THE HOT LAKES

MAORI USE AND MANAGEMENT OF GEOTHERMAL AREAS FROM THE EVIDENCE OF EUROPEAN VISITORS

R.P. BOAST THE HOT LAKES: MAORI USE AND MANAGEMENT OF GEOTHERMAL RESOURCES FROM THE EVIDENCE OF EUROPEAN VISITORS

A REPORT TO THE WAITANGI TRIBUNAL BY R.P. BOAST

DECEMBER 1992 Copyright R.P. Boast, Faculty of Law, Victoria University of Wellington The Hot Lakes: Maori Use and Management of Geothermal Areas from the Evidence of European. Visitors

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1. Introduction 1.

2. Ngawha and the Bay of Islands Geothermal Zone 3.

A. Ngawha Springs: A Chronology 3. B. Records of Visitors and Maori Use of the Resource at Ngawha 5. C. Ngawha Springs: Minute Book Evidence 19.

3. The Rotorua-Taupo Zone Circa 1833-60 22.

A. Introduction: the Legacy of Ngatoro-i-Rangi 22. B. Records of European Visitors 31.

4. The War Years 1860-70 84.

5. Tourism and Social Change 1870-1886 86.

6. The Land Court in the Central North Island 103.

A. The Fenton Agreement and the coming of the Court 103. B. The Nature of Land Court Evidence 108. C. Principal Rotorua Blocks 109. D. Taupo and other Districts 111. E. Land Court evidence relating to geothermal features 112.

7. Analysis 114. I. INTRODUCTION.

1.1. This study has the quite specific and limited objective of documenting Maori use and management of geothermal sites based on written English­ language evidence. It needs to be read alongside Paora Maxwell's study of the same subject based on Maori-language sources. The documentary evidence used for the present report falls into three main categories.

1.2. Firstly, there are the records left by European visitors. Since James Cook's sighting of White Island in 1769 Europeans have been recording their impressions of New Zealand's many and varied volcanic landforms. Samuel Marsden, for instance, describes the hot springs, pools and lakes of Ngawha in the Bay of Islands, which he visited in 1815, in some detail. Later visitors, explorers, travellers and tourists, including Angas, Dieffenbach, E.J. Wakefield, Hochstetter and luminaries of the Victorian world such as the novelist Anthony Trollope and the historian J.A. Froude visited the thermal zones of New Zealand and left behind them a wealth of personal impressions and a good deal of information. This material is included in a substantial number of published books, some long out of print, others which have been reissued or reprinted in recent years. The published material is supplemented by an abundance of unpublished manuscripts, letters, unpublished journals and diaries now to be found in the Alexander Turnbull library and other institutions. This wealth of material forms the principal source used to research this report.

1.3. This material is often, needless to say, overloaded with attitudes of condescension towards Maori. Many writers, in a rather typically Victorian way, strove to create picturesque and colourful effects, replete with scantily­ clad Maori maidens basking in hot pools on romantic moonlit nights (often supplemented by tasteful illustrations for the benefit of the British and New Zealand reading public). Reading between the lines, however, it is clear that the combined effects of an encounter with Maori life and with the remarkable landscape often had a powerful impact on visitors and stirred them greatly.

1 The purple prose also contains a great deal of valuable information about the topography and geology of thermal areas, about Maori life, and about Maori use of and attitudes towards the thermal areas. The prose is, of course, in any case not always purple. Hochstetter's careful description of the thermal regions in his classic account is a remarkable achievement for its time and is still a useful description of the geomorphology of the Rotorua-Taupo zone and other parts of the country.

1.4. The second main source of material are the files of the Tourist, Native Affairs, Lands and Mines departments. Many files have been accidentally lost or destroyed, but a huge quantity of material remains. Laregly this is due to the fact that the development of spas at Rotorua and elsewhere was a government initiative under the aegis of the Tourist Department. Consequently the Department built up a substantial collection of files on every aspect of life and administration concerning Rotorua. This source provides further information about Maori life at Whakarewarewa and Ohinemutu, about the painful readjustments after the devastating eruption of Mount Tarawera in 1886, and about the endless frictions and problems that developed as the government tried to pursue its ideal of developing a spa on European lines and Maori continued living in their traditional way in their villages around Rotorua. Although the purpose of this report is to document Maori traditional use of geothermal resources as revealed in the reports of early visitors and the records of the Land Court this information is often usefully supplemented by government files, and the reader will find that this source has been drawn on to some degree in this report.

1.5. Thirdly, there are the minute books of the Native Land Court. As blocks of land passed through the court in the years after 1865 (in Rotorua itself not until after 1881) large quantities of evidence about traditional history were recorded in longhand by the officers of the court. Sometimes this material can reveal further details about geothermal areas. It becomes clear, for instance, that villages and habitations were built around areas of geysers and hot pools, as at Ohinemutu or Orakeikorako. The minute books also reveal economic activities associated with geothermal areas, an example

2 being seasonal taking of ducks from the thermal lake at Rotokawa. Geothermal features were well-known landscape features and often were important boundary markers. Knowledge of the position of geothermal features was sometimes used as a way of testing a claimant's knowledge of a block of land by opposing claimants.

1.6. The writer has written about the modern history of geothermal resource management elsewhere1 and it is not intended in this study to cover events exhaustively up to the present. The focus, after all, is on the traditional use of geothermal resources, not on providing a comprehensive study of the history of each geothermal area. Generally the cut-off point is roughly about 1886, although in respect of some areas (such as Whakarewarewa) the narrative will extend considerably beyond that in the interests of clarity and intelligibility. The study begins with the Bay of Islands geothermal zone centred at the place now known as N gawha. This seems to have been the first geothermal surface area visited by Europeans.

2.0 NGAWHA AND THE BAY OF ISLANDS GEOTHERMAL ZONE2

A. Ngawha Springs: A Chronology _

2.1. In this section a short chronology setting out the main events in the modern history of Ngawha Springs follows. This seems necessary in that the rest of my report dealing specifically with aspects of the history of Ngawha will deal with the subject thematically rather than as a narrative history. This is set out below as Table 1. Some of the matters referred to in this outline are covered more fully in my separate report on Ngawha Springs.

1 See R.P. Boast, The Legal Framework for Geothermal Resources: A Report to the Waitangi Tribunal, 3 vols, 1991. 2 The author has completed a separate report on Ngawha: see R.P. Boast, Report on Ngawha Springs, A Report to the Waitangi Tribunal, 1992. The present section of this report differs from the earlier report (a) in omitting the material on the general history of geothermal resource management; (b) in omitting the material on mining at Ngawha; and (c) in adding a number of records concerning Ngawha not included in the earlier report, principally those of the Reverend Samuel Marsden and Dieffenbach.

3 Table 1: Ngawha Springs circa 1815-1945 Date Event Para 1815 Ngawha Springs visited by Marsden. 2.1.

1842 Publication of Wade's description of Ngawha in 2.2. his book A Journey in the Northern Island of New Zealand.

1843 Publication of Dieffenbach's Travels in NZ. 2.3.

1858-9 Ferdinand von Hochstetter visits New Zealand 2.4. and his description of the Ngawha springs is published in his book on the geology of New Zealand published in Vienna in 1864.

1866 Discovery of mercury at Ngawha 2.4.-5.

1870 Publication of F.W. Hutton's report in the 2.5.-6. Transactions of the New Zealand Institute. This report confirms the presence of cinnabar (mercury ore) at Ngawha.

1873 (16 July) Parahirahi Block is vested by the 2.19. Native Land Court in 10 owners.

1874 (10 September) Rehearing for Parahirahi 2.19. ordered.

1874 (5 November) Parahirahi rehearing. 2.19.

1885 First Parahirahi partition. The area 2.20. containing the hot springs is at the request of the applicants separately contained in a block called Parahirahi C.

4 1894 Second partition. Crown interests in all three 2.2l. Parahirahi blocks are partitioned out, leaving Maori ownership of one acre at the hot springs. i.e. Parahirahi Cl.

1908 G.W.S. Patterson offers to sell the Tuwhakino 2.9. block to the Crown, but the offer is declined. Patterson sells his land to T C Kelly.

1926 Parahirahi C1 is made into a Native Reservation 2.13., "for the common use of the owners thereof as a 2.21. village and a bathing-place".

1928 Application by R.H. Goodwin for a prospecting licence at Ngawha.

1929 Crown approves mining licence at Ngawha for Kaikohe Development Ltd, a subsidiary of ICI

1930 (December) Mine and processing plant closes temporarily due to technical problems.

1931 (September) Kaikohe Development Ltd ceases operations at Ngawha.

1937 Judge Acheson recommends improvements to 2.14. Maori housing at N gawha.

1945 Publication of CA. Fleming's report on Ngawha 2.15. in NZ Journal of Science and Technology.

B. Records of Visitors and Maori Use of the Resource at Ngawha

5 2.1. The Ngawha Springs geothermal area appears to be the first seen in New Zealand by European visitors. They are described at some length by the Reverend Samuel Marsden who visited the springs in 1815. Marsden writes:3

In the evening we returned to Kiterra's residence where we remained until the next morning (Tuesday, May 9th). The natives informed me that there were several places a few miles distant where the water was very offensive, which we determined to visit. On our arrival at one of these places we found several hot springs, and in some of them the water was boiling hot. As we walked over the ground it shook under us and in some parts it was not able to bear our weight. The volcano was burning underground, and not very far from us the surface of the ground was hot. Some of it had been thrown up in small heaps and sent up a steam like boiling water. We removed some of the cavities of these little hillocks and found them to be hollow within, in the cavities of which the sulphur was forming in the most beautiful pyramids, as close together as an honeycomb. When we looked into these cavities the little spires of sulphur shone with the most sparkling lustre that can be imagined. The sulphur was hot, and under the hillock the water was boiling and burst out in several places. There was one spring where the water was almost as thick as batter pudding and nearly as white as flour and water. I went as near as I could to examine it but the ground would not support my weight, but gave way with me when within a few feet, and I sank with both feet about one foot into this thick white batter, and found some difficulty in returning as the ground shook at every step and the surface broke.

2.2. Another early reference to the Ngawha Springs is to be found in John Wade's book A Journey in the Northern Island of New Zealand, published at Hobart in 1842. Wade describes what quite clearly is Ngawha as follows:4

Beyond Taiamai, and about seven miles from the Waimate, there are sulphurous lakes, warm near the margin, with adjoining pools of warm or boiling water. These I once visited. They lie in a district remarkable for its volcanic appearance. There is every indication of an enormous crater, divided into, or containing two lesser craters: and

I, 1 3 J.R. Elder (ed), The Letters and Journals of Samuel Marsden 1765-1838, Coulls Somerville Wilkie and A.H. Reed for the Otago University Council, Dunedin, 1932. 4 Wade, Journey in the Northern Island of New Zealand, Hobart, 1842, pp 161-2.

6 we could distinctly trace a broad outline of the history of the spot in the smaller branches, leaves, and catkins of kauri, which were embedded in a sulphur deposit on the edge of one of the lakes. The awful fires of the original volcano must long have been extinct, before the sloping verdure of its sides could have been covered with the verdure of a kauri forest; and there must have been subsequently a tremendous re­ action, spreading destruction around, and depositing, in the place of forest vegetation, the deadly waters of the lakes which now occupy the two craters. The springs at this place are resorted to by diseased natives from the bay of Islands, who bring baskets of provisions with them, and remain on the spot to use the sulphur warm-bath until a cure is effected.

2.3. Ngawha was visited by Dieffenbachs who gives a full description of the area in his Travels in New Zealand:6

A few miles to the southward ofWaimate are some curious thermal springs. In order to visit them we leave Waimate, and ascend a hill, from which three of the volcanic cones above mentioned present themselves to our view, in an extensive depression of the table-land below. The field is spread over with fragments, often more than fifteen feet in diameter, of a slate-coloured basaltic rock, the spaces between which are covered with fern and flax; while here and there are patches planted with Indian corn and potatoes. After passing a small native settlement, and crossing a ravine, we ascend a ridge of hills, very barren and steep, with a white clay on the surface, and evidently covered in former times with the kauri-pine. We now come to a lake about one mile in circumference. On its shores are black and half-burnt stems of kauri, and the soil in the neighbourhood is covered with efflorations of pure sulphur. At a little distance is another lake, called Ko-huta-kino, smaller than the, former, and near this are the mineral springs. There are several of them, all close to the lake ... I found here some native women, with their children, living in a temporary shed. The children were affected with cutaneous and scrofulous diseases, especially ringworm and swollen lymphatic glands, and had been brought to this place for the benefit of bathing in the warm sulphurous water, the beneficial effects of which were already very visible. The springs are often visited by the natives for this purpose, and, as might be expected, are of very great benefit in many of the disorders most common in these parts.

5 For commentary on Dieffenbach see below, para. 6 Ernest Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, John Murray, London, 1843, pp 244-45.

7 2.4. The Ngawha Springs were also described by the famous Austrian geologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter (1829-1884), who visited New Zealand as part of an Austrian government expedition in 1859-59. Hochstetter, like Wade, gives emphasis to Maori use of the geothermal waters at Ngawha.7

Volcanic activity must not be considered extinct in the Bay of Islands zone. A few hot springs and solfataras that lie a few miles south of Waimate, in a remarkable crater­ like depression in the ground on the shores of two small lakes in Otaua district, are the last after-effects. Sulphur incrustations and efflorescences of alum and salammon­ iac here cover the soil, hot steam gushes from the earth at many points, and many warm springs and mud pools of 130 degrees to 168 degrees F surround the shore of Ko-huta-kino [Tuwhakino?], the smaller of the two lakes. The natives have made use of these springs with good results for many kinds of illness, and although the nearby surroundings offer no charm at all as landscape, yet perhaps in time to come the healing properties of this Waiariki (as the natives call natural warm baths) will bring it a reputation among the European colonists as well.

Hochstetter does not mention mercury or mercury ore (cinnabar), which was first noted to be present at Ngawha in 1866.

