Chapter XIII: Kiharoa the Giant

A FOLK-TALE OF THE TOKANUI HILLS.

This curious tradition, gathered from the last of the old learned
men of the Ngati-Maniapoto tribe, is given as a typical example of
the Maori folk-lore with which the King Country abounds.

On the crown of the land at Whenuahou, immediately north of the Tokanui hills known to the European settlers of the old frontier as “The Three Sisters,” is an historic spot called Kiharoa, in memory of a giant warrior of long ago. It was proposed by some of the Kingite chiefs in 1864, after the British occupation of the Waipa basin, that a fort should be built here for a final stand against the Queen’s soldiers. The position commanded a wide view over the valley of the Puniu and the conquered lands north of the river, but it would have been useless without a sufficient garrison to hold also the hill-forts in rear of and above it, ancient terraced pas of the Maori. The suggestion was not favoured by Rewi and the other leaders, and the warriors re-crossed the Puniu to the north side and built the pa at Orakau. Long ago, riding along the old horse track from Kihikihi to Otorohanga past Hopa te Rangianini’s little village at Whenuahou, we used to see the Giant’s Grave, as it was called. This locally-famous landmark was a shallow excavation on a ferny mound; it was twelve or fourteen feet in length and about four feet in width, and vague traditions had grown up around it, but none of the European settlers of the frontier knew anything definite of its history. A few years ago, however, I gathered the story of this semi-mythic giant from two venerable warriors of the Ngati-Maniapoto, on the south bank of the Puniu River. There certainly seems to have been a veritable giant, a man of enormous stature and length of reach with the hand-weapons of those days, six generations ago. This Kiharoa, or “The Long Gasping Breath,” was a chief of the Ngati-Raukawa and Ngati-Whakatere tribes, who in those times owned the Tokanui hills and the surrounding fruitful slopes.

The strong terraced and trenched pa on Tokanui, the middle conical hill of the row of three, was built by the two tribes named, under Kiharoa, about a hundred and fifty years ago. The same people fortified and occupied the other two hills; the eastern one is Puke-rimu (“Red-Pine hill”) and the western Whiti-te-marama (“The Shining of the Moon”). There were many good fighting men among the people of these hill forts, but their tower of strength was Kiharoa, who stood hugely over his fellows; he was twice the height of an ordinary man, and he wielded a taiaha of unusual length and weight, a hardwood weapon called by the name of “Rangihaeata” (“The First Rays of Morning Light”). Many a battle he had fought successfully with this great blade-and-tongue broadsword, sweeping every opponent out of his path. Kiharoa was tattooed on body as well as face, and when he leaped into battle, whirling “Rangihaeata” from side to side in guard and feint and cut, his blue-carved skin glistening with oil and red ochre, his great glaring eyes darting flame, his moko-scrolled features distorted with fury, few there were brave enough to face him. But there came a day when Kiharoa met his better on the battlefield of Whenuahou.

The Ngati-Maniapoto tribe, whose great fortress was Totorewa, an impregnable cliff-walled pa on the Waipa River, raised a feud against the Ngati-Raukawa and Ngati-Whakatere, and a large war-party set out under the chief Wahanui, who himself was a man of great frame, though no giant like Kiharoa. The “taua” took a circuitous route, coming upon the Tokanui hills from the south via Manga-o-Rongo, and then making a detour to the east to avoid the deep morass which defended the southern side of “The Three Sisters”—the present main road from Kihikihi to Otorohanga traverses this now partly-drained swamp.

Meanwhile the garrisons in the hill forts had prepared for war, and their sentinels stood on the alert on the tihi or citadel of the terraced strongholds, keeping keen watch for the expected enemy. Harua, one of the chiefs of the forts, had descended to the plain with a small party before the approach of the foe was detected, and although the people on the hill forts called repeatedly to him warning him to return, no heed was given to the long-drawn shouts. At length a keen-eyed sentry saw the glisten of a weapon—perhaps a whalebone mere—in the westering sun; the direction was well to the east of the pa, and by that token it was plain that the enemy army was lying in ambush waiting to advance silently in the night. It was imperative that Harua and his men outside the pa should be warned, and so in the still watches of the night a strong-lunged warrior on the battlements of Tokanui lifted up his voice in this whakaaraara-pa, or sentinel-chant:

E tenei pa, e tera pa!
Titiro ki nga tahanga roa
I Tunaroa!
Pewhea tena te titiaho
Kia haere ake ki te pa.
Hoi tonu, hoi tonu!

