TAUPO - NUI - A - TIA

Taupo Times, Volume I, Issue 3, 30 January 1952, Page 1

TAUPO - NUI - A - TIA

(By R.H.W.)

Taies of ihe Taupo Country

On a large stone at Waihi, the village at. the southern end of Lake Taupo, are inscribed the following words, a proverbial saying of the Tuwharetoa people of Taupo: 4Ko Tongariro te Maunga^ Ko Taupo te Moana; Ko Te Heuheu te Tanga." The reference is to the high chief of the tribe, and the words may be translated "Tongariro is the Mountain, Taupo is the Sea, Te Heuheu is the Man." The currency of such a saying is indication of the great "mana" of the first Te Heuheu, a man whose regal bearing and generosity profundly impressed the early pakeha visitors. Todav one of the streets of the town of Taupo bears the name "Heuhu" and another, Tuwharetoa Street, honours the tribe. The origin of the name Heuheu was as follows. About a hundred and seventy-five years ago an ancestor of the Te Heaheu family, Te Rangi PuMamao ("The Far Distant Heaven") died in the country of Ngati-Mania-poto,, and a party consisting of members of both tribes set out to carry his body back to his home. Owing to the roughness of the country the party eventually decided to bury the body at a spot called Kaiwha, near Waipapa, norwest of the Lake. Some years later an expedition was made to the burial place by the people of Tuwharetoa for the purpose of the rite hahunga, the ceremonial disinterring of the bones preparatory to Jpringing them back to the ancestral burial place. But great difficulty was en~ countered in lncating the spot owing to the growth of fern and scrub in the interval. At last the search was successful and the remains were returned safely to the tapu resting place in South Taupo. Soon after this Rangiaho, the wife of the high chief Tukino, a close relative of the dead Te Rangi PuMamao, gave birth to a son, and at once there was a discussion in the family as to a suitable name. It was decided that the child shobld be named "Heuheu," a word meaning brushwood or bush undergrowth, in memory" of the growth that had hindered the finding of the burial place. The child became famous in Maori history

as Te Heuheu Tukino, a mighty leader in battle, of whom an old priest, Tai-Pahau, prophesied that he would not die by the hand of man. In 1846, on a night of violent storm and rain, the stream of Wai-mataii, that drained the steaming cliffs of Hipaua, near the site of the present village of Waihi, became blocked with falling debris, until the dammed up waters burst through the obstruction and a torrent of mud, rocks and water swept over the doomed kainga of Te Rapa. Te Heuheu the Great perished with fifty four of his people, his^death an^ act of the gods, fulfilling the prophesy of Tai-Pahau.