2.5. In 1870 Captain F.W. Hutton publi~hed an article in the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute in which he describes his visit to Ngawha, giving a full account of the springs and of the presence of mercury. Hutton remarks:8

A few miles south-east of the Omapere Lake, near the Bay of Islands, lies a group of hot and cold springs, of great interest on account both of the peculiar mineral character exhibited by them, and the deposits of mercury and cinnabar that some of them form.

7 Ferdinand von Hochstetter, Geology of New Zealand, 1864, English Translation c.A. Fleming, Government Printer, Wellington, 1959, p. 45. 8 F.W. Hutton, "On the occurrence of Native Mercury, near Pakaraka, Bay of Islands", Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, 1870 Art XLVI.

8 Hutton notes that mercury had first been found at Ngawha in 1866, but since the quantities found had been so small there had been some speculation that the 'discoverer' had merely broken a thermometer. He was now able to confirm that there were extensive quantities of mercury at the place.

Havin~ however, been informed that small grains of cinnabar had also been found in the sand, I was induced, in June 1869, to make a visit to the place. This visit... was unfortunately a very hurried one, and limited to a few hours only, but, thanks to the guidance of my friend, Mr Ireland, of Waimate, it was very successful, for not only did we find mercury in the sand in the place alluded to, but also in two other localities, in veins in the rock, accompanied by cinnabar and sulphur.

2.6. Hutton gives in his paper an interesting and full description of the springs:

The springs which I have to describe are, I believe, the most important in the district, though many others exist. They commence with a large group of cold springs, situated in a crateriform hollow in low undulating fern-covered hills composed of brown soft, argillaceous, thin-bedded sandstone, with occasional beds of lignite. These rocks are probably not of an older date than Upper Miocene, and may be even of Pliocene age. After leaving this hollow the stream passes through a narrow gorge, about a quarter of a mile in length, which opens out into another small hollOW, in which, among others, some warm springs are found containing mercury and sulphur. The stream then flows through another gorge, and again emerges into a level irregularly-shaped hollow, of much larger dimensions than any of the others, in which numerous springs, both hot and cold, are situated. On leaving the hollow, the stream flows through a narrow passage, and empties itself into a small lake. The water of this stream both smells and tastes strongly of sulphuretted hydrogen, and is decidedly acid. Most of the springs are cold, some are tepid, and a few, situated in the centre of the last and largest hollow, are hot, but the temperature of the hottest of them is probably not more than 120 degrees F. In one of these hot springs deposits of alum and sulphur are found; many of them show traces of sulphur, and almost all have deposited silica though not in large quantities.

9 This is the last description of the area before it began to be disfigured by mining operations.

2.7. In 1893 an official of the Mines Department visited N gawha and described the springs, once again emphasising use of the thermal pools by local Maori. 9

It has been known for many years that there is ore containing mercury at Ohaeawai, but the place where it was found was the seat of thermal-spring action. In one locality here there are hot springs, and in a basin where there are a number of hot pools, there is a deposit of black sediment having quicksilver distributed through it in the finest globules. On my first visit to this locality the remains of a small furnace were standing in what had been used by some one in collecting the quicksilver out of the fine black sediment referred to by placing it in retorts in charges and volatilizing the mercury, and collecting t by the same process as that in retorting amalgam. At the time of my visit to this place there were several Natives bathing in the hot pools, which are said to be efficacious for rheumatic complaints, and also for skin diseases; and, judging from the quantity of quicksilver mixed amongst the mud as well as the steam and sulphurous vapour coming out of the ground at the cinnabar-lode, a sanatorium could be erected here for certain diseases which could not be surpassed in the world.

In referring to I certain diseases' the writer was being deliberately discreet: mercury's prime medicinal purpose was for the treatment of syphilis.

2.8. In 1907, W.J. Wheeler, the District Surveyor, submitted a full report on the springs to the General Manager of the Department of Tourist and health Resorts. Again we see evidence of Maori use of the pools.10

I have to report that I visited the locality and submit a sketch showing a 40 acres area, including the springs used by residents (chiefly Maoris).

9 Mines department Report, 1893, p 187. [Copy on TO I, 20/55, Ngawha Springs] 10 W J Wheeler, District Surveyor, to General Manager, Department of Tourist and Health Resorts. Wellington, TO I, 20/55.

10 The value of the land is about 5s. per acre, and its only value would be for fruit or tree planting, it being a worked-out gum field. It contains large quantities of quick­ silver, which is obtained in the volcanic sand and mud vomited up in former years and still being found in the vicinity of the small boiling geysers now at work there. Not having any expert knowledge, I am unable to state what mineral value should be set uon the property, which is now only being used as a kauri gum producer. No doubt thousands of pounds have been spent in exploiting the works, but the building and plant are now falling into decay awaiting a purchaser. It is said that failure to pay was not due to a lack of quicksilver, but that in the retorting process the ore escaped and no way was found of saving it. As regards the value of the springs for medicinal purposes, I would express no opinion. although I am told the faculty use mercury in treating certain unmentionable diseases. No cures have been brought under my notice. The fact, however, that in summer months often a score of natives bathe there on Sundays, shews that they appreciate the warm baths. Personally I am inclined to attach some weight to the remark of a trained geologist who saw the bathing, and said that nothing should induce him to bathe in water so charged with mercury. Though some may fear salivation [?] I have (with most Europeans here) had an hour's bath without any ill effects, and it would be interesting to get expert medical attention upon their medicinal value. Saving a rather large cold lagoon (about 6 acres) the place is entirely devoid of beauty, but with an expenditure of 1500 for roads and bathing houses, pipes and tree planting, it could be made much more attractive and probably the property could be acquired cheaply, as at present it is a drug [?] on the market. The favourite bath is on the edge of the cold lagoon before referred to ... After rain this bath becomes merged in the lagoon. Further to the south (one mile) are two large lagoons and some smaller springs on Crown lands, being part of the Parahirahi Kauri Gum Reserve. I have seen no one bathing in these small lakes. The northern one is cold, always effervescing, and is of a white muddy colour, tasting like soda water. The southern lake is calm, cold and clear. Formerly a forest grew on the site of these lakes and the banks and bed of the white lake are full of roots and stumps of considerable age.

1 1 2.9. In September 1908, Mr A Hanna, Solicitor of Auckland, wrote to the General manager of the Tourist department offering on behalf of his client, Mr G.W.S. Patterson, to sell land at Ngawha.ll In this letter Hanna states that:

The property consists altogether of 622 acres, and contains very valuable cinnabar deposits, as well as medicinal springs. I am informed that the springs have been used by the Maoris for curative purposes for generations, and that they are also conSiderably used likewise by Europeans.

2.10. Alex McKay, government geologist, prepared a report on Ngawha for the Under-Secretary of Mines in 1908. He states:12

During the survey of part of Bay of Islands County I examined the various pools and thermal springs at Ohaewai[sic). The larger of these, in the heart of the valley, towards Ohaewai Pa, though used by the Maoris for curative purposes so far as I know do not yield quicksilver either as metallic mercury or any of its compounds. It is the most easterly of the springs that that yield mercury and especially that on the south bank of the creek flowing eastward to join a branch of the Waitangi.

2.11. Occasionally (though admittedly not very often) there is a reflection in the files of the concerns of the local Maori residents at Ngawha. In 1919 Mr Tau Henare, the Member for Northern Maori, asked the Minister in Charge of Tourist and Health resorts a parliamentary question concerning Ngawha. Henare Wanted to know whether the Minister intended to set aside money for 'the purpose of acquiring the land immediately surrounding the hot springs at Ngawha... and of erecting on it the necessary bathhouses for the use of the local residents who may be desirous of trying the efficacy of its curative waters.' 13 At that time the owner of the two relevant privately-owned blocks (i.e. Tuwhakino and Section 1, Block XVI Omapere Survey District) was one

11 A Hanna, Barrister and Solicitor, Auckland, to General Manager, Department of Tourist and health resorts, September 1908, TO 1/20/55. 12 Report by Alex McKay, government geolOgist, to the Under-Secretary for Mines, 2nd April 1908. Copy on TO 1/20/55 13 Question on Supplementary Order paper, 15 October 1919. Copy on TO 1.20/55.

12 Thomas Caradoc Kelly, of London (and later of Auckland). Kelly had bought the land off Patterson in 1909 for L1500 and was hoping to sell the area to the government for the ludicrous amount of L25,000. The reply to Mr Henare's question was therefore that:

It is not intended at present to enter into negotiations for the purchase of the land referred to as it is understood that the owner is not prepared to sell the property for less than twenty to thirty times the amount the Department would be willing to pay.

But that of course did not dispose altogther of the issue. The government already owned the area of 4 acres at Ngawha lying next to Parahirahi C1, the remaining island of Maori freehold land, and could have given some consideration to managing the area in association with the Maori owners of Parahirahi Cl. The springs were undoubtedly fairly extensively used - in fact in a letter to the Department from Mr J.B. Berry of The Northern News (Kaikohe) it was pointed out that the springs have 'a wide local celebrity for curing rheumatism and other diseases'. In fact at present there was 'quite a camp there' and many more people were in the habit of staying at the springs during the summer:14

At present no provision of any sort is made for these people who come, some from considerable distances, for treatment, and something will have to be done in the matter soon.

But nothing was done, and matters so matters remained until the local Maori community took action themselves to provide better facilities for the public.

2.12. One of the key problems was access, as shown vividly in a report by the Commissioner of Crown lands in 1924, which must take the prize for the

14 JB Berry to General Manager, Tourist Department, 1921, TO 1,20/55.

13 most sardonic and unprepossessing picture ever given of the Ngawha springs:1S

During my recent tour of the Far North, I visited these Springs. Owing to the exceptionally dry weather we were just able to get to the Lake in a Ford car; but the grades (an old bullock track) are in places very steep indeed so that in wet weather this track would be well nigh impassable for anything but horse or bullock dray traffic and at no time fit for invalids. We have been approached on several occasions to open up the legal road, but as the adjacent roads are very poor and the springs held by Kerry and the natives, we have not seen fit to make any move in this direction. These springs were offered to the Department about 1907 for L2000 reduced to 1.500 but for some reason no business eventuated and Kerry got the lot for L1250. There are rumours that he wants L20,OOO but this is of course ridiculous ...

Holes are dug in the sand and mud and these filling with water become heated pools in which the patients squat, and so far as I can see all squat in the same water. As there is no possible convenience, patients disrobe in the manuka and sit in the holes in bathing costumes or their old clothes, and this cannot be good for them.

What is odd about this is that there seems to be no awareness that a good number of the springs were at that time actually situated on Crown land, in the area which was later to be vested in a Domain Board.

2.13. Local Maori took action to improve the amenities of the place in 1927. These steps were described in an article in the Herald. 16

... It is still principally the natives who make use of the springs, and it is the natives who are now arranging to provide facilities for bathers. Originally they held five acres at the springs but four of these were vested in the Crown in 1895. The tribe still held one acre, however, and as the result of an application to the

15 Commissioner of Crown Lands to Under-Secretary for Lands, 6 March 1924, copy on TO I, 20/55. 16 "Ngawha Springs", Herald (Auckland), 18 June 1927.

14 Native Land Court this has now been made into a native reservation.17 A board of trustees has been formed by 11 of the prominent Maoris in the district, and it is their intention to obtain the return of the other four acres. A petition to this effect will be presented at the next session of Parliament. Meanwhile the Board has appointed a committee which is taking active steps in carrying out a programme of improvements. Already wooden slabs have been placed in position round four of the baths - formerly holes scooped out of the sand. It is recognised that finance is likely to be a matter of concern and it is proposed to canvass residents in the surrounding district and the local bodies in the vicinity for money to help in the project. The next improvement will be in the provision of dressing sheds for both men and women and the construction of the concrete bath. Attention will also be given to the access road to the springs so that sufferers may come and go in comfort. The Maoris, in obtaining control of the springs area, realise that the springs are very valuable, and as they have had the free use of them since they were first discovered they consider their rights should not be interfered with. They do not wish the area to pass into the control of the Government or any other party, as in that case they would in all probability be forced to pay for the use of the baths. They explain that the area will be open to the 'pakeha' just as much as to the Maori. It is to ensure that they will have the continued free use of the baths that they are now striving to have the total area of five acres declared a reservation.

2.14. Between 1928-33 Ngawha was the scene of a large-scale mercury mining operation conducted by Kaikohe Development Ltd, a subsidiary of the British chemical company ICI. This project had significant effects on the landscape and people of Ngawha and is described fully in the author's separate Ngawha Springs report. In 1935 the 4 acre Crown area at Ngawha was vested in a Domain board. partly, it would seem, in the hope of encouraging the Maori owners of Parahirahi Cl to hand over their land to the government. In 1935 the Under-Secretary of Lands wrote:18

17 Parahirahi CI, partitioned off by the Native Land Court in 1894, was made into a native reservation in 1926 'for the common use of the owners thereof as a village and a bathing­ place': New Zealand Gazette, 1926, p 3522. 18 Under-Secretary of Lands to General Manager, Department of Industries and Commerce, 8 August 1935, TO I, 20/55.

15 Referring to your memorandum of the 16 October 1931, I have to advise that the Department arranged to reserVe the Crown area of 4 acres 2 roods 8 perches, containing some of the Hot Springs, as a public domain and to place the control in the hands of a representative Domain Board.19... The intention of the Board is to plant suitable shelter belts around the area; to allow for sites for hutments; and to make provision for camping sites also. The Department is also arranging to reserve an adjoining area of about ten acres as an addition to the domain and to provide more space for development. Some of the best known Hot Springs are situated on an acre of native land known as Parahirahi Cl. It is hoped that eventually this area may be handed over to the Crown, particularly as the Maoris have been given representation on the Domain Board.