In this chant the garrisons of the pas on each hand, Puke-rimu and Whiti-te-marama, were called upon to be on the alert, and to scan the long slopes towards the place called Tunaroa where the enemy lay concealed. Yonder perhaps was the place whence the foe would advance in the morning sunshine against the pas. “Ye heeded me not—heeded me not,” the chant ended. Had any lurking enemy scout been near enough to hear the words he would take them as being addressed only to the garrisons of the hill-top fortresses, and would not suspect that it was really a warning for the ears of Harua and his small force of scouts who were liable to be cut off from the pa as soon as daylight came.

The cry of warning was heard and understood by Harua, and he and his scouts swiftly rejoined their friends on the hill-tops.

When day came and the war-party of Ngati-Maniapoto appeared, working round to the north-east side of the Tokanui chain of forts, Kiharoa the giant, stripped for battle, took up his taiaha, “The First Rays of Morning Light,” and led his warriors down to the open slopes of Whenuahou to give battle to the invaders. As he dashed down the hill he ran through a grove of karaka trees. Here there was a pool where the kernels of the karaka berries were prepared for food by being steeped in water after having been cooked; this food was termed “kopiri.” There were some dead leaves of the karaka lying on the track, and Kiharoa slipped on these leaves as he ran, and fell, and narrowly escaped breaking his taiaha in his fall. The spot is at the foot of Tokanui hill, just outside the thickets of prickly acacia which now clothe the silent old fortress with a mat of softest green. This accident was in the belief of the Maori a tohu aitua or evil omen for Kiharoa. The knowledge of this fact may have unnerved the giant, or “Rangihaeata’s” mana may have suffered by the mishap. He rushed to meet his foes, but he was outfought for all his phenomenal reach of arm. He fell pierced with spear thrusts and battered with blows of stone clubs, and he lay dead on the battlefield of Whenuahou.

The Tokanui people were defeated; they fled in panic when their gigantic chieftain fell, and many were killed on the field. The survivors, however, held their forts successfully. Ngati-Maniapoto contented themselves with the dead, which would provide many ovens of man-meat, and most of all they rejoiced to find that they had vanquished the dreaded Kiharoa. They gathered round in amazement to measure his height and his giant limbs; and on the spot where he lay marks were cut at head and feet to indicate his length. His enormous tattooed head was cut off and preserved by being smoke-dried, and presently was carried home to Totorewa to decorate the palisade at the gateway of the fort. His body was cut up and cooked and eaten where he fell, and there the excavation remained to mark his great stature. He was two fathoms long! So says the native account. My Maori friends will not abate a single inch. This is the length of the place we used to call the “Giant’s Grave,” on the crown of the land below Puke-rimu, the eastern hill of the “Sisters.” And the battlefield was divided among the victors, and later became the home of a section of the Ngati-Matakore tribe, of whom my old warrior acquaintances Hauauru and Hopa te Rangianini were the chiefs in the days of my boyhood within sight of the terrace-carved “Three Sisters.”

Such is in brief the story of the giant’s grave—a misnomer assuredly, seeing that Kiharoa’s tomb was the stomachs of his slayers. The Tokanui village hall stands within revolver shot of the place where Kiharoa came to his end, and the community creamery at the cross-roads stands where once Wahanui’s cannibal army plied spear and stone club and taiaha on the defenders of the three hill forts. Some distance to the east is the Waikeria prison farm. It was in that direction, at Tunaroa, that Wahanui and his Totorewa army lay in the fern the night before the battle.

There was another giant of those parts in the days before the white man came with his guns. This was Matau; he was, like Kiharoa, a man of the Ngati-Raukawa tribe. He was nearly as tall as Kiharoa, says an old word-of-mouth historian. He was a dreaded warrior, and, like Kiharoa again, his favourite weapon was the taiaha. His home was in a palisaded hole in a cliff above the cave called Te Ana Kai-tangata (“The Cannibal’s Cave”), which you may see in the rocky face in the gorge towards the head of the Wairaka Stream, a tributary of the Puniu River. The entrance to this cave is still marked with the paint kokowai or red ochre; that is how you will know it. It was an excellent place in which to lie in wait for incautious travellers in the days of old.

