KARITANE

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 135, 4 December 1929, Page 16

KARITANE

ORIGIN OF THE NAME

SOME MAORI HISTORY

The present controversy as to the meaning and spelling of certain Maori place names lends interest to what the Rev. M. A. Rugby Pratt has to say in the "Methodist Times" about the origin of the name "Karitane."

The question has sometimes been raised, he says, as to the meaning and source of the word "Karitane." The peninsula bearing that name was not always so called..Until the late 'forties of last century if was known as "Huri-' awa."

Various attempts, more or less unsatisfactory, have been made to find a meaning for the word "Karituue." It has been translated "swamp ground " ■Mr. W. H. S. Roberts refers to the uncertainty of its meaning, and says it may bo translated "a man to dig" or ''a bruised man" or "a maimed husband,' whilst some have' rendered it 'where nien dig." In the. year 1919 Mr. Pratt, in the course ot a conversation at Waikouaiti with a Mrs. Mary Ann Thompson, who was the half-caste daughter of a Swede named Thomas Tandy, and who had been baptised, at Waikouaiti by the Rev. James Watkin, the pioneer missionary, on 24th March, 1844, was told by Mrs. Thompson that she recalled perfectly the circumstances of the changing of the name of the Peninsula from Huriawa to Karitane. It was decided upon at a korero on Hautekapakapa Hill, on which the old Wesleyan Mission House stood. Rawiri te Maire, a noted chief, who had been baptised by James Watkin on 22nd January, 1843, and on whose proposal the name of Hikororoa mountain had been changed to' Mount Watkin, proposed that the name of Mr. Creed (called "Karita." by the Maoris) should be perpetuated by changing the.name of the peninsula on which the Wesleyan Mission Station was . established from Huriawa to Karitane (Creed the man). In making this proposal, the chief referred to the good work done by both Mr. and Mrs. Creed in instructing the children, and especially by Mrs. Creedin teaching the girls to sew and the mothers some simple lessons in hygiene, ever since they had come to Waikouaiti in April, 1844. The chief's suggestion was acclaimed and unanimously adopted by the gathered tribe. It is interesting to note that this decision received official recognition in the early 'sixties. When the locality was being surveyed by Mr. Walter Mantell, two reserves, each of 161 acres, were laid off. One was called Marine Reserve, and the other Karitane Reserve. Mr. Mantell, in his report to the Colonial Secretary concerning Native reserves, stated that Mr. Creed had declined the offer of the site of the mission station, and had begged him, if possible, to include it in the reserve, a request with which he complied. The story is told in Vol. 2of the Official. Reports on Native Affairs in the South Island.

It is singularly fitting that the name of the Rev. Charles Creed should thus be unintentionally perpetuated in a notable work on behalf of child life.