Local Maori of course not only used the pools at Ngawha; they lived there as well. Life cannot have been made easy by the difficulties of road access and then having a large-scale mercury mining operation on their doorstep. It seems that the Depression, which hit the Maori communities of Northland very hard, did not spare Ngawha in this respect. In 1937, Judge Acheson, Judge of the Tai Tokerau Maori Land Court and President of the Tai Tokerau Maori Land Board, wrote to the Under-Secretary of the Native Department recommending the construction of "four cottages" for "indigent Natives" living at Ngawha.20

2.15. In 1945 CA Fleming published a detailed study of the Ngawha hot springs21. This invaluable paper is attached as Appendix I of my Ngawha Springs report. By the time Fleming wrote the operations of Kaikohe Development Ltd had ceased and the Ngawha Springs Spa and baths had been

19 New Zealand Gazette, 28 March 1935, 787. The Board was made up of six members, (a) the Chairman of the Bay of Islands County Council, the Member of the Bay of Islands County Council representing Pakaraka Riding and the Chairman of the Kaikohe Town Board, all ex officio, and (b) A H Morgan, Harold Ingram and Ripi Wihongi. 20 See File MA 1,30/3/54, Ngawha Housing Survey; Acheson to Under-Secretary, Native Department, Wellington 26 July 1937. 21 C A Fleming, "Hydrothermal Activity at Ngawha, North Auckland", New Zealand Journal of Science and Technology, vol 26 Sec B, 1944, 255-276.

16 constructed. Fleming lists all the springs and pools and other phenomena and sometimes gives the Maori names for springs (the springs he gives Maori names for are Waima, Ngawha, Waikato, Wainanga, Horomoana, Rata, Peipei, and of course the Tuwhakino and Waitotara pools. Fleming writes:22

With the dimunition of interest in the ore deposits, the hot mineral waters of the Ngawha area have attracted relatively more attention. Maori tradition ascribed great healing powers to the various waters, and the baths have enjoyed an increasing popularity.

2.16. In 1945 J Henderson published a paper on cinnabar deposits at Ngawha and Puhipuhi, also in the New Zealand founal of Science and Technology 23, extracts from which are reproduced as Appendix II of my separate Ngwaha Springs report. These two papers allow us to form some idea of the damage wreaked on Ngawha by mining and other developments. Fleming, for example, remarks that an earlier map of the springs prepared in 1909 cannot now be relied on "owing to the extensive subsequent mining operations"24. Mining had changed whole sections of the landscape:2s

The disused "Tiger Bath" lies in an amphitheatre at the head of the Tuwhakino Stream. Within a radius of 16 yards a number of hot ebullient pools and mud-pots still justify Bell and Clarke's designation as the "most vigorous thermal phenomena" in the Ngawha area, in spite of the changes wrought by mining operations in the interevening years. The basin owes its present form to mining excavations.

Formerly boiling springs were now cold:26

Two chains below the Tiger area the stream receives a trickle from the Waima or White Pool, a roughly circular body of cold water turbid with suspended sulphur.

22 Ibid, 255-56. 23 J Henderson, "Cinnabar at Puhipuhi and Ngawha, North Auckland", New Zealand Journal of Science and Technology, Vol 26 Sec B, 1944,47. 24 Fleming, op.cit., 255-56. 25 Ibid, 260-61. 26 Ibid, 261.

17 This pool, which has a surface area of 850 square yards, occupies the site of a prospecting shaft sunk prior to 1907. The shaft was abandoned at between 30 ft and 40 ft owing to the high temperatures encountered and filled with water which bubbled vigorously. Thirty-five years ago the pool was warm, but in 1944 was quite cold at the surface.

It also seemed to be the case that the spings had changed significantly in terms of their chemistry, with the waters now acid rather than alkaline and the deposition of cinnabar appearing to have ceased. This could be explained by the deterioration of groundwater circulation, the lowering of the lake-basin outlet gorges or "the gradual sealing of the faults at depth".27

2.17. Further evidence of change is given in Henderson"s paper. He remarks:28

There are, or were, ten of these ponds, and some are surprisingly deep for their small size. Thus Waiparaheka is 91 feet deep, Ngamokaikai 74 ft., and Waitetera 40 ft. Tuwhakino, which formerly was also of considerable depth, had been insilted to 17 ft since the working of the mercury deposits.

- 2.18. Thus the Maori people at Ngawha have seen many changes to their springs. Usually there have been periods of great activity by those wishing to exploit the place for a mining or tourist development, followed by long periods of neglect after the failure of such ventures. The evidence seems clear that through all this Maori have maintained a presence at Ngawha, have continued to use the springs, have been generously willing to share them with other people (even to the extent of constructing facilities for visitors) and that there has been a continuous tradition of the springs' medicinal qualities.

27 Ibid, 273, 272. I am not certain as to how recent these changes are in Fleming's view, or whether they are attributable wholly to natural causes. 28 Henderson, op.cit., 57.

18 C. Ngawha Springs: Minute Book Evidence

2.19. The evidence left by visitors and officials can be supplemented by a consideration of the history of land alienation around Ngawha. The Parahirahi Block first went through the Native land Court in 1873 at a sitting of the Court at Haruru (near Waitangi) before Judge Maning. The Parahirahi Block of 5,097 acres was vested, as per the normal practice, in ten owners, including Wiremu Hongi Te Ripi and Hirini Taiwhanga.29 Unfortunately the minutes of this hearing - as happened rather often with Judge Maning - have been lost. On 10 September 1874 the Governor in Council granted a rehearing for Parahirahi. No doubt the owners wished to take advantage of the new 1873 Native lands Act (the earlier hearing was decided under the 1865 and 1869 Acts) by which a memorial of all the owners could be recorded by the Court and the block vested in them, rather than in only ten owners as formerly. The matter went back before the Court, sitting as before at Haruru but presided over on this occasion by Judge Monro. A memorial of ownership was prepared by the Court listing the original ten owners plus (by my count) another 26. No minutes for this hearing have survived either.

2.20. In 1885 the Parahirahi Block was partitioned into Parts A, Band c. 30 The Court Minutes state:31

The Judge reminded those present that of the proposal made at the former sitting for the division of the Block into two equal portions - one for sale or lease and one to be retained; - the Ownership of these two parcels to be identical.

It did not appear that this proposal was in favour with some of the owners: -

29 Order of court, 16 July, 1873. [The documentation from the block ftles held at the Tai Tokerau Maori Land Court registry has been collected together by Mr Rex Wilson: see Mr Wilson's letter to the Registrar of the Waitangi Tribunal, 3 September 1991 re Parahirahi Block.] 30 The Court orders are reproduced as Annexure 5, and see Figures 1 and 2. 31 Parahirahi Block, (1885) 7 Northern MB 155-6.

19 Hiku objecting thereto.

The Court was willing to allow time to discuss the question, provided it appeared probable that such discussion would lead to an agreement.

After some conversation on the question the Court stood adjourned from 11.15 to 12.15 pm.

On the re-opening of the Court, the Presiding Judge asked whether a division had been agreed upon. Hiku replied that they had decided upon a scheme - a small parcel of about 6 acres near the N.E. angle containing some hot springs to be cut off, and vested in the whole of the owners: - the remainder of the block to be divided equally by a line from the N.W. to S.E.; such two last named blocks, also to be vested in the whole of the of the owners named in the ...... [illegible] and their various succession orders that had been made from time to time; - being 43 in number. It did not however appear that the owners were unanimous in their acceptance of this scheme. After much discussion, the Court rose for the midday recess.

The Court having resumed at 3 pm. It was announced that the scheme above defined had been adopted and agreed to by all. The Court therefore accepted it as a "Voluntary Arrangement" and made the Orders following in accordance therewith.

Each block was vested in forty-five persons holding thirty-seven equal undivided interests. The Court orders do not on their face contain any restriction as to alienability.

2.21. The key years in the history of the Parahirahi Block are the years between the 1885 Partition and a further partition in 1894. Restriction on alienability or not (legally and in practice such restrictions seem to have meant "restricted to the Crown") the Crown had clearly been engaged in the far from untypical practice of buying out individual share owners. Having

20 acquired enough shares to make a partition worthwhile, the Crown applied to the Native Land Court for a partition order in 1894 which was eventually heard before Recorder R S Bush at Kawakawa on 19 October 1894.32 The minutes set a new standard in Native Land Court minute book illegibility. The minutes record that the application to the Court was brought by the Native Minister on behalf of the Crown. At the hearing the Crown was represented by Captain Gilbert Mair, Land Purchase officer.33 It appears from Mair's statement that the non-sellers were mostly residents at Kaikohe and Ngawha itself, giving rise to the possibility that the sellers may no longer have been resident, but this requires further research.34 The Court seems to have left the cutting up of the block in Mair's hands. The Minutes note:35

The Court asked Captain Mair where it was intended to cut off the land for non­ sellers.

As a result of this, that part of the Parahirahi Block containing the hot springs (Le. Parahirahi C) was partitioned with the Crown getting most of it. Parahirahi Cl of one acre was vested in 12 individuals. This is the remaining portion of Maori land at the springs today. In 1926 the area was set aside as a Maori reservation for a village and bathing place (see above).

2.22. A full analysis of the alienation of Parahirahi and the surrounding blocks, is beyond the scope of this report. Fairly quickly the land became either privately owned or Crown land. Part of the Crown-owned section of Parahirahi was set aside as a kauri gum reserve and the land worked for kauri gum in the 1890s and the first decade of the twentieth century.

32 See (1894) 4 Whangarei Minute Book 51-58. 33 As a Land Purchase officer was involved, there will presumably be a Native Land purchase Department file on the Parahirahi Block. I have not had an opportunity to research Native Land Purchase records; I understand other researchers will be covering this. It seems an important point in view of the emphasis placed by the claimants on the inalienability of the Parahirahi Block. 34 See (1894) 4 Whangarei Minute Book 54: "Captain Mair on his oath saith. I am Land purchase officer. On arriving at Kawakawa on 16th Oct I telegraphed the non-sellers at their respective addresses Kaikohe and Ngawha, and I have been assured that the telegrams were delivered." 35 Ibid.

21 3.0. THE ROTORUA-TAUPO ZONE CIRCA 1833-60

A. Introduction: the Legacy of Ngatoro-i-Rangi

3.1. The thermal areas of the central North Island are especially associated with the great explorer and tohunga Ngatoro-i-Rangi, who travelled to Aotearoa on board Te Arawa and who made a celebrated journey into the interior. The are a number of versions of the famous story which diverge considerably. I would suggest that a full consideration of the purposes and implications of the story of Ngatoro-i-Rangi is necessary in order to fully comprehend the Maori conception of geothermal resources, although to do this is obviously a task for other specialists.

3.2. The earliest manuscript version of the story appears to be that contained in the manuscipt of Wiremu Maihi te Rangikaheke, written in 1849 and now held in the Grey Collection at the Auckland Public library. Te Rangikaheke, who at his baptism took the name of Wiremu Maihi (William Marsh) was a leader of the Ngati Kereru hapu of Ngati Rangiwewehi. He was born about 1815 and became a close adviser of Sir George Grey. Te Rangikaheke is one of the most important nineteenth century Maori prose writers and scholars, as Jennifer Curnow explains:36

For a time Grey paid Te Rangikaheke L36 a year, and provided living quarters for him and his family, attached to his own house in Auckland. Te Rangikaheke wrote of Grey's kindness and generosity. His writings show that they worked together in a warm and close collaboration. He produced a very large body of written work - 21 manuscripts of which he was the sole author, and 17 more to which he contributed, in all nearly 800 pages ... The manuscripts encompass most aspects of Maori culture, including language, genealogies, legendS, contemporary history, political commentary,

36 Curnow, liTe Rangikaheke, Wiremu Maihi", Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol. 1, 1990,494-5. See also, J. Curnow, "Wiremu Maihi te Rangikaheke: his life and work", Journal of the Polynesian Society, 1985, vol 94, 97-147.

22 customs, commentary on laments, and autobiographical material. In addition Te Rangikaheke contributed to Grey's manuscripts of songs and poverbs. Eight manuscripts deal with myths and tribal history. Three of these were the source of most of the prose material in Grey's Ko nga moteata, me nga hakirara on nga Maori (1853), and also provided Grey with at least a quarter of the material for his Ko nga mahinga a nga tupuna Maori (1854) and hence for its translation, Polynesian mythology (1855). Grey did not acknowledge his debt, and introduced alterations, combinations and omissions, particularly in the latter two books.

The Ngatoro-i-Rangi narrative is contained within, and is an extended digression from, the author's account of Hinemoa. An unpublished prose translation of this part of the narrative by George Graham, together with Graham's notes and commentary, is now in the Graham papers, Auckland Institute and Museum Library.37

3.3. As Te Rangikaheke tells the story, Ngatoro-i-Rangi, the great tohunga and explorer, came on to Taupo where he saw the mountains:

5 .... He beheld the many mountains standing yonder - as it were in a straight line erect. 6. The names of these mountains are:- Tongariro, Ngauruhoe, Para-te-taitonga and Ruapehu. These are mountains of lofty heights - being all quite covered by the snow drifts. 7. Now the thought which impressed this ambitious man, was to ascend unto the pinnacled peaks of these mountains. When he arrived with his followers at the base of these mountains, he (thus) addressed (them):- 8. "Here do you stay, whilst I actually climb upward unto these mountains. For if no man should climb up unto these mountains - then will ever prevail the icy conditions of these mountains. Then intenser still ever more will be the keen cutting winds (and) the cold affecting mankind." 9. "But otherwise, oh friends, if I do attain unto these mountainous summits, and there tread about (takatakahia), and also leave my signs (tohu) as proof thereof, then

37 George Graham, Ngatoro-i-Rangi: his ascent of Tongariro and the neighbouring mountains, translated from the MS. account of Wiremu te Rangikaheke, MS 120, M52, AIML.