APPENDICES

SOME MAORI PLACE NAMES.

The following are the meanings of a number of native place-names in the Te Awamutu district; some of these names are now for the first time placed on record:—

Te Awamutu: The end of the river; i.e., the head of canoe
navigation.
Rangiaowhia: Beclouded sky.
Kihikihi: Cicada, tree-locust.
Orakau: The place of trees.
Paterangi: Fort of heaven; i.e., the pa on the high part of the
ridge, the skyline.
Waiari: Clear water.
Mangapiko: Crooked creek.
Te Rore: The snare.
Mangatea (on the Manga-o-Hoi, where the mill stood): White stream.
Matariki (a short distance above the bridge at Te Awamutu, right
bank of river): The Pleiades constellation; also reeds used for
lining the interior of a house.
Te Reinga (old village site behind R.C. Church, Rangiaowhia):
Leaping, rushing; thus the place of leaping, the final departing
place of spirits of the dead.
Hikurangi (the Rangiaowhia heights above the Manga-o-Hoi; Gifford’s
Hill; also place on Pirongia-Kawhia Road): Skyline; horizon.
Pekapeka-rau (swamp between Hairini and Rangiaowhia): Place where
the native bat was numerous.
Tioriori (native village, near where the Hairini cheese factory now
stands): A kind of kite, made of raupo.
Tau-ki-tua (the site of the English Church at Rangiaowhia): The
farther ridge.
Te Rahu: Basket made of undressed flax.
Te Rua-Kotare (Taylor’s Hill, or Green Hill, north of Te Awamutu):
The kingfisher’s nest (in hollow tree).
Tauwhare (ancient pa on cliffy right bank of Mangapiko River, above
Waiari): Overhanging.
Tokanui: Great Rock.
Waikeria: Dug-out waterway, or watercourse gouged out.
Otorohanga: O, food carried for a journey; torohanga, stretched
out. According to a Ngati-Maniapoto tradition, a certain warrior
chief who set out from this spot for Taupo with only a very small
quantity of food caused it by supernatural means to “stretch out”
and to last until he had reached his destination. Hence the name.

THE CAPTURE OF WINIATA.

The Maori murderer Winiata, captured at Otorohanga by Robert Barlow, was brought into Kihikihi early on the morning of Tuesday, 27th June, 1882. At about three o’clock that morning Constable Finnerty, of the Armed Constabulary, found Barlow and Winiata struggling violently outside the Alpha Hotel. Winiata, who was in a naked condition, had recovered from the effects of the grog, and was making a desperate effort to escape. He was overpowered and taken to the Constabulary barracks in the redoubt, and chained to a bedstead. Major Minnett, who was in command of the Armed Constabulary Force at Kihikihi, sent him to Te Awamutu with Barlow in the Government waggon under an armed guard, and Constable Gillies then took the prisoner in charge and delivered him to Sergeant McGovern at Hamilton the same day.

There were two other Maoris in the whare at Otorohanga, and both of these were made helplessly drunk or drugged by Barlow.

MR HURSTHOUSE’S ADVENTURE IN THE KING COUNTRY.

