By Bill Dacker
By the late 18th century the fighting between Kai Tahu and Kati Mamoe mostly involved hapu connected with both Kai Tahu and Katimamoe ancestry. Increasingly there were relations on both sides. In the late 18th or early 19th century Te Hau Tapa Nui o Tu and Rakiihia, ariki of Kai Tahu and Kati Mamoe respectively, attempted to end the fighting. Rakiihia travelled to Kaiapoi to begin the peace negotiations and these were completed with marriages between members of their families.
Honekai, son of Te Hau Tapa nui o Tu, was married to Kohuwai, granddaughter of Rakiihia, and Hinehakiri, a cousin of Te Te Hau, was married to Rakiihia.[1]
The lower Clutha – Mata Au river was by this time a boundary marking areas where Kai Tahu influence dominated on the northern side and Kati Mamoe influence dominated on the southern side. At this time Rakiihia was said to have been living at Wharepa between the Balclutha- Owaka highway and SH1 between Balclutha and Clinton.
This marriage meant that the leading families of the northern districts, dominated by Kai Tahu, gained an important Kati Mamoe whakapapa, while the leading families in the south, dominated by Kati Mamoe, gained an important Kai Tahu whakapapa. It is also clear that the lineage of Waitaha was important in this mix.
Poupoutunoa
It is said that at the place Poupoutunoa, a pou, or post was erected to mark the peace and the boundary of the two iwi that would now be joined. When Europeans later picked up parts of these stories they put the name, misspelt as Popotunoa on the hill at the back of Clinton. However an alternative position was retained in the traditions of the Rakiraki family of Maranuku at the mouth of the Mata Au or Clutha river.
This river is now officially known as the Clutha - Mata Au since a renaming was part of another type of peace agreement, the settlement of Te Kereeme, the long dispute between southern iwi and the Crown over land purchase injustices.
The Rakiraki family hold that the true Poupoutunoa were the two hills that over-look the lower gently rolling lands round Wharepa, between the river and Clinton, the lands that the figure of Rakiihia would have once dominated. In several important ways this view better fits the lie of the land and the name, for those two hills, with their very conical peaks, dominate the land below them. For miles around they are clear markers and there are two – hence the poupou of Poupoutunoa.[2]
Kauwaewhakatoro
This attempt to find a lasting peace was challenged by two of the younger brothers of Rakiihia, Taihua and Raki-amoamohia. One account has the brothers attempting to sabotage it by killing Rakiihia while another has a “scuffle” with friends of the brothers in which Rakiihia was mortally wounded. But he managed to escape and travel to Otakou to say to Te Hau Tapa Nui O Tu, before dying, that Te Hau would have to kill these brothers if he wished to maintain the peace.
Rakiihia was buried on top of the ridge overlooking Dunedin now known as Lookout Point but known as Ko Raka a Ruka Te Raki to Maori, because it was Rakiihia’s wish to be buried there looking south to where his home was.[3]
There are two versions of the following events[4].
In Beattie’s account ,the taua of the group that became known to later generations as the “rebel Kati Mamoe” [5], first of all successfully attacked and killed many Kai Tahu at Teihoka on the Southern Coast and took the nearby Kai Tahu pa on the island of Matariki, established by Te Wera, Te Kiri o Tunehu. They then arrived on the banks of the Clutha – Mata Au opposite Hillend, led by Taikawa to that place, while Te Hau and his taua from the north were at Hillend, waiting.[6] In Cormack’s account the Kati Mamoe had already been attacked and defeated by Te Hau at Waiharakeke on the southern coast. The survivors of that battle eventually travelled to meet and parley with Te Hau at Hillend.[7]
Both versions have Taikawa, of Kai Tahu and Katimamoe ancestry, who wanted the peace to succeed, enticing the chiefs of the Kati Mamoe taua, to cross over to negotiate with Te Hau. In Beattie’s account Taikawa was travelling with the Kati Mamoe taua in order to be on hand to save some of the Kai Tahu defeated in the south in return for the clemency shown him by the Kai Tahu rakatira Te Wera in the earlier fighting between the iwi on Otago Peninsula.[8]
It was however a trap. Taikawa himself is said to have enticed the others to cross, taking some across on his mokihi, and then he fled downriver on it, in order to be well away from what followed.
All the rebel Kati Mamoe chiefs were enticed across except Te Kiri, whose thigh had been pinched badly by the mokihi he was crossing the river on and so he returned to the southern bank and hence escaped the killing that followed.
The others died. This massacre took place on the riverbank near the area now known as Hillend, just downstream from Totara Island, a large island in the river near the southern bank, then known to Maori as Otaparapara, and just above Te Houka on that southern bank . Te Houka was a well established river crossing place. Though the current here is considerable it is not nearly as strong as elsewhere, hence it is possible to cross without the danger of being carried far by the current, downstream; the main north – south Maori trail was intersected by the river here. [9]
According to the account Beattie recorded one of the Kati Mamoe chiefs killed was called Kauwaewhakatoro and this name was given to the Hillend side of the river.The name of a Kai Tahu chief killed either then or about the same time, was given to the small river, the Waitahuna river, that joins the Clutha - Mata Au on the northern side, just upstream of Otaparapara or Totara Island.