23 benefited will be mankind, as also the food (crops). But if I do not accomplish such, then mankind will suffer as also their food (crops)." 10. For the significance of the mountains being thus ice capped in this Island of Aotearoa, and their mana was thus: Already he was indeed aware of the nature of these mountains. 11. An outstanding tohunga, as also clairvoyant was he. Isaiah and Samuel also were compeers in power with this tohunga, Ngatoro-i-rangi. He was also so as to his mana and in his power of prophesying. 12. He then thus directed his companions: - " After I have departed - eat ye not of food. When I have ascended upward unto the summit of the foremost of these mountains, you will then behold the sudden appearance of my signs (proofs) upon these mountains. The proofs will be these: When I am up above, and there breaks forth thunder claps and lightnings, as also rainstorms, you will see the gradual disappearance of the icy conditions on these mountains. Thereupon you will know that exhausted has become the mana of these mountains, and increased (in superiority) has mine become". 13. Having thus finished his discourse, he climbs off. At early dawn this tohunga climbed away. When now the sun had high arisen, he rested mid-way on his upward way. The sun had then reached the zenith. The greater part of the mountain was below, but yet only a little part above him. Then a craving for food came upon his companions. 14. They also thought"Alas! Death has befallen our friend due to the overpowering effects of this mountain. His followers looked up unto these mountains! Behold! the snow and sleet were falling from the darkened sky. 15. Also hailstones were falling from above upon the house roofing, and also upon the side wall supporting posts. Hence his followers knew that disaster had befallen their ariki. They then partook of food, because of their fasting, and ate forthwith. 16. Ngatoro-i-Rangi had now actually attained unto the summit of Tongariro. Having thus completed the ascent, he became prostrated by the cold, and had become quite benumbed (cramped). 17. They then a second time assembled in their abode to eat. Then extreme indeed became the intensity of the cold afflicting him. He became completely buried in the icy snowdrifts, and was deeply distressed in mind because they had disobeyed his orders as first given. 18. Because his order had thus been transgressed by his followers, then became manifest the anger of the God, Rongo - against him - and almost even his head was buried beneath the snowdrifts. Then was evinced the pity of the God to him. So

24 therefore he turned his soul and thoughts to life and safety. he then thrust (cast off) his slave girl Hinehotu into the boiling spring (or active crater) of that mountain, as a sacrificial offering unto his God Rongo. Hence it was that that crater, also that mountain, were so named "Ngauruhoe".38 19. He thereupon arose and directed his mind and spiritual thoughts to Hawaiki, so that his call thereto might reach his ancestors. Thus (he called) "Oh! my grand­ dames oh! Bring hitherward unto me some fire. I will perish by the southern winds." Such was his call. (Hence it was that the name Tongarir039was given to the mountain). 20. On his second call, behold indeed these old dames came hither across the crests of the ocean waters. Thus then his mind became quite relieved. 21. At Wakaari yonder the fire was kindled by those old women; and thence it spread unto this Island. Thus it was his ancestors came hither to him, and thus indeed was fire brought for him. 22. Then indeed he saw (fire) breaking forth from within that mountain, and thus erupt. And behold! He was now quite recovered. Now, if his companions had not partaken of food, never so intense would ever have been the cold in this island. 23. Hence the name so given, Waiwera (hot water), is "Wai-ariki". For by this ariki (high chief) it was summoned hither, and reached this island, and here kindled. Hence therefore it is named "Wai-ariki", though waiwera is the name (given it) by other tribes and people. (So this finishes the narrative).

3.4. The important aspects in this specifically Arawa version of the famous story to note are: (a) The author's emphasis on the disobedience of Ngatoro-i-Rangi's followers. Had they obeyed him Ngatoro would have been successful in his mission to rid Aotearoa of cold.

38 Graham notes in his footnote 8 that Ngauruhoe's ancient name was Te Auruhoe, so called "because on that montain he cast (auru hoe) his maid slave, Hine-hotu into the crater, as a sacrifice to appease the deities of the mountain, and so that they might alleviate his suffering from the intense cold." Of Hine-hotu he writes (ibid, n.13) that she "was a girl of rank among her people, the Ngati Hotu, the aboriginal people of the district. Her death, and other contributing causes, led thereafter to a long continued warfare between the Arawa people and the Ngati Hotu." 39 Graham's note 7: "Tongariro: so named from Ngatoro's appeal to his priestess ancestresses to send fire to warm his limbs lest "he perish (riro) from the cold blasts of the South wind (tonga): "Kei riro ia i te.hau tonga".

25 (b) Te Rangikaheke gives a two-fold explanation for Ngatoro's purpose of ascending the mountain - he was "ambitious" to extend his own personal mana, and he wished to improve the climate for the growing of crops. (Arawa and Tuwharetoa can only have been too conscious of the central North Island's severe winters and the perils that frosts posed for kumara crops - hence the particular importance of geothermal surface features and of certain areas of good soils which were relatively frost free, such as Mokoia Island.) (c) Te Rangikaheke gives the name of Ngatoro's companion as a slave­ girl, Hinehotu, who belonged to the local tangata whenua. Other versions state that Ngatoro had a male slave, Ngauruhoe, for whom the mountain is named, but the Rangikaheke manuscript gives a different explanation for the name. (d) He particularly emphasises the Arawa name for the hot springs, Waiariki. This name is a constant reminder of the source of the vital resource.

3.5. Nineteenth century vistors to the region often recount the Ngatoro-i­ Rangi story, often giving narratives which appear to reflect a specifically Taupo-Tokaanu version rather than a Rotorua version. Thus in 1860 Bates writes:40

The following is the Maori legend respecting the origin of Tongariro and the hot springs. Soon after the immigration of the Maoris to this country from their original home Hawaiki the chieftain priest Ngati-roirangi(sic), with his slave Ngaruahoe (sic) set out to view the country, having bade his companions whom he left on the sea coast not to eat till his return. Coming to Tongariro, he ascended it, but, while he was at the summit of the mountain, his companions, disregarding his instructions, commenced to eat, whereupon the hero and his slave were pierced with intense cold. He therefore prayed to the gods to send him fire. They sent him fire from Whaka ari (White Island in the bay of Plenty) underground to Tongariro by the Taniwhas Pupu and Te Haeata. The fire saved the life of the hero but Ngaruahoe was dead; the crater was named by the chieftain after his faithful slave and it still bears his name and to

40 "Lieutenant Bates rides to Taupo", Auckland-Waikato Historical Societies Journal, No 14, April 1969, p6.

26 this day the sacred fire bums throughout the underground passage from Whaka ari to Tongariro.

3.6. Hochstetter also gives a version of the story which he learned from Te Heuheu41 himself when he visited him in 1859:42

The natives have (quite rightly) long connected the ngawha and puia with the centres of volcanic activity that are still active even if they clothe their idea in the form of a strange legend .. .! reproduce the legend as I heard it from the mouth of the Chieftain Te Heuheu at Lake Taupo. Among the first voyagers who came from Hawaiki to New Zealand, was the chief Ngatiroirangi [sic] (Le. Heaven-runner, the traveller in the heavens). He landed at Maketu on the east coast of the North Island. Thence he made his way with his slave Ngauruhoe to explore the new country. He travels through the district, stamps springs of water from the ground to succour the barren valleys, climbs hills and mountains and glimpses towards the south a great mountain, Tongariro (literally "towards the south"). This mountain he determines to climb in order to survey the whole country from its summit. He comes to Lake Taupo in the inland plains. Here the bushes tear up his great cloth of kiekie leaves. The shreds strike root and become kowhai trees. Then he climbs the snow-clad Tongariro; higher up. however, it is so cold that chieftain and slave are in danger of freezing, Ngatiroirangi therefore calls his sisters who remained at Whakari, to dispatch him fire. The sisters hear the call and send the sacred unquenchable fire that they had brought with them from Hawaiki. They send it by means of the two taniwha (spirits of montain and water, living underground), Pupu and Te Haeata43, by a subterranean passage to the peak of Tongariro. The fire came just in time to save the chieftain. When, however, the latter wished to offer it to his slave, so that he too could warm himself, Ngauruhoe was already dead.

41 Te Heuheu Tukino ill, Iwikau, who succeeded his brother Te Heuheu Tukino IT, Mananui, after the latter's accidental death in the landslide at Te Rapa on 7 May 1846. See Elizabeth Hura, "Te Heuheu Tukino III, lwikau", Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol I, 1990, 448-9. 42 E T Fleming (ed), Fedinand von Hochstetter, Geology of New Zealand, 1959 (original ed 1864),140: 43 Also known as Te Hoata: Hochstetter observes that one of the springs at Rotomahana is named Te Rua Hoata after one of the taniwhas which brought the sacred fire: ibid, 159.

27 To the present day, the hole through which the fire rises in the mountain, Le. the active crater of Tongariro, is known by the name of the slave Ngauruhoe. Since, however, the fire was the sacred fire from Hawaiki, it still burn strongly today, burns along the whole stretch between Whakari and Tongariro, at Motou-Hora, Okakaru, Roto-ehu, Roto-iti, Rotorua, Rotomahana, Paeroa, Orakeikorako, taupo, at every point where it shot up when the two taniwha brought it underground. Hence the innumerable hot springs.

Both Hochstetter and Bates emphasise the role of the taniwhas, giving the names of both, and both state that Ngatoro-i-Rangi's slave was male and named Ngauruhoe after whom the mountain his named. (Compare this with the Te Rangikaheke manuscript and the account of the sacrifice of the female slave Hinehotu). Hochstetter's account does not mention Ngatoro's followers and the role they played in inadvertently thwarting his mission by disobeying his command to refrain from eating whilst he was daming th mountain.

3.7 The fullest written version of the Ngatoro-i-Rangi story is to be found in John Te H. Grace's Tuwharetoa, published in 1959. A particular feature of the Grace account is the careful atention paid to Ngatoro-i-Rangi's rivalry with others seeking to daim land, Tia and_ a man named Hapekituarangi:44

Shortly after Tia's departure for the Taupo district Ngatoroirangi also journeyed to those parts from Maketu. He travelled by way of the Tarawera River and Ruawahia. He reached Paeroa mountain and then continued his journey to a place between the township of Taupo and Taharepa on the northern shore of Lake Taupo. There he erected a shrine before which he could recite his incantations. With the aid of Ikatere, a god brought from Hawaiki, he produced the fresh water whitebait that was seen in large shoals in the lakes and streams until recently. Tradition says that he tore his garments to shreds and, casting the pieces into the lake, produced this fish. The post of incantation was called Te Tuahu a Ngatoroirangi. While on the lake shore he caused

44 John Te H. Grace, Tuwharetoa: the history of the Maori people of the Taupo district, Reed, Wellington, 1959,61-64.

28 heavy clouds of dust to discolour the water to prove his ownership of the lake. It was this dirty water that Tia saw at Atiamuri. From the lake shore Ngatoroirangi climbed Tauhara and at the summit set up another altar. Ikatere was installed as its guardian. It was while he was there that he saw Tia's arrival in Taupo. He tried to tum him back, but not being able to do so, decided to follow him. He bespoke the great expanse of water for his descendants and, to make his mark, he cast his spear, called Kuwha, into the lake. It landed close to the shore off Wharewaka, about four miles from the present Taupo wharf. It is now a tree trunk standing upright in the water. Ngatoroirangi travelled round the eastern shore toward Tokaanu, and en route erected three more altars. The first was built near Rotongaio, a large lagoon situated close to the lake and about ten miles from Taupo, and he named it Hawaiki. The second was erected at Te Hatepe and named Ihuporo. When he arrived at Hamaria he discovered the temporary shelters and the post of incantation set up by Tia. He noticed that they were recently built and, desiring to establish beyond doubt his claim to Taupo, he set to work to build an altar which, when completed, would have the appearance of being built long before the one he found. The next day he met Tia, who had just returned from the forests situated towards thr mountain ranges, and asked him, "What brings you to these parts"? Tia replied, "I have journeyed to these parts to claim the territory for my people. I have built altars, and I have made my peace with the spirits of the land. Observe my clearings and my shelters!" Ngatoroirangi then said. "When our celebrated canoe Te Arawa stood off the shores of Maketu I heard you bespeak land for yourself on the coast. This is not your domain. It is mine. I have already made my mark in the Great Inland Sea. I have examined your clearings and found that they were done very recently. Accompany me and I will show you my clearings, my altar and my shelters, and you will observe that they are old and so I will prove to you that my occupation of this land is longer than yours!" Tia accompanied him and inspected his clearings and saw that they were as Ngatoroirangi had said. He realised, with some disappointment, that he had been outmanouevred in his bid for the territory, and so continued his journey round the lake with his followers to Tokaanu. He remained at that place for a while and then travelled on to Titiraupenga. Ngatoroirangi a Hitle later also travelled round the lake and arrived at Motutere. a promontory situated about fourteen miles from Tokaanu. He built another altar which he named Mahuehue. He observed the mountain Tongariro in the distance and decided

29 he would ascend it as he had done Tauhara. He went to Tauhara and then travelled to Rangipo. There he met a man called Hapekituarangi and said to him, "What brings you to this cold and barren country where there is nothing to eat?" Hapekituarangi, while looking toward Kaimanawa range, replied, "My breath is my food!" The range to this day is known by that name (kai, meaning eat; and manawa, in this case, breath). Hapekituarangi then informed Ngatoroirangi that he had come to claim the land for himself and his descendants. Ngatoroirangi, seeing the danger of being outdone of the vast domains that he had travelled so far to obtain, immediately began to climb Tongariro in order to bespeak the land from its summit. When he was well above Hapekituarangi, and in a position sufficiently high to get a commanding view of the

land, he said, "E Hape e! Kaua hoe i piki ake. Ki te piki mai koe, ka heke te po 0 te rangi!" (Do not dare climb this mountain. If you do I will cause the darkness of the heavens to descend upon you!) Hapekituarangi was standing in the heart of the in the heart of the Rangipo desert at a place called Onetapu, or the Sacred Sands, which was avoided and dreaded by the Maori in those days. In answer to the rebuke he raised his voice, and shouted up to Ngatoroirangi, "Kaua koe e heke mai, ko te wahl e tu nei au ko te Onetapu!" (Do not come down to where I am standing, for it is the Sacred Sands!) The place has been known by that name ever since. Hapekituarangi, however, paid no heed to the threats and started to ascend the mountain. Ngatoroirangi, observing him, immediately called upon his gods and upon Ruaimoko, god of volcanoes, to destroy the trespasser. The traditions of the tribes of Taupo say that the gods responded to the appeal, and in the skies great banks of dense, black clouds rolled by and all became dark as night. Snow fell and sleet swept the desert, and in the intense cold Hapekituarangi and his company perished ... After destroying Hapekituarangi, Ngatoroirangi continued to ascend the mountain. He encountered the snow and sleet and the cold winds that had destroyed his countrymen. The black clouds that darkened the sky enveloped him. He turned his face to the south and looked down on the plains below and, as the douds blotted out his view, he named the expanse Rangipo (the plains of the dark sky). He struggled on. His strength was failing him and he was almost frozen. With great difficulty he reached the summit. He looked out across the land below and claimed it for himself and his descendants. Weakened by the cold and and the strenuous climb he cried aloud to his ancestral spirits and to his sisters, Kuiwai and Haungaroa who were in Hawaiki, to come to his assistance and send him fire. he exclaimed: "Kuiwai e! Haungaroa e! Ka riro au te tonga, tukuna mai te ahil" (0 Kuiwai! 0 Haungaroa! I am

30 seized by the cold wind from the south. Send me fire!) They heard him and, with the assistance of Pupu and Te Hoata, the fire gods, heat was sent him from Hawaiki. It came underground and passed White Island, Moutohora, Taupo and Tokaanu. He then threw down on the mountain the fourth of the five ara (sacred stones) brought from Hawaiki. Where it struck, a burning volcano burst open. The fire and heat revived him and he was saved. While appealing to his sisters for fire, Ngatoroirangi killed his slave Ngauruhoe as an offering to his gods so as to give greater mana to his request, and when the volcano broke out he threw him into the yawning crater. The volcano today bears the name of the unfortunate slave. The fire that travelled underground from Hawaiki came up through the earth at all the places already mentioned above. The localities have remained active thermal areas to this day, and the name Tongariro is derived from two words that were in his appeal - tonga (south wind), and riro (seize).