The capture of Mr Charles Wilson Hursthouse and Mr William Newsham, Government surveyors, by a band of King Country fanatics under the prophet Te Mahuki occurred at Te Uira, near Te Kuiti, on 20th March, 1883. Mr Hursthouse was on his way from Alexandra to explore the country from the Waikato frontier to the Mokau, and he and his assistant surveyor were accompanied by the Mokau friendly chiefs Te Rangituataka and Hone Wetere te Rerenga and twenty-five other Mokau men. At Te Uira, sixteen miles beyond Otorohanga, on the afternoon of the 20th, as they rode up they saw a large body of Maoris mustering excitedly. These were natives under the leadership of the fanatic Te Mahuki, or Manukura, a Ngati-Maniapoto man who had been a follower of Te Whiti at Parihaka, and who had returned to the Rohepotae to found a sect of his own. He called his followers the “Tekau-ma-rua,” or “The Twelve”—although they numbered many more—after the Twelve Apostles. This was a revival of a term of the Hauhau war days. The selected war-parties of the Taranaki fighting chief Titokowaru were called the “Tekau-ma-rua.” These men attacked Hursthouse’s party, and a lively fight followed, although no deadly weapons were used. The Tekau-ma-rua pulled the surveyors and the Mokau men off their horses, Rangituataka’s followers fighting desperately with stirrup-irons and leathers. The prisoners were marched to the village at Te Uira, in the midst of the terribly-excited Tekau-ma-rua, who were dancing and yelling and chanting ngeri or war-songs. Te Rangituataka and Wetere and their men were not ill-used—there were too many of them; moreover the leaders were high chiefs of the tribe—but the surveyors and a native named Te Haere were thrust into a cookhouse and imprisoned there. Hursthouse and Newsham had been stripped of their coats, waistcoats, and boots. Their hands were tied behind their backs and their feet were fastened together with bullock-chains. In this condition, suffering great pain from the tightness of their bonds, tortured by mosquitoes which they could only brush off by rubbing their faces on the ground, and without drink or food except dirty water and some pig’s potatoes thrown in on the floor, they remained there two nights and a day, listening to the yells and threats of the natives outside, and expecting to be killed. Early on the morning of 22nd March there was a new commotion outside, and Hursthouse heard Te Kooti’s voice. In a few moments the door of the cookhouse was burst open and the prisoners were released by Te Kooti—who had just been promised an amnesty by Mr Bryce, Native Minister—and a large party of natives, including Wahanui’s people; Wahanui himself arrived a little later. Hursthouse and Newsham had already worked their hands free, and the former had picked up a piece of iron chain as a weapon in case he was attacked. The extreme tension and anxiety of the thirty-six hours’ painful confinement and the want of food had affected even the indomitable Hursthouse, old campaigner though he was, and, as he related afterwards, when he was released he fairly broke down and wept. The surveyors were escorted to Alexandra by a large body of Wahanui’s people, and presently resumed their exploring expedition, after their late captor in his turn had been locked up.

MAHUKI’S RAID ON ALEXANDRA, AND HIS CAPTURE.

On Sunday, 25th March, 1883, three days after the release of Hursthouse and Newsham, Mahuki and twenty-six followers invaded the township of Alexandra (now Pirongia), in pursuance of the leader’s announced intention to loot the place. Mahuki had prophesied many extraordinary things, and his followers had implicit belief in his supernatural powers. He had even sent word of his intended visit, so Alexandra was prepared. A force of Armed Constabulary under Captain (afterwards Major) Gascoyne, who was in command of the Alexandra Redoubt, and the Te Awamutu Cavalry troop were on hand, and so disposed in detachments out of sight as to surprise and surround the invaders. Mahuki’s men, fortunately for themselves, were not armed. Two Europeans who had ridden out to reconnoitre the road to the Waipa bridge had to make a speedy retreat when the Tekau-ma-rua came in sight. One of them—Mr Alfred H. Benge, the schoolmaster at Te Awamutu—returned safely with the loss of only his hat; the other, a well-known Alexandra resident, parted company with his horse in the race, and was caught, tied up, and deposited by the roadside to reflect on the position at leisure, while the Hauhau troop galloped on into Alexandra. Their surprise was complete. Armed Constabulary and Cavalry troopers rushed out and surrounded them, pulled them off their horses, and tied them up. Twenty-three were captured in this way, including the much-astonished prophet himself, and four more were arrested at the bridge. Only one man got clear away to carry the news of the prophet’s capture to the kainga at Te Kumi. Four of the twenty-seven, being young boys, were released; the rest were marched, handcuffed in couples, to Te Awamutu, where they were entrained for Auckland. Mahuki and his principal followers were tried at the Supreme Court for the assault on Hursthouse and Newsham, and received terms of imprisonment.

Some years later Mahuki ran amok again, this time at Te Kuiti, and was once more imprisoned, and he died while serving his sentence. He was the last of the troublesome religious fanatics of the Rohepotae.

THE NAME RANGIAOWHIA.

Rangiaowhia has been spelled in a variety of ways, ranging from the curious “Rangahaphia” in one of the Auckland papers of 1851 to “Rangiaohia” and “Rangiawhia.” The old men of Ngati-Maniapoto pronounce and write the name as spelled in this book.

THE FIRST WAIPA MISSIONARY.

