TE RERENGA-A-TIKAWE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 1, Issue 91, 22 November 1939, Page 6

TE RERENGA-A-TIKAWE

MOTUTAWA TRIBE LEAP OF DEATH On Lake Rotoiti, travelling East from Oliau, is a peninsular known as Motutawa. It rises sheer from the water, with an unclimeable face of roclc, and on its flat top once stood the palisades of the Ngati-Pikiao tribe. Its steeply sloping landward side, in the days of the Ngati-Pikiao, was defended by trenches and stockades, but all have disappeared now and there is silence where once was heard the farewell song of the beautiful Tilcawc. This is the story of Tikawe. « « * s Tikawe was a high-born chieftainess and was the beauty of the kainga on Motutawa hill. She had never known sorrow; the tribe had always been safe, and the days were pleasant. Moreover she was loved. Day followed idyllic day.

.... Then one fatal afternoon her husband departed on a visit to the East Coast of the island. TikaAA'e Avaited for his return, counting the days, yearning. The Aveeks slipped by and impatience AA r as noAA* the mood of Tikawe.

She Avatched and Avaited, stealing out to the Avhite cliff edge and gazing at the far lakeside AAiiere the track comes in from the coast, saying to herself, "He Avill come; he will return to me." But the moons Avent on and then TikaAve heard that her husband had forsaken her.

Wandering among the tribes on the coast, in the Hawkc's Bay area. Tikawe's husband had listened often to the love-making of the girls down there, but the thought of Tikawe kept him faithful... .until he fell in love with a girl of the plains that slope down towards the Bay. He lived with his new wahinc in her pali which stood on the site of the present town of Napier, and he was content. ... .Tikawe still waited and watched. for the wandering one, and the moons went by. Then she and the tribe of Ngati-Pikiao heard that the husband had forsaken her for a woman of the Kahungunus, of Herotaunga. The perfidy of the absent one was discussed at a tribal council in the nieeling-hall that night. But Tikawe remained in her lone house, tossing on her flaxen whariki, devoured by the ragings of sorrow and the know - ledge that she had been scorned. She could not sleep. For so long she had waited expectantly for her husband's return, thinking of him and of the beautiful daj's ahead when they would once more be united, that the news of his unfaithfulness was such a sudden shock. She tossed on her flaxen bed, and in the morning, as the light mists drifted-.upwards from the calm surface of Rotofti, and the birds commenced their chorus from the bush, Tikawe went

out to die

Shc robed herself in her finest garments and with her precious greenstone tiki resting on her bosom, and a plume of feathers in her hair, she walked out from her house? to the centre of the kainga, where the tribe were eating their morning meal.

Standing there in the village square, Tikawe sang with bowed head, of the husband who had de-

sorted licr.

"And here I go to death,

Grief tears my wounded heart —• That jewel once to thee so dear."

She sang in picturesque phraseology of hearing the news after wait

ing for so long,

"And long I Avaited, asking, 'Where is my loA'ed one?' 'When Avill he return?' And then, O Faithless One!

Then, after chanting her oa\ n dirge TikaAve calmly walked to the edge of the white precipice overlooking the placid lake. She stood for a AA'hile. looking lingering]}- at the lake she loved, and then dropped OA r er to her death on the rocks beloAV.

Mot ut awa was a famous suicide clifT of the Maori. A common method of ending one's days in the time of long ago, under the stress of disappointed love or maddened jealousy, was to hurl oneself from such a height as this. The fatal cliff at Motutawa is known now as Te Re-rcnga-a-Tikawe, which means The Leaping-place of Tikawe.