Just downstream from the place of the massacre and close to the northern bank, lies a small rocky islet that was called Tamariki a Te Paeru after a Kati Mamoe woman who escaped when the killing began, hid her children on the island (which is quite close to the northern bank), then swam the far greater distance to the southern bank where she found a mokihi, went back to the island on it and picked up the two girls, then fled down the river with them.
It is also worth remembering that In Beattie’s account, Taoka, another Kai Tahu chief who also had a Kati Mamoe lineage, gave to Te Hau Tapa Nui o Tu about this time – that is after the death of Rakiihia - the area around Wharepa which, it is presumed, he had a right to through his Kati Mamoe side. In this account Taoka was given in return some of the Kati Mamoe women captured at this time and one of these was to become, said Beattie’s informant, an ancestor of Tuhawaiki who was indeed born nearby on Tauhinu or the island of Inch Clutha.
It interesting to note that the name of today’s town of Tapanui is more likely to have derived from the name Te Hau Tapa Nui o Tu, than from the meaning, “forest edge” attributed to it today. An old map exists with the name Tapanui across the top of the lower end of the Blue Mountains.[10] It was customary for the old chiefs to lay claim to an area through naming prominent features after ancestral names or by citing them as parts of their body, thus making the landscape tapu to them.
Taikawa’s actions in leading the brothers of Rakihia into the trap laid by Te Hau Tapa Nui o Tu, have been seen by some as an act of treachery and by others as the necessary, albeit bloody deed, that would ensure the maintenance of the peace. But it did not initially do so. Some relations of those killed demanded utu and this meant sporadic fighting and killing continued, and indeed, that the rivalry and mistrust continued, and some would say has continued from then to through the southern land purchases until today.
In Beattie’s account Pukutahi was another brother of Rakiihia, one who favoured the peace but one who nevertheless was caught up in the exchange of utu that resulted from the fulfilment of his brother’s wishes. Pukutahi was also a relation of Taikawa who again travelled with a taua, this time a Kai Tahu taua led by Te Hau Tapa Nui o Tu in pursuit of those who had killed a high ranking young Kai Tahu chief on Otago Peninsula as utu for the killings of Kauwaewhakatoro. This time Taikawa travelled to save his Kati Mamoe relative from a Kai Tahu utu whereas before he had travelled to save some of Te Wera’s people of Kai Tahu from Kati Mamoe.
Te Hau Tapa Nui o Tu caught up with the Kati Mamoe party on the shores of Lake Te Anau and in the resulting fighting, though he intended to save Pukutahi, Taikawa mistakenly killed him while aiming a blow at the head of the Kai Tahu warrior grappling with him.
And so, over this time these taua had cris-crossed the Southland and Waimea plains in pursuit of utu and in order to enforce peace - and for Taikawa, he first went one way then the other in attempts to ensure peace between his relations, protect some of them when he could not and to repay an old debt of honour. It is then an irony that with the changing times of the 19th century his actions should be seen as treachery.
In the Cormack account it was after the death of Pukutahi at Lake Te Anau that the surviving rebel Kati Mamoe followed Te Hau to their final meeting with him at Hillend.
[1] Beattie had either picked an incorrect whakapapa or had misinterpreted whakapapa when he wrote that Honekai, son of Te Hau Tapa Nui o Tu was married to Kohiwai, sister of Rakiihia, and Rakiihia to Hinehakiri, sister of Te Hau in his JPS series. This series was a watershed in his career, particularly in his relation with iwi members who wrote to him to correct him in many instances of spelling and others where he had been given incorrect information such as this. It made him aware I believe of the depth of knowledge still retained by elders and thus encouraged him to continue working with them. Some of the incorrect information here can be found corrected in his notebooks and other publications.
[2] Maureen Wylie, descendent of Haimona Rakiraki.
[3] Goodall, Maarire and Griffiths, George: Maori Dunedin.
[4] The ones I refer to are found in Beattie’s JPS articles and in Cormack’s MS history. There are certainly others I have not included in this account. Certainly it is clear there are northern and southern prespective’s on these events and this account does not pretend to be comprehensive.
[5] Ibid, Cormack MS. This was how the old people Syd Cormack heard talking about these events, referred to them.
[6] Beattie, JPS, 1916, no 98, p56.
[7] Cormack MS
[8] This was a relatively common practice in Maori warfare, especially when close relatives were on both sides and when previously mercy had been shown – a reciprocal affair. Another prominent occasion in the Hokonui disrtrict was when Matenga Taiaroa stopped the killing at Tuturau after Te Puoho was killed following Ngati Mutunga letting him escape form Kaiapoihia several years earlier.
[9] In fact it was intended that the firat Pakeha town in the area should be built here because of this crossing place but events shifted it to near the present bridge site at Balclutha with the resulting establishment of the town of Balclutha.
[10] Map copy in the possession of Dunedin historian, Frank Leckie.