The Rev. Benjamin Yates Ashwell, although the first to establish a mission settlement at Te Awamutu, did not live there. He made several visits, travelling through the Waikato and Waipa, and left native teachers in charge at each village where he was early favourably received. In the Forties he established his headquarters at Kaitotehe, near Te Wherowhero’s pa, on the opposite side of the Waikato River to Taupiri. This spot, on the most beautiful bend of the Waikato, became a favourite halting place for canoe crews passing up and down the river, and pioneer travellers have described to the writer the pleasure of landing at Kaitotehe on a hot midsummer day, after a long, cramping voyage in a Maori canoe, and feasting in the cherry groves at the mission station. Mrs B. A. Chrispe, of Mauku, describing Mr Ashwell’s station, says that the church was a large and lofty thatched building, with the walls beautifully lined in the artistic Maori fashion with arapaki lattice work of coloured lathes and reeds arranged in many patterns. The site of the long-deserted mission station, which is seen from the railway train as it passes along the Taupiri bend, is covered with a growth of acacia. The Maoris pronounced the missionary’s name “Ahiwera.”

THE KING COUNTRY RAILWAY.

A highly-important event in the story of this district, and, indeed, of the Dominion, was the turning of the first sods of the Te Awamutu-Marton railway, the King Country section of the Main Trunk line, in 1885. The sods were turned on the south side of the Puniu bridge by the high chiefs Wahanui, Taonui, and Rewi. The Premier of New Zealand, Sir Robert Stout (then Mr Stout), was present, but he contented himself with second place in diplomatic compliment to the lords of the soil. There is a curious inner history to the ceremony on the banks of the Puniu; it was related to the present writer some years ago by Sir Robert Stout. “The sod was nearly not turned that day,” said Sir Robert; and he told the story of the dispute between the Waikato and Ngati-Maniapoto tribes. Early that morning there was a conference at Te Awamutu between the Premier and his colleague, Mr John Ballance, and the Maori chiefs. Mr G. T. Wilkinson was the interpreter. Wahanui, Taonui, and Rewi were there, and all three had agreed that the sod should be turned and the railway should go on through the Rohepotae. But Waikato sent two chiefs to protest against the work in the name of the Maori King, whose headquarters were then at Whatiwhatihoe, on the Waipa. There were long speeches; the only one who was silent was the huge-framed Wahanui; but he was fuming with indignation; his chest was heaving in his efforts to suppress his anger. At last one of the Waikato chiefs, regardless of the fact that his tribespeople were only in the Rohepotae by sufferance of Ngati-Maniapoto, had the hardihood to declare that the sod would not be turned because it was Waikato’s land. “Oh, well,” said the Premier, quietly regarding the deeply-incensed Wahanui, “if it is Waikato’s land we have come to the wrong place.” Then the tall, dignified rangatira Taonui, almost as big a man as Wahanui, arose and said, with angry determination: “It is our land; the sod shall be turned, and turned to-day!” And it was done. Waikato were ousted; literally they had no locus standi; and, baffled and disgruntled, they saw the big work begun and the first step taken in the civilisation of the great Rohepotae.

NOTES

[1] The full name of Kakepuku is Kakepuku-o-Kahurere, or “The Swelled Neck of Kahurere.” It was so named nearly six centuries ago by Rakataura, the priest and magician of the Tainui people. Rakataura and his wife Kahurere explored all this wild new country from Kawhia eastward and southward, giving names to the features of the landscape as they travelled. The name alluded to the shape of Kakepuku, but in truth it deserves a more poetical one, as, for example, that of Tauranga-Kohu, “The Resting Place of the Mists,” a beautiful place-description belonging to a mountain a few miles to the eastward on the south side of the Puniu.

[2] MS. journal lent to the writer by Mr E. Earle Vaile, of Broadlands, Waiotapu.

[3] The old man Pou-patate Huihi, of Te Kopua, told the writer: “Before we procured European ploughs we made wooden ones, and these were sometimes drawn by men—Ko te tangata te hoiho tuatahi (Man was the first horse).”

Pou-patate also said that when wheat-growing was at its height on the Waipa, before the war, his people received as much as ten or eleven shillings a bushel for the wheat in the Auckland market.

[4] Died in Wellington, 1922.

[5] The original MS. narrative is in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.

[6] Later in the day the Rangers had a skirmish with armed Maoris who occupied the Catholic Church, and drove them out of it, the natives finding that the walls were not bullet-proof.

[7] For further details of these episodes see Appendices.