3.8. Reconciling and explaining the various accounts is a task for specialists in Maori studies, comparative mythology and anthropology, but even to a non-specialist a number of key differences are readily apparent. In the Grace account far more emphasis is placed on Ngatoroirangi's outwitting or defeating the two rival claimants for the land, Tia and the mysterious Hapekituarangi. Te Rangikaheke and Grace give quite different explanations for the storms and cold that afflicted Ngatoroirangi as he ascended the mountain. Grace does not mention Ngatoroirangi's followers and their disobedience: instead Ngatoroirangi calls for the bad weather to destroy the trespassing Hapekituarangi, but is then assailed by the same forces when he tries to ascend the mountain himself. Grace's account seems similar to the version given to Hochstetter by Te Heuheu (Iwikau) in 1859, and this may point to there being distinct Tuwharetoa (Taupo) and Arawa (Rotorua) versions of the story.

B. Records of European Visitors

3.9. The earliest description of the hot springs of the central North Island the author has located to date comes from the journals of the eMS

3 1 missionary Henry Williams, who visited Rotorua in 1831. Aged thirty-nine at the time, Williams had headed the CMS mission in New Zealand from its main base at Paihia since 1823. The visit to Rotorua was an exploratory foray, a prelude to setting up a permanent mission base there. (This had to wait until 1835 when Thomas and Anne Chapman set up the mission at Te Koutu: this had to be abandoned due to a war with Ngati Haua: the Chapmans re-established the mission on Mokoia Island in 1838, and in mid- 1840 it was moved to a permanent base at Te Ngae on the eastern side of the lake.45 ) In 1831 Williams travelled to the Bay of Plenty on the Herald, the CMS schooner, landing briefly at Tauranga and disembarking at Maketu where the Danish trader Philip Tapsell (Hans Homman Jensen Falk) ran a trading store, where he traded with the Arawa, muskets, gunpowder and other goods in exchange for flax. On Tuesday 25 October 1831 Williams and his group left Tapsell's house and travelled inland, reaching Rotoiti at noon the following day. The next day they travelled to lake Rotorua and reached the village of Arorangi on Mokoia, where they were met "in a most gracious manner":46

We had an opportunity of speaking to a considerable number upon the object of our mission, to which all paid the utmost attention. After which a most sumptuous supply of food was brought forward of potatoes, kumara and fish. This being the place of Taewanga's father-in-law the chiefs addressed themselves principally to him, which gave him the opportunity of stating our desires respecting them. We afterwards passed on in the canoes to Kaiweka, where Tipetipe was waiting our arrival. Our reception was much the same as at Arorangi. On landing we found all our party had taken their seats in the warm bath which was close at hand. The bath consisted of various compartments, each of a different degee of heat which was regulated by the introduction of fresh water from the lake.

45 For the history of the CMS mission at Rotorua see D.M. Stafford, Te Arawa: A History of the Arawa People, Reed, Wellington 1967, chs 37-40, 44,46, 48, 51, 53, 55,57; see also Stafford, The Founding Years in Rotorua, Ray Richards and Rotorua District Council, 1986, chs 1-2, and Philip Andrews, Ko Mata: The life of Anne Chapman, missionary at the Bay of Islands, Rotorua and Maketu, 1830-1855, Rotorua & District Historical Society, 1991. 46 L.M. Rogers, (ed), Early Journals of Henry Williams 1826-40, Pegasus Press, Christchurch, 1961, 197.

32 But Williams did not approve of communal bathing, and the following morning decided to administer a little lecture on the subject:

Had a good deal of conversation with the natives about the impropriety of men, women and children bathing together.

3.10. The CMS party then crossed over 'to Ohinemutu. A group of about 4- 500 was waiting to welcome them. After the speeches of the morning were over, Williams was able to explore the place:47

In the afternoon we walked through the Pa and visited the warm baths and boiling springs in which the natives cook their food. They were very wonderful. We entered a large house in which they sleep, which was like an oven from the heat of the ground. We spoke to several parties of people during the day, who appeared well disposed to receive our message. The children at all these places seem far more numerous than in the Bay of Islands. The day very hot. Pita and Ngere assembled the children to repeat the catechism, but it was not confined to them as very men and women came also and repeated with them. After employing them as long as we felt proper, we walked to see a hot spring which possesses the quality of washing without soap. Several things were washed therein, which became perfectly clean. On a return we were presented with a baked pig and several small baskets of potatoes, which we received with a nod of the head. Before sunset assembled ail for prayer.

On Sunday, 30 October 1831, Williams conducted the first Christian service held in the region, followed by catechisms and another service in the evening. On 1 November Williams left, justifiably feeling that his visit had been a success, taking with him some boys to be educated at the CMS school in the Bay of Islands. On Thursay 3 November the party walked along the beach from Maketu to Tauranga where the CMS vessel collected them.

3.11. The earliest published (as opposed to diary or journal) reference to the thermal areas of the central North Island I have so far located comes in the

47 Ibid, 197-98.

33 evidence of John Watkins, a surgeon who lived in New Zealand from 1833- 34. In his evidence given to a select Committee of the House of Lords in 1838 Watkins states:48

... Their Diseases are something like our Diseases, with the Exception of Scrofula being perhaps more abundant there, and cutaneous Affections of a very malignant Kind, - one of the most malignant of the cutaneous Affections we meet with; they know how to treat it; they bath in the sulphureous Lakes when they can, and they are aware that if they go there they will be cured; they know not any other remedy; I have not seen them apply any other Remedy.

Where are the sulphureous lakes?

About the East Cape in general; they are warm.

Clearly Watkins has only the vaguest idea where the hot springs zone of the North Island is located, but he had obviously heard from his Maori informants of the reputation of the springs as a cure for skin diseases.

3.12. In 1839 John Carne Bidwill travelled through the centre of the North Island and seems to have been the first European to ascend Mount Tongariro. ( It seems in fact that the peak which Bidwill calls Tongadido is what is known today as Mt Ngauruhoe.) He travelled to the central peaks via Rotorua, staying with Thomas and Anne Chapman on his journey south, and again on the return journey. Bidwill's ascent of the mountain greatly displeased the great chief Te Heuheu as Bidwill found out when he met him subsequently. Bidwill describes the scene in his Rambles in New Zealand published in 1841.49

He [Te Heuheu] did not appear in a particularly good temper, and after about five minutes' talk he suddenly arose from his seat, and began to walk up and down, and stamp, talking all the time with great animation. He at last worked himself into a

48 Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Islands of New Zealand, GBPP 1838/680, Minutes of Evidence, p.13. 49 John C Bidwell, Rambles in New Zealand, W.S. Orr & Co., London, 1841, Capper Press reprint, Caxton Press, Christchurch, 1974.

34 most terrible pitch of fury, at which I only laughed. The cause of complaint was my having ascended Tongadido [sic]. I said that a Pakiha could do no harm in going up, as no place was taboo to a Pakiha; that the taboo only applied to Mowries; and finally, that if the mountain was an atua, I must be a greater atua, or I could not have got to the top of it, and that it was all nonsense to put himself into a passion with me, as I did not care for it; but if he would see that the people made haste with the canoe, I would give him some tobacco. I then took out one fig for each of his companions, who sat still all the time without saying a word, and gave him three figs. It proved a most astonishing sedative. He quite changed his tone in a minute and sat down again. He could not help saying, however, that if he had thought that I could have gone up the mountain, he would have prevented my ever trying it, and requested me not to tell any other Pakihas of it on any account.

If Bidwill really did talk to Te Heuheu in the way that he claims then the chief can only be said to have showed great forbearance in tolerating his rather insolent visitor. Whatever exactly may have transpired, Te Heuheu Mananui's anger due to the sacred peak being climbed without his permission is only too clear.

3.13. Bidwill travelled back to Rotorua where he stayed with Thomas and Anne Chapman, the CMS missionary family then living on Mokoia Island (the site of the mission was later moved to Te Ngae on the eastern shore of Lake Rotorua). In his book Bidwill gives a number of interesting descriptions of Rotorua. He writes that the population of the area had been greatly depleted by Hongi's invasion and noted the general dearth of supplies of wood close to the lake which he explained by it having been "almost entirely removed by the natives".50 In the middle of the lake is Mokoia, "about five hundred feet high" and "very steep". On the island was about "fifty acres sufficiently level for cultivation", the flats being "carefully planted" with "kormeras, corn & c." - although in Bidwill's opinion the soil on Mokoia was not rich enough to allow for the cultivation of potatoes.51 On the island were "numerous" hot springs:52

50 lbid,22. 51 Ibid. 24. 52 Ibid.

35 They are all at the edge of the lake, and formed into baths by the natives making an open wall of stone around them, so as to admit a sufficiency of cold water to make them bearable to the skin.

Lake Rotorua was an important food source, containing "great numbers" of shellfish, and "also crawfish, sometimes eight inches long". Both were "articles of food" for the inhabitants, "of great consequence" due to there being no fish in the lake except eels (not plentiful in Bidwill's opinion), and "some little fish as large as minnows, which they catch in nets made the shape of a sparrow-trap, and eat dried".53 Writing of the practice of cooking food in the hot springs Bidwill remarks:54

... Having nothing to eat all day had not improved my temper: although very hungry I did not like eating what was dressed in the hot springs; and there was no wood to be had in the whole Pa for love or money.

And a little later:

Employed these days in visiting all the most remarkable parts of Roturoa. The boiling­ springs extend over the whole country around the lake, and are some of them very large; the great one at the Pa pours forth a stream of water four feet wide and one foot deep; the waters are perfectly clear, and nearly tasteless; they are, however, slightly styptic, and many of the rocks are covered with an efflorescence very like concrete sulphuric acid, but is, I suppose, an aluminous salt with a great excess of acid. The natives of Roturoa have very bad teeth, said to be the consequence of always eating their food cooked in these streams; but I saw many of them here with as good teeth as elsewhere: there was one girl at Mr, Chapman's who had, I think, as fine a set of teth as I ever beheld, and she was altogether so beautiful that I very much wished for her likeness, to have sent to England as a favourable specimen of New Zealand beauty.

53 Ibid. 54 Ibid, 65. Earlier he states that "the natives cook all their food in the streams of hot water, by putting it into a basket and letting the water flow through it; it does not at all injure the flavour of the vegetables, but I never tasted any meat so cooked". (p.25)

36 In an earlier section of his book Bidwill describes the universal practice of using "cocoi" (kokowai), which is, as Evelyn Stokes explains, "red ochre oxidised iron in hydrothermally altered ground in geothermal areas ... the source of red colouring used as paint or dye".55 Bidwill writes:56

The natives are very fond of daubing their heads with a sort of red paint which they call "cocoi;" I saw a large manufactory of it on the banks of the Waikato; a double circle of matwork was formed round a large spring of rusty water, and the curdy carbonate of iron was by this means strained off. After this preparation, it is burnt and mixed with oil, and plastered on their heads and bodies, till they look as if they had fallen into a paint-pot. I understand it is going out of fashion; but it is still so common, that it is impossible to be carried by a native without getting your clothes daubed all over with the red dirt which has staurated their mats.

3.14. The Reverend W.R. Wade published an account of New Zealand at Hobart in 1842.57 Wade came to New Zealand with William Colenso in 1834 and worked as a Superintendent of the Missionary Press, and travelled over much of the northern North Island. He visited Rotorua and left a particularly full and interesting account of Ohinemutu. (At the time of his visit the eMS mission was still on Mokoia Island, before the move to Te Ngae, thus dating his visit to Ohinemutu to before mid-1840) He instances a particularly singular use of the boiling springs:58

The natives say that the boiling springs in days of yore were made instruments of cruelty. Enemies were thrown alive into them; and slaves who had become useless by sickness, and of whom their masters were tired, were thus horribly got rid of. A recent instance of this inhuman exercise of arbitary power, came within the range of Mr Chapman's own observation. To save all further trouble concerning the bodies of such

55 Evelyn Stokes, Wairakei Geothermal Area: Some historical perspectives, University of Waikato, Hamilton, 1991, p.18. 56 Bidwill, op.cit., 35. 57 W.R. Wade, Journey in the Northern Island of New Zealand, Hobart, 1842, Capper Press reprint, Christchurch, 1977. 58 Ibid, 143.

37 slaves as died a natural death, they used to throw them into these terrific pits, some of which are full twenty feet deep.

