ROVERS OF THE PACIFIC

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 1, Issue 76, 18 October 1939, Page 2

ROVERS OF THE PACIFIC

TQI THE WOOBEATER

HOW HE CAME TO WHAKATANE

SEARCH FOR A GRANDSON

An honoured place in the Maori genealogies <>!' tlie Hay of Plenty to Toi. who flourished some two hundred years before the Matatua immigrants reached these shores. The period in which he lived can be recorded with more certainty than that ol' many dates in Polynesian history; it seems to have been about

tlie vear 112Toi-te-huatahi was his full name, that is: Toi the Only Child, but to a later generation of Polynesian he was known as Toi Kairakau, or Toi the Woodenter, the reference as is well known, being to the forest foods on which he and his people lived in the period before th? introduction of the kumara. Like most people of those ages he was a navigator, and among othe." places, he probably visited the Hawaiian Islands. He was a descendant of those who formed the ihird nr.gra tion into the Pacific and lived at Tahiti. The circumstances that led lo his settlement in New Zealand arc; interesting. A Lost Grandson. J A great gathering of the people

had been .summoned from all the adjacent islands to Tahiti—over, from Hawaii, as the traditions say —to take part in a canoe race. Toi's grandson, AVhalonga, look part in this race, and when far out i.t sea was overtaken by an easterly storm, accompanied b3' heavy fog, and this prevented Whatonga and his crew from finding their way back to Tahiti. For several days they "\vcre driven before the wind, having, through the fog, lost any sense of direction, until they landed on Ra'iatea Island, some 120 miks W.N.W. from Tahiti. There they dwelt for some years as the story says, until Whatonga's train ed bird found him, and brought a message on a knotted cord, asking where the lost people were, and by the course the bird look on its return liight with Ihe answer the wanderers discovered the direction o!

their home. I One can believe this story or not, but it Is a known fact that the Poly nesians were in the habit of sending messages from island to island by means of these cords carried by trained birds. The use of these knotted cords is interesting, and rccaMs the practice adopted by the Aztecs of South America who sent messages in the same manner. Toi Seeks Whatonga. In the meantime Toi had become very anxious to discover the whereabouts of his grandson and his fellows, so he decided to go in search of them. He obtained from the record keepers of the whare-wananga (or house of learning) the direction of New Zealand left by the great navigator Kupe the discoverer of this country, and started with a fine seagoing canoe manned by a picked crew visiting Rarotonga and other islands in the course of his search.

Eventually he rcachecl Samoa, hut in none of the places visited could he learn tidings of his lelatives. Hr then decided to visit New Zealand. He left Pagopngo harbour in Samoa and headed for this country, but it is obvious that he did not allow sufficiently for th«i difference in the direction of New Zealand from Tahiti and from Samoa. The consequence was that he passed to the east of New Zealand and discovered the Chatham Islands south-east of Cook Strait. Did Not Like Chathams. He found the Chathams unattractive, describing them as a small island, uninhabited, and "on which the fogs and mists continually hang" This was no resting place for the! people from the sunny Pacific Islands, and so r . r oi put his ship about and headed north, making the coast of the Hauraki Gulf.

To digress a moment, it is interesting to recall that generations later a chief' named Kahu, from Whakalane knowing of Toi's discovery, migrated to Cdok Strait where he prepared a canoe and visited tliie Chatham Islands. On his arrival he leuiK! many people there, who were the Moriori, descendants of people expelied from the Tamnaki coast about 7.") or JOO years stiver Toi's time. Kahu did. not like plat*?, and started hack for the South Island of Xew Zealand, but never readied his destination; he was'prob ably lost on the voyage over those stormy seas. All his crew did not accompany him, some settling at

tlie Ghathams. Four generations later some of their descendants \ to New Zealand, settling in the ganui district, Cook Strait. Toi at Whakatane. But to return to Toi. From Hauraki he coasted along to the east and south, until he reached Whakatane in the Bay of Plenty, where he and his crew settled down, building the pa named Kapu-te-rangi, still Tin T existence on the hill by the trig station behind the town. A small pa, probably jusl big enough for the crew of one canoe, it is possibly the first earthwork built by the pure Polynesians in this country. Over 800 years old, its ditches are still deeply cut on the hilltop and cloaked by its mantle of fern it defies the years. Whatonga Arrives. From this eyrie the Tt>s must have scanned the sWpng sea below. At length the leagues of ocean were broken by another Polynesian craft. It was that of Whatonga, the missing grandson, who his turn had taken up the search for his grandfather.

Whatonga bad returned with his nepliow Rniuii and their from Ra'iatea st.:ne time alter Toi had left Tahiti and, finding that his grandfather had sailed for New Z.;a}and in search of him, he had manned the Kurahoupo canoe and taken up the sea road at Aoteaioa. Later Whatonga settled at Port Nicholson. (Wellington). This was the first strong infusion r of Polynesian blood from Tahiti in the veins of the people of New Zealand, who at that time were largely a Melanesian-Polynesian strain. The vigorous Polynesians soon fell out with the original people, fighting and conquering them, and absorbing them in their own tribes. These Avars lasted down to and aftei - the arrival of the "fleet" in 1350. These voyages of the old-time Polynesians are astonishing even when it is remembered that many were mts.de in the tropical seas, with numerous islands on the way, at which the voyagers could rest and replenish their stores. But the Maori did not always keep to

tropical waters. Maoris in Antarctic. At least two daring voyages wef& to the high Antarctic latitudes, the first in the seventh century by one Ui-te-rangiora in the canoe Te Ive-o-atea and the second two hundred years later by the chief Te Aru-tanga-nuku, who was inspired to follow in Ui-te-rangiora's wake by the accounts of the wonderful things he had seen. These curiosities are described ap "the rocks which grow' out of the sea . . . the monstrous seas; the female that dwells in those mo;;n- v /-

tainous waves whose tresses wave about in the waters and on the surface of the sea; and the frozen sea of Pia, with the deceitful animal of that sea which dives to great deo'.hs —a foggy, misty and dark place not shone on bv the sun. Other thing! are like rocks, whose summits pierce the skies, they are completely bare f and without any vegetation on them"

Icebergs and Walruses

The bare rocks growing out of ihe frozen sea are obviously icebergs, the tresses on the waves the lu: g leaves of the bull-kelp—over 50 feet long—quite a new feature to a poopie from the tropics; the deceitful animal the walrus, sea-lion or j»oaclepliant. The frozen ocean is expressed by the term Te tni-uka-a-pia, which gives the sense of "the icy sea

iike scraped arrowroot," arrowroot being snowy white when thus prepared. '9m

The Antarctic ice is lo be found ia about latitude 45 or 50 degrees in

summer time, and consequently the voyage to those latitudes in the frail r sinnet-1 ashed canoes was no mean feat. Ui-te-rangiora is also mentioned in Rarotongan sources as haviife made a voyage either from Fiji or Samoa to Enun-manu to procure scar let fetiUwi'S, This may mean a cruise to New Guinea, the feathers beir:£ those of the Bird of Paradise.

Another confirmation that Poly-"<f nesians looked on the Antarctic seas comes from the tradition of th 6 Tongans describing the ice-covered ocean which they called. Tai-fatu, or thick fat-like or congealed ocean, and to Avhich they said some of their ancestors had sailed long ages before.