to become a Christian, but the grim old warlock scoffed at the Rongo Pai.[77](../../77/ "tree and pragmatics") “Hu!” he grunted, “what is your Karaiti?[78](../../78/ "tree and pragmatics") Who was he?[79](../../79/ "tree and pragmatics") My god is Kahukura, the god whose sign is the rainbow.[80](../../80/ "tree and pragmatics") As for yours, your Karaiti--he is a \_poriro\_, a misbegotten!”[81](../../81/ "tree and pragmatics") And at last the sorely pained missionary abandoned in despair the hopeless task of plucking the ancient man from the burning.[82](../../82/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../83/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../84/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../85/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../86/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../87/ "tree and pragmatics") It was his way of perpetuating his name and fame.[88](../../88/ "tree and pragmatics") But long-distance pedestrian Tamatea fairly has prior claim.[89](../../89/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../90/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../91/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../92/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../93/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../94/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../95/ "tree and pragmatics") But those enormous \_kupengas\_ will never again be hauled through the fish-teeming waters.[96](../../96/ "tree and pragmatics") From Tikao, too, we hear something of the poetic legend and nature-myth that steep those swart hills above Rapaki.[97](../../97/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../98/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../99/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../100/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../101/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../102/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../103/ "tree and pragmatics") The sun is over the range, and Tamatea’s gloomy peak is outlined in sharp symmetry against the burning west.[104](../../104/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../105/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../106/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../107/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../108/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../109/ "tree and pragmatics") “Hoki-hoki tonu mai, Te wairua o te tau.”[110](../../110/ "tree and pragmatics") (“Return, return again to me, The spirit of my love.”)[111](../../111/ "tree and pragmatics") 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](../../112/ "tree and pragmatics") [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/12/) **2** - ← previous: [page 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/12/) - next →: [How the Sacred Fire Came to Witch Hill.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/13/) - ↑ back to [Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg73766/)