But the springs were mainly used for rather more benign purposes, bathing and cooking, which Wade describes fully:59

Some of the springs are of such a temperature as to form a perpetual warm bath. In these, men, women, and children crowd togtehr, rgardless of all decency, chatting as they sit almost up to their chins in warm water; smoking their pipes, and taking their food as if they were on dry land. Mr. Chapman had seen them, in bitter cold and rainy seasons, take off and roll up their garments, to go and sit in the bath till they acquired sufficient warmth; when they would come out, wrap their single garments (perhaps half wet) about them, and sit down, or pursue their journey, without using the slightest precautionary measures. Yet it is a rare occurrence for them to take cold; though the water is generally warmer than would be quite comfortable to a European warm-bather. The people will often sit in these warm baths three or four hours at a time; and occasionally, in cold days of idleness, they will remain the whole day in the water, having food brought to them, and fire to light their pipes. Oinemutu [sic] , the largest of the Rotorua pas, is situated on a peninsula projection, which may be said to be the very seat of the principal boiling springs. The houses of the natives stand on ground which is almost everywhere warm, and in some places hot: and the springs at their doors, or just at hand, serve as ever-boiling pots, in which they may easily cook their food. Indian com has been seen, placed with care in a calabash, quietly stewing in a still comer: and potatoes or kumaras are readily let into or drawn out of the boiling water, by means of baskets constructed for that purpose.

Wade also describes how geothermal heat was used to warm buildings as natural green-houses for the purpose of growing kumara:60

If you go into the houses erected on warm spots, after the doors or windows, or apertures so called, have been shut, you are instantly reminded of the highest temperature of English hot-houses. This warmth is both grateful and useful to the natives, particularly in the winter season. Early in the spring, they place their kumaras in

59 Ibid, 143-4. 60 Ibid, 144-45.

38 baskets, in these natural hot-houses, leaving them for a month or six weeks to grow out. The weather by that time being sufficiently warm to allow of their being planted out in prepared beds, the plants are then put into the ground in rows, and sheltered from the winds and morning frosts, by broom twigs, about three feet long, placed upright, so as to form a screen along the rows. In removing the kumaras, great care is taken not to injure the young shoots. By this method they gain a month or six weeks in the growth of the plant, the losing of which time would so shorten its summer advantages, as frequently to prevent its coming to perfection. The kumaras grown in the neighbourhood of the hot springs are very fine in quality and flavour. They seem to grow best in a soil almost entirely composed of pumice-stone sand, no kind of manure being used, except turning in the grass and weeds of the previous year's fallow.

3.15. Wade then describes his own personal impressions of Mokoia and Ohinemutu, both of which greatly impressed him:61

The Mission house on Mokoia stood in a commanding situation, sheltered at the back by the high land, crowned with basaltic rock, which forms the centre of the island. Just below the settlement there was a hot spring, affording at all times a supply of boiling water, without an expenditure of fuel, so that for clothes washing, pig scalding, house cleaning, and other purposes requiring hot water, you could always have as many pails full as you pleased to send down for. The natives had ingeniously divided the pool of water into two compartments, connected with each other by a narrow channel, and each having an outlet to the lake. It was so contrived that they could always keep the larger compartment as a constant warm bath, regulating its temperature by letting in hot or cold water, as required. I only saw one old woman comfortably sitting in it; but Mr. Chapman informed me that he had seen it crammed full, with about fifty naked natives, men, women, and children, thus keeping up their animal warmth on a cold evening. With Mr Chapman and mr Morgan I visited the large pa [Ohinemutu} which was thickly populated. On landing from our boat, we were soon surrounded, and I could not but remark the superiority of the people, as to dress and cleanliness, over any that I had seen. The garments they wore, the canoes on the beach, and their neat plantations, all indicated a degree of creditable industry; while, at the same time, there was more

61 Ibid, 149-50.

39 of the untamed independence of savage life in their manners, than we had been accustomed to among the Ngapuhis. Indeed, they had rendered themselves, except for fire-arms and ammunition, almost independent of foreigners. I found that they even made their own pipes, and grew their own tobacco. The pipes were cut out of a solid mass of indurated pipe clay, in connexion with the boiling springs, and were so well formed, as to be even a fair model for an English pipe maker. Two varieties of the tobacco plant were growing in the pa. The natives dry the leaves in the sun, and afterwards twist them together, in imitation of negrohead tobacco. Their cooking and bathing in hot or warm water impregated with sulphur, did not appear to have been in the least prejudicial to their health. I never saw a more plump, healthy, cleanly assemblage of native children in New Zealand: and, compared to the Waikato tribes, they were all well clad. The only detrimental effect of their singular mode of living, appeared in the universal yellowness of their teeth; the natives of other parts having remarkably white teeth.

Ohinemutu was by any measure a large and wealthy community. Wade describes the community's fleet of war canoes, "arranged with regularity in a sort of dock-yard",62 and, echoing many other visitors, the profusion of carved posts and buildings which decorated the village.

3.16. From Ohinemutu Wade went on to visit "a valley of hot springs at no great distance" (probably the Kuirau area at the foot of Pukeroa). Here he learned of another use to which the locals put the thermal features:63

In some places there were holes, from which steam constantly issued; and though nothing but steam was to be seen, you might hear the water boiling and bubbling at a furious rate beneath. These holes are a singular convenience to the natives, who lay fern top or other litter over them so as to condense the steam, and then place their garments at the top to get rid, by an easy process, of all vermin; as animal life is speedily destroyed by the sulphurous vapour.

62 Ibid, 150. 63 Ibid. 155.

40 He also describes a visit to an extensive area of hot springs near Rotoiti, presumably the Tikitere area, "a singular and striking prospect".64

3.17. William Colenso was himself an early visitor to Ohinemutu, which he describes in his book Excursion in the Northern Island of New Zealand, published in Launceston in 1844.65 Colenso (1811-1899) was the CMS printer based at Paihia who in 1841-2 travelled from Hick's Bay to Turanganui, then via Waikaremoana and the Urewera ranges to Rotorua, Matamata and the Waikato, returning to Paihia via the Manukau and Kaipara.66 Colenso had a particular interest in botany and he collected many specimens in the course of this journey. He appears to have been the first visitor to pay attention to the unique plants which grow around the thermal springs. In the following extract Colenso describes he time he spent in the Rotorua region which we approached from the Urewera mountains, first reaching Lake Rerewhakaaitu67:

We had arranged to make Tarawera (the second lake where some natives resided) our halting-place for this night, but, although we had nothing to eat, we were so excessively tired as to be obliged to bring up on the white gravelled shores of the placed Rangiwakaaita [i.e. RerewhakaaituJ. I offered my natives the choice of staying supperless where we were, or of proceeding on to Tarawera, distant about three miles, and there getting supper; fatigue, however, overcame hunger, even in a New Zealander, and they chose the latter. The whole face of the country in the neighbourhood of the lake, was overspread with massy blocks of compact lava scattered in every direction, many of which were vitrified on the surface. The ground gently rose on every side from the lake, which appeared to occupy a deep hollow; and, I could but venture to suppose, that this might perhaps have been the crater of that volcano, which, in some by-gone age, inundated the whole of the adjacent country with showers of pumice and ashes.

64 Ibid, 159. 65 William Colenso, Excursion in the northern Island of New Zealand in the summer of 1841-42, Launceston VDL, 1844. 66 See David Mackay, "Colenso, William", Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol 1, 1990, pp 87-89; A.G. Bagnall and G.c. Petersen, William Colenso, Wellington, 1948; Nancy M. Taylor, Early Travellers in New Zealand, Clarendon, Oxford, 1959 1-3. 67 Colenso, Excursion, 54-9.

41 Leaving Rerewhakaaitu, the party travelled on to Tarawera:

At an early hour the next morning we arose, feverish, stiff, and sore, to re­ commence our march. We soon came within sight of the place where the hot-springs were situated; from which the steam and sulphureous vapours ascended in dense white clouds. The air, this morning, was cool and bracing; and, after travelling about an hour and a half we arrived at Tarawera Lake. Here, at a little village on its banks, we gained some potatoes, on which we breakfasted with a hearty zest. At this place, were several small hot springs, which flowed out of the earth near the edge of the lake; the water of some was hotter than the hand could bear. Just within the lake, the water was warm; a little further on, it was luke-warm; and further still; it was cold; so that these natives have baths, of every requisite degree of heat, always ready, without any trouble whatever. The water of the lake, I supposed to be specifically heavier than the sulphureous hot waters which flowed into it; as, whenever the natives of the village wished to drink, I observed them to go into the lake, and dashing the uppermost water aside with their feet, quickly take up some from beneath, which, they said, was good and cold. The natives of the village informed me, that, at a spring on a hill at a little distance, the water was quite hot enough for the purposes of cooking, for which they often used it. Sulphur, too, abounded there, and was often 'thrown up' out of the earth, from which place the steam and smoke ever ascended .... Breakfast ended, we, accompanied by the chief of the village, paddled nearly to the opposite side of the lake. This sheet of water is about three and a half miles in length, and from one to two miles in breadth; is surrounded on all sides by barren hills, and is very deep. Landing, and walking abou two furlongs, we came to Kareha [Okareka], another little lake much smaller than the proceeding. Here, we were obliged to sit and wait some time before we could get a canoe, which having obtained, we paddled to the opposite end. This little lake is about a mile in length, and about three quarters of a mile in breadth. Resuming our journey, and gaining the top of a high hill, we had a fine prospect of the principal Lake of Rotorua; a fine sheet of water about six miles in diameter, with a very picturesque island nearly in the midst. An easy journey of a few miles from the top of the hill, brought us to Te Ngae, a church mision station on the eastern side of the lake; where we were very hospitably received by Mr Chapman. I gained not a single botanical specimen throughout the whole course of this day.

42 3.18. Colenso made a visit to Ohinemutu from Te Ngae:

I remained at Te Ngae for a few days; during which time I visited Ohinemutu, a large and fenced town on the banks of the lake, celebrated for its boiling springs. This village is one of the principal ones belonging to that very turbulent tribe, Ngatiwakaaue [sic]; in it the the head chiefs of the tribe have for a long time resided. The large spring at this place was boiling most furiously, throwing out many gallons of water a minute, which rolled away steaming and smoking into the lake, a second Phlegethon. In the smaller springs, of which there were severl, the natives cook their food, merely tying it up in a rude basket made of the leaves of Phonnium tenax [i.e. NZ flax] woven together, and placing it in the boiling water, where it soon dressed. For this purpose, and for that of bathing, they have made a number of holes through the crust, or scoria, on which this village is princiapally built; so that it may truly be said, that this people dwell in houses built over subterranean fires. The sulphureous stench which abounded here, was almost insupportable. The blade of a knife immersed for a short period in some of these waters, soon becomes as it were superficially bronzed. Accidents not unfrequently happen to children; and to dogs and pigs brought from a distance. The quadrupeds, however, of the place, appear instinctively to be well aware of the potential callidity of these streams, and shun them accordingly. The natives who live in this neighbourhood are, when travelling, easily recognised as belonging to this district, in consequence of their front teeth decaying at a very early age, contrary to those of other New Zealan?-ers. This is supposed to be caused by the sulphur with which these springs are impregnated, being deposited on he surface of their food during the operation of cooking, which, consisting chiefly of roots, is mostly bitten into morsels with their fron teeth. The natives of this village are celebrated, among other things, for their manufacture of tobacco-pipes; an article of first-rate utility to a New Zealander. These they carve out of a white stonewhich is found in this neighbourhood, patiently finishing a short-stemmed pipe in a day. These pipes look well, and stand the heat of the fire. I saw some beautiful white blocks of this stone near the village, lying on the surface of the ground; some of which were vitrified on the outside. The natives of this neighbourhood grow their own tobacco, which they gather, and, separating the large fibres of the leaf, twist up into figs , in imitation of our negro-head.

43 3.19. Another early visitor was Edward Jerningham Wakefield, Edward Gibbon Wakfield's son (1820-1879) who travelled to Taupo in 1841. He described this journey in his best-selling Adventure in New Zealand, published in London in 1845. Wakefield came to New Zealand on the Tory in 1839 with his uncle, Colonel William Wakefield. Edward was naturally wholly bound up in the New Zealand Company's affairs, and his brilliant book is essentially a propaganda work for the Company. His book is something of a piece with Edward himself: according to Ronda Cooper "he was marked throughout his life, and beyond it, by a damning reputation for flawed and wasted brilliance".68 Wakefield's journey to Taupo seems to have been for his own amusement - he went there, he says, to visit "myoId friends".69 Travelling from Wanganui Wakefield's party reached the mountains of the central plateau and then Lake Rotoaira, where they stayed at the lakeside village of Tukituki. Wakefield describes the village in the following excerpt, in which he notes the presence of famous hot springs visible on the slopes of the mountain he calls Puki Onake (Pukeonake - the springs he is referring to are the Ketetahi Springs on the northern flank of Mount Tongariro):70

On the 26th we remained at Tuku-Tuku to rest. This is a pretty settlement, in the N.E. comer of the lake. The underwood has been cut away, but the tall forest trees, matai or mai, remain standing and still alive; the plantations and villages are dispersed among their trunks, on the acclivity which rises up from the side of the lake to Pihanga. They grow all their potatoes here by throwing up the soil in heaps, about four feet in diameter, and a foot high; so that the whole cultivation takes place above the surface in artificial beds. The soil is a rich brown loam, mingled, however, with a large proportion of powdered pumice-stone. The rain continued at intervals, and the clouds hung below the surface of Puki Onaki. Half-way up the steep N.E. face of this mountain, a boiling spring juts out, which is considered by the natives a sovereign remedy for some diseases: they travel from all parts to benefit by its healing qualities; Watanui, the head chief of the Ngatiraukawa tribe, is stated to have obtained here a wonderful cure.

68 Ronda Cooper, "Wakefield, Edward Jemingham", Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol 1, 1990, P 575. 69 E,J, Wakefield, Adventure in New Zealand, John Murray, London, 1845, vol ii, 83. 70 lbid,99.

44 3.20. Wakefield went on to Tokaanu where he met the young chief Herekiekie, whose manner and good-natured exercise of his unquestioned authority greatly impressed Wakefied. Due to one of his companions falling ill, Wakefield stayed at Tokaanu for nearly a month and saw much of the surrounding countryside. He paid a visit to Te Rapa where he met Te Heuheu Mananui, where the latter hosted a "splendid feast" for the group of Wanganui Maori Wakefield was travelling with. Wakefield writes in his book at length of the geography of the area, including the hot springs. He visited the springs at Tokaanu, described as follows: 71

A space of about 10 acres on either side of the Tokanu stream is perforated with holes and cavities of various sizes, from which steam issues in large quantities. Some part of this space is barren, and whitened by the sulphureous exhalations from the hot springs; but in other places, manuka and rich grass grow to the very edge of a boiling cavity. In some places, a small hole only is perceptible, from which issues a stream of steam: here the natives form their ovens, and cook their food very nicely with great expedition.

Wakefield also testifies to the use of the pools for bathing:72

Close to my house was a warm spring, so shallow that you could lie down on the sandy bottom, holding your head out of water. In this bath all the natives assembled, morning and evening; and, indeed, I never found a time, late or early, that there were not some in the water. I soon learned to join them; and used to remain there for hours, smoking and playing at draughts, at which game all the natives have learned to be extremely expert. To their frequent use of these baths I attribute the cleanliness and good health of the natives of this part of the country: who are totally free from the cutaneous diseases so universal among the coast tribes, and generally a cleaner and handsomer race.

71 Ibid, 102-3. 72 Ibid, 108.

45 3.21. Ernest Dieffenbach travelled to New Zealand on the Tory in May 1839 employed as a naturalist by the New Zealand Company. He was "the first trained scientist to live and work in New Zealand".73 He travelled extensively around the country, returning to England in 1841. His work Travels in New Zealand was published in London in 1843. He visited Taupo, where he found that because of Bidwill' s unauthorized ascent of Tongariro Te Heuheu had issued instructions forbidding anyone else to ascend it:74

We could not persuade the natives to allow us to ascend the principal cone, which me might have accomplished in four hours. The head chief of the Taupo tribes, Te Heu Heu, was absent on a war excursion to Wanganui, and before he went he had laid a solemn "tapu" on the mountain, and until his return they ciould not grant us permission to ascend it. This "tapu" was imposed in consequence of a European traveller of the name of Bidwill having gone to the top without permission, which had caused great vexation, as the mountain is held in traditional veneration, and is much dreaded by the natives, being, as they tell you, the "backbone of their Tupuna," or great ancestor, and having a white head, like their present chieftain.

Dieffenbach gives a full description of the thermal areas near the delta of the Tongariro river (the areas today known as the Tokaanu and Hipaua fields) and the village of Te Rapa. Behind Te Rapa village Dieffenbach found an extremely active thermal area (it was this unstable hillside which suddenly collapsed in 1846, overwhelming the village):75

The most interesting hot-springs and fumeroles [sic] are in the delta which the Waikato [Tongariro] has formed in entering the lake on its left shore, and on the sides of the hills which bound the delta to the south-west. The scenery on the western shore of the lake is magnificent, vigorous trees overhanging the black trachitic or basaltic escarpments of the shore: here and there are native houses and cleared places on the precipitous hills. Where this shore joins the delta of the Waikato there is a narrow belt of flat land, on which stands the village of Te-rapa. Behind it the hills rise to

73 Denis McLean, "Dieffenbach, Johann Karl Ernst", Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, 1990, 107. 74 Ernest Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, 2 vols, John Murray, London, 1843, vol i., 347. 75 Ibid, 339-40.

46 about 100 feet above the lake. In ascending, the ground is found to be of a high temperature; the surface is often bare, or is scantily covered with mosses and lichens; it is formed of a red or white clay of a soft and alkaline nature which the natives use instead of soap. and sometimes eat.76 Gaseous effluvia seem to have converted the rock of the hill, which is basalt, and sometimes amygdaloid, into this clay. When we approach the top of this amphitheatre of hills, the scene which presents itself is very striking. Vapours issue from hundreds of crevices, and in most of these places there are shallow springs, the bottom of which is a soft mud, into which a stick can be easily driven ten feet. The temperature of the water is from 200 degrees to 212 degrees Fahrenheit. In some springs it has an argillaceous, and in others a sulphurous taste. A subterranean noise is continually heard, resembling the working of a steam-engine, or the blast of an iron-foundry. By placing some fern over a crevice, and their food (potatoes, kumeras, or pork) upon it, the natives have a ready and convenient oven.

Along the lakeshore were "ponds of hot water", which, "formed either by nature or artificially by the natives, are used as bathing places".

3.22. Dieffenbach travelled on to Lake Rotorua which he describes as follows:77

This lake is about twenty-four miles in circumference, and nearly circular. The hills which surround it are low, but to the westward they rise to the height of about 800 feet. This latter range is wooded; and wood is also found at some other places near the lake, giving a rich variety to the scenery; but generally the country is open and covered with fern. The singular distribution of the woods shows that a great part of them have been destroyed artificially. In someplaces there are the black stems still standing. The destruction was evidently occasioned by the natives burning the wood when clearing patches for cultivation. This method they were obliged to repeat frequently, as the soil soon became exhausted, compelling them to seek fresh spots of ground.

He describes the hot springs of Ohinemutu and Maori use of them:

76 [Carbonate of magnesia] (Dieffenbach's footnote) 77 Ibid, 388-9.

47 The circumstance that renders the lake of Rotorua particularly interesting is the number of hot-springs which at several places rise close to its banks: those on the south side are the most powerful; they consist of a numerous smaller or larger basins, and from several of the openings every five minutes a column of steam and water, of two feet in diameter, is thrown up with great violence to a height of three or four feet. All around the springs a jasper-like deposit is found, which is either soft, like chalk, or forms what is called porcelain jasper and magnesite. In some places it is of a white or greyish colour, and when soft adheres to the tongue, in which state the natives use it for making pipes, which, however, are now scarce, as the European pipes have superseded them. The largest village is built close to the springs, and the natives have from time to time used them as a natural kitchen for boiling their food. The water of several of these springs is clear and nearly tasteless, and its temperature is above the boiling-point. The pa, which is the finest I have seen in New Zealand, occupies a large surface, which is actually intersected by crevices from which steam issues, by boiling springs, and by mud volcanoes. It requires great care even for the native to wind his way through this intricate and dangerous labyrinth. Accidents are very common, as the thickness and solidity of the insecure crust upon which the pa is built are continually changing, and the ground suudenly sometimes gives way at a place where shortly before it appeared to be perfectly firm. At one time a part of the village close to the edge of the lake subsided several feet, and the water took its place. The palisades are still visible, and standing upright under water. In some places only a narrow path leads through a field of boiling mud; and in the neighbourhood of the pa are a great many of those curious mud-cones which I have already described.

3.23. Dieffenbach was greatly impressed by the pa at Ohinemutu, especially by the quality of its works of art:78

The structures in this pa - the houses, doors, and palisades - displayed the most ingenious pieces of native workmanship. I have nowhere else seen carvings in such profusion, and some of them were apparently very old. Many of the figures are representations of the progenitors of the tribe, and the collection of figures in and around each house may be considered as the genealogical tree of its owner. Each of the representations of the human figure bears the name of some tupuna, or ancestor, and the

78 Ibid, 390-1

48 whole is actually a carved history ... Within the pa some were busy carving, or working at canoes, whilst others enjoyed the dolce far niente, Comparing the upstart settlements of missionary natives with this old heathen pa, the former really look extremely miserable and tame.

3.24. He also describes Mokoia Island:79

Almost in the middle of the lake, but somewhat towards its eastern shore, is the island of Mokoia. It is about a mile long, and hilly, with a belt of low land around it. The hills rise to the height of about 300 feet above the lake, and are in many places covered with shrubs and small trees. From having formerly been the principal abode of the Rotu-rua natives, and their great stronghold against the Nga-pui and Waikato tribes, it was always well cultivated, and grasses, both native and European, plantain, chickweed, and others, which in such cases generally spring up, vary agreeably the usually brown tint of the lower native vegetation. Formerly the mission-station was on this island, and many of the shrubs which were planted in the garden of the station are stil remaining. On the flat land are fields of sweet potatoes, for the growth of which the light soil is peculiarly adapted. Here, again, the chief attraction is the thermal springs which issue close to the margin of the lake. The natives have banked them up from it by a surrounding wall of stones ...

3.25. In 1844 the writer and artist George French Angas visited New Zealand. He subsequently published an illustrated book of his adventures, Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand (1847).80 Angas travelled to Taupo

79 Ibid, 393. 80 For a biographical note see Moira M. Long,"Angas, George French 1822-1886", Dictionary of New Zealand Biography vol 1, 1990, 5-6. Long sums up his contibution to ethnography as follows: /I Although his stay in New Zealand was brief, George Angas made an important contribution to the preservation of knowledge of Maori culture. His interests in ethnography and natural history, combined with his artistic ability, enabled him to produce an extremely valuable record of the Maori way of life. Accuracy and attention to detail characterise his descriptions and depictions of artefacts, clothing and dwellings, but in his Maori portraits he succumbs to the prevalent fashion for the sentimental and the picturesque, Europeanising the Maori features and reducing his subjects to stereotypes." Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand, dedicated to Sir George Grey, was published by Smith Elder & Co in london, 1847; there is available a one-volume reprint pubished by A.H. and A.W. Reed.

49 via the Wanganui river valley. He describes the central North Island peaks as follows:81

At length, after three days' journey, we emerged from the almost interntinable forest, and entered upon a grassy tract of open volcanic land, strewn everywhere with lumps of pumice. It was late in the afternoon when we reached the open country; and the bright sunshine and fresh air gladdened us, after the dull twilight and damp and stagnant atmosphere of the woodland solitudes. Magnificently did Tongariro and the Ruapahu [sic], burst upon our sight, as we looked over the open country beyond us. The summits of these vast mountains were enveloped in clouds; the steam rolling in volumes from the crater of Tongariro is condensed by the cold of that exalted region, fronting a canopy of vapour that, in calm weather, conceals the head of the sacred mountain: for, by the New Zealanders, it is considered as strictly tapu.

Angas remarks on a number of occasions on the sacred quality of the peak he refers to as Tongariro (it seems to be that it is actually Ngauruhoe that he is referring to): it was forbidden to climb the mountain or even to draw pictures of it (a prohibition which Angas surreptitiously broke).

3.26. Angas visited Te Rapa and met Te Heuheu Mananui and his brother Iwikau. He describes Te Heuheu as "a fine old man; he stands nearly seven feet high and is very corpulent":82

His hair is silvery white, and his people compare it to the snowy head of the sacred Tongariro; there being no object, except this tapu mountain, of equal sanctity to permit of its being mentioned in connection with the head of their chief.

Behind the village of Te Rapa was a steep hillside dotted with steam vents and boiling springs:83

I visited the boiling springs which issue from the side of a steep mountain above Te Rapa. There are nearly one hundred of them; they burst out, bubbling up from little

81 Ibid, vol. ii, 106. 82 Ibid, 110. 83 Ibid, 113-4.

50 orifices inthe ground, which are not more than a few inches in diameter, and the steam rushes out in clouds with considerable force: the hill-side is covered with them, and a river of hot water runs down: into the lake. The soil around is a red and white clay, strongly impregnated with sulphur and hydrogen gas: pyrites also occur. Several women were busy cooking baskets of potatoes over some of the smaller orifices; leaves and fern were laid over the holes, upon which the food was placed: I tasted some of the potatoes and they were capitally done.

3.27. Another early visitor was Donald McLean who left a detailed journal of a visit he made to Taupo and Rotorua in 1845. McLean, at that time aged only 25, was a sub-protector of aborigines for Taranaki and Wanganui.84 He was accompanied on this journey by the Reverend Richard Taylor, eMS missionary at Wanganui since 1843. Both men kept very full journals describing this journey. McLean and Taylor were accompanied by a group of Wanganui Maori. Travelling from Wanganui, they reached Rotoaira on 12 November 1845 and Tokaanu the following day where they stayed with the chief Herekiekie and looked at the hot springs. The next morning they bathed in a hot pool. Taylor writes in his journal:85

... the bath caused us to break out in a profuse perspiration and I have no doubt is highly beneficial to the natives in cleaning their bodies and dispersing those humours to which they are so liable there are few who do not daily use them. I counted 12 sitting in one.

They travelled on to Te Heuheu's86 village at Te Rapa. Gust one year later Te Rapa was overwhelmed by a massive mud flow in which Te Heuheu lost his life along with nearly all the inhabitants of the village.87) On the14th McLean had an interview with Te Heuheu, where the subject closest to the hearts of

84 Alan Ward, "McLean, Donald", Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol. 1, 1990, 255-8. 85 Reverend Richard Taylor, Journal, Typescript AlML, Nov. 14 1845, p. 170. 86 I.e. Mananui, Te Heuheu Tukino II. 87 John Te H. Grace, Tuwharetoa, Reed, Wellington, 1959, 238-40.

51 both men - politics - was discussed at length. Amongst other things Te Heuheu told McLean:88

That he found a difficulty in keeping the tribes around him in proper subjection to himself. And to show his own disposition to both Europeans and natives he said he was sending his women and children to Wellington with mats and kokowai as presents for Te Rauparaha and Ngatata (?), and he did not wish to conceal from us that there was a strong disposition on the part of the natives to have more fighting, that the mission natives were not well disposed and want to make themselves greater than they have any right, and that was one reason he did not join them.

3.28. By Wednesday 19 November McLean and Taylor had reached Rotokawa:89

We got on to a small lake called Rotokauau and pitched our tents for the night having had a fatiguing journey we indulged ourselves with the luxury of a glass of wine. The water of this small lake is unfit fo general use owing to the quantity of sulphuric acid contained in it we however managed it by putting in some carbonate of soda which is a great improvement. This lake abounds with ducks. The general character of the country after leaving Taupo lake and along the Taioroho mountains is level and perfectly barren and useless with a few scatterred bunches of wi wi grass growing over a pumice soil with occasional Puias presenting the appearance of an immense buryal ground the whole road appearing equally barren and gloomy.

Taylor describes the area in his journal as follows:90

About 7 we reached Rotokawa dripping with wet and shaking with cold here we pitched our tents, the plain from Taupo to this place is very barren covered with moss occasional tufts of grass and solitary manuka trees there are many gas jets along the road and large quantities of sulphur and alum, the ground is hollow and gives the idea of travelling over a vast gulf. We found the waters of the lake Rotokawa strongly

88 Donald McLean, Journal kept during a visit to the tribes in the interior of the northern island of New Zealand, manuscript, McLean papers, ATL. 89 Ibid. 90 Taylor, Journal, AIML typescript, 177.

52 impregnated with Sulphuric acid but by adding soda we managed to drink the tea. It was late when we got to bed, we walked tod-day about 2S [miles]. 20. A fine morning the mountain opposite appeared to be full of smoking pits and imparted a very disagreeable smell to the atmosphere. We managed to drink our coffee made with diluted sulphuric acid by adding soda but I found it difficult to wash with. We went to look at the lake it is about 3/4 of a mile long and broad it lays in a deep hollow with perpendicular sides the waters are deep and motionless, and though undrinkable are still resorted to by hundreds of ducks the duck of Taupo and this part is of a peculiar kind the size is greater and the flesh more abundant than those in general.

The next day they reached 'Hohaki' (Ohaaki) "where", writes McLean, "there are a few houses, but found no natives". Taylor remarks:91

We came to a place abounding in hot springs puias whose deposit is so great as to be forming a siliceous stratum here there is a pa Kowhaki [Ohaaki] but we found no one within it.

The following day they noticed a strange sculpture on the side of the track. Taylor writes:92

... we came to a curious image of a man or woman with two infants in its arms it had a singular appearance as we approached it and being placed in a very conspicuous place is visible at a great distance and looks like some one approaching it is dressed up with great care and appears to have been there many years. It strongly reminded me of some of the ruder manufactured ones I have seen on the Continent of the Virgin and the Lord, the only difference being that the idol of the New Zealand savage is tattooed while those of idolatrous Rome are merely painted.

They passed through a kainga named Paeroa (obviously near the present Paeroa range which lies between Rainbow Mountain and the Waikite Valley), and on the 22nd reached Rotokakahi (which McLean refers to as Mututawa and Taylor as Motukawa: in other sources this name is confined to the island in the lake). They crossed the lake to Tarawera "where Mr Spencer an

91 Ibid, 178. 92 Ibid.

53 American in deacons orders is located" and then on via Lake Okareka to Te Ngae where they stayed with the Chapmans at the CMS mission. Here they caught up with news of the day, the progress of Heke's war in the north, and the arrival of Captain George Grey at Auckland to take up his position as the new governor. On the 26th McLean was "delighted" to meet Pukuatua, "the old chief of Maketu", and again McLean had a long discussion on political affairs.

3.29. The same day they walked to Ohinemutu where they spent the night. McLean described Ohinemutu as "very thickly populated" with "many interesting children most of whom know their English alphabet". Describing Ohinemutu, McLean writes:

The most remarkable features in this place are the immense numbers of hot springs in the very centre of the Pah rendering it dangerous to walk about after dark. It appears to be a complete subterranean boiler of volcanic steam. These springs are not unattended by danger to the inhabitants sometimes breaking out in fresh places and scalding those who come near to death. They are of different temperatures, some sufficiently hot for cooking food whilst others make agreeable baths.

Taylor remarks:93

This morning I went to see Miss Coney's infant school [at Te Ngae] with which I was much pleased, afterwards Mr Chapman took us in the boat a part of the way to Ohinemutu, we went about five miles when we landed and walked the remainder of the way which was about four miles further. We passed many hot springs on the side of the lake which here is evidently losing although the natives say it is gaining on the pa part of which is sunk. This is a most singular place it is literally filled with ngawhas and many are very dangerous many lives have been lost the natives cook all their provisions in them, they also bathe in the tepid ones, some are paved over on which they dry their hinanga and shellfish, they seldom light a fire for the general temperature of the place is many degrees higher than that of the neighbourhood and whilst at Mr Chapman's the fig tree will not grow on account of the continued frosts

93 Taylor, Journal, 181-2.

54 here it flourishes and has fruit already half ripe, the natives have these hot springs even under their houses over which they place a covering of branches and then sleep on them. They are constantly bathing in the tepid water and thus have a much more cleanly appearance than they generally have elsewhere but all even from childhood have bad teeth which must arrive from cooking their food in the ngawhas which are strongly impregnated with sulphuric acid. The pa appears to have larger than at present judging from the many carved posts still standing. One post of the pa is so wide as to have an entrance cut through it on which is curiously carved a gigantic figure of Tiki the first man. The church is a pretty large and good building the children are very proud of their schooling and were very pressing for me to examine into their proficiency. After therefore my tent was pitched I held school with with them and then the evening service. We encamped opposite Hoepa's [sic] house he is a high chief and head teacher a noble looking man. Mr Maclean went to bathe in a ngawha in the evening and I accompanied him, in returning I found it almost impossible to find the way a native came to my aid and carefully conducted me over a narrow bridge thrown across a boiling spring taking a firm grasp of my hand lest I should slip into the boiling gulf below.

3.30. Richard Taylor subsequently published his impressions of New Zealand in 1855 in his book Te Ika a Maui. 94 He describes Orakeikorako as follows: 95

At Orakokorako [sic], on the Waikato, the boiling springs are almost innumerable; some of them shoot up a volume of water to a considerable height, and are little, if at all, inferior to the Geysers of Iceland. A village is placed in the midst of them; the reason assigned for living in such a singular locality was, that as there is no necessity for fires, all their cooking being done in the hot springs, the women's backs are not broken with carrying fuel, and further, from the warmth of the ground they were enabled to raise their crops several weeks earlier than their neighbours; but, as a counterbalance for these advantages, many fatal accidents occur from persons, especially strangers and children, falling into these fearful caldrons, and being boiled.

94 Rev. Richard Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, or New Zealand and its inhabitants, Wertheim and Macintosh, London, 1855. 95 Ibid, 223-4.

55 3.31. Taylor also describes a visit to Rotomahana. Taylor's account is as follows:96

The first view of Rotomahana is very remarkable, and cannot fail to excite the traveller's astonishment. The lake lies in a great hollow, evidently a crater, flanked on the side by which we approached its margin with lofty precipices; but containing a considerable extent of low swampy land along one of the shores; the opposite bank is formed of hills, literally covered with boiling springs, emitting volumes of steam, and the soil being of red or white ochre, gives the whole a most extraordinary appearance. On the lower side it has an outlet into the Tarawera Lake. There are several islands in it, some merely a few connected tufts of grass, but abounding in water fowl, ducks, pukeko,and sea birds, which appear to delight in the warmth of their abode. Two of these islands present a singular appearance, being composed of misshapen rocks and ochreous hills, filled with boiling cauldrons and jets of vapour, intermingled with manuka trees and native huts, on reaching which, the stranger scarcely knows where to set his foot, lest he should tread on unsafe ground, the whole surface being very hot, and overspread with fragments of former puia.

3.32. In 1847 the central lakes region was visited by Dr John Johnson, who in 1840 had been appointed as New Zealand's first colonial surgeon. His account was published in The New-Zealander, an Auckland newspaper, 22 September-29 December 1847. In the author'S judgment Johnson's account is one of the fullest, most objective and most interesting of all the sources, its value compounded by its early date and its very full description of Rotomahana and the Terraces as well as Ohinemutu. Johnson's account is fairly readily accessible as it reprinted in Nancy Taylor's Early Travellers in New Zealand (1959); Don Stafford also devotes a chapter of his Te Arawa to Johnson's visit.97 Leaving Auckland in December 1846 Johnson and his companion travelled south through the Waikato, travelling to Rotorua via Maungatautari and the Patetere plateau. Descending to Lake Rotorua, they came to a large stream flowing into the lake, about a quarter of a mile from

96 Taylor, op.cit., 245-6. 97 Stafford, Te Arawa, ch. 52.

56 Ohinemutu. Although the stream was "perfectly cold", alongside it lay "hundreds" of boiling water and mud springs, and "a cluster of huts were built along its banks for the express purpose of enjoying the luxury of the bath from reservoirs filled by those very springs".98 Johnson crossed into Ohinemutu by means of "a very rickety bridge formed of an old canoe", and stayed in "a well built and commodious ware, belonging to Hohepa, one of the Christian teachers, who always accomodates respectable pakeha" .99 Like so many visitors, Johnson was impressed by the striking "grotesque" carvings terminating the palisade posts, although the stockade itself was "now neglected and falling into decay". Johnson estimated the population of Ohinemutu as at about five hundred. About a third of the inhabitants were Roman Catholics, about a third were affiliated to the CMS, and the remainder were pagan. The spiritual needs of the Catholics were catered to by Father Rene, "one of the Propagandist Missionaries, who resides in the pa, and the tinkling of whose bell to matins and vespers, with the measured chant of his flock were heard during the day." The CMS mission by this time was situated at Te Ngae.

3.33. Johnson is one of the few visitors who gives any information about the allocation of property rights in the geothermal resource at Ohinemutu. There was one large pool (in fact an arm of the lake) which was the common bathing-place of the whole community. Johnson describes it in some detail as follows: 100

Jan. 6. We rose at daybreak, and on going out found the whole pa enveloped in vapour, which was rising from the numerous ngawha , and we could hear the voices and the splashing, though we could not see the persons, of a number of people in the lake below, who were enjoying the luxury of a bath, in the common bathing-place. Thither we descended and found it nothing less than an arm of the lake, occupying at least an acre in extent, which was heated to a temperature of 96 degrees, both by the streams that flow into it from the ngawha , as well as from a large boiling spring in its centre, by

98 John Johnson, "Notes from a Journal", reprinted in Nancy Taylor, Early Travellers in New Zealand, 1959, 154. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid, 155.

57 approaching, or keeping at a distnce from which, the temperature may be varied at pleasure, but in the summer season it is never below what I have stated. On reaching the edge of the basin, a scene, certainly unique of its kind, presented itself. About a hundred and fifty people of all ages were engaged in bathing, all in a state of nature, with the exception of the women, who, beyond a certain age, wore the bouraki [rapaki?l, a species of kilt made of flax, reaching from the waist to the knee. In one comer might be seen a group of young women with dripping tresses, like so many Stygian Naiads - in another, a swarm of young urchins, sporting about like so many imps in Dante's Inferno. Here were a party of the seniors of the pa, seated in the water, quietly enjoying their morning pipe - and there, a family from grand-father to grand­ child, and mothers with infants at the breast, enjoying this agreeable luxury; but the strangest scene of all was a row of young men sitting up to their necks in water, in front of whom was squatted a man who was asking questions, which were answered by the posse in full chorus. I found, on enquiry, that these were a set of young noviciates aspiring to an entrance into the Christian field, who were repeating the ten commandments to their teacher, as an initiatory rite.

Johnson was uncertain, however, about the therapeutic benefits of bathing in the springs:

This frequent use of the bath by the natives, for they spend half their time in this public one, or in private ones attached to many of the houses, cannot be favourable to - their general health, for though it affords an exemption from skin-disease, so prevalent amongst the natives in other parts of the country, and gives their skins an almost velvet softness and gloss, yet I remarked that a greater number of the children were disfugured by glandular swellings about the neck, and other scrofulous tumors, than I had seen elsewhere.

3.34. Johnson gives some further information about the use of geothermal resources at Ohinemutu in the following passage, where he identifies cooking, the use of formed bathing-pools (waiariki) and heating as other applications of the resource. He also gives further information about the

58 allocation of property rights, some springs being communal and others belonging to families: 101

We had some difficulty in procuring wood, with which to prepare our breakfast after the English fashion, as there is none nearer than six miles, for the inhabitants of the pa cook their food by immersing it in the boiling springs, which are so numerous near the lake, that almost every house possessses a natural kitchen, and those who live higher up the the hill, make use of several, common to all who choose to take advantage of them as public property. But as all the waters are slightly acidulous, food cooked in the ngawha corrodes the teeth, and gives them a blackened decayed look, so that natives of Rotorua are recognised everywhere by that disfigurementi nor does it seem to agree with Europeans, being apt to produce indigestion and irregularities of the bowels. The pa occupies the steep sides of the hill I have before described, as rising from the edge of the lake, to the height of perhaps two hundred feet - its base, and a long point, jutting out, which forms one side of the common bathing pool. The foot of the hill and the point are composed of a whitish rock. a deposit from the springs, which seems to be an impure alumina, the chemical base of clay. It is indeed a mere crust, covering an immense reservoir of boiling water, for every part of it is perforated by circular apertures to the edge of which the water rises in a state of ebullition. Each family has managed to secure two or more of these, in the square fenced enclosures, common to native pas, which, as I have before mentioned, they use as a cooking -place, but they also make use of them for other purposes of domestic convenience, one, being that of private baths called wai ariki which are hollowed out of the rock or shaped with flat slabs, and are heated to a suitable temperature, by means of channels, which convey the necessary quantity of boiling water from the spring that is constantly overflowing, into the bath, or it can be turned into the lake at pleasure, and the family, by a little management, can always keep the wai ariki at the same heat.

And the geothermal resource was further used as a kind of central heating:

Another, and very singular employment of these springs is, their use as fire-places, and this is managed by covering the apertures with smooth slabs of rock, which, becoming thoroughly heated, impart an agreeable warmth to the family seated on them. They are in fact hot plates, which are never cool. The weather was too warm for the natives

101 Ibid, 156-8.

59 to use them, consequently the dogs of the pa were permitted the sole enjoyment of a station which, in the winter, they only participate with their masters. Cats there are none, as rats can find no hiding holes, without a risk of being boiled or roasted alive. Even sand-flies find the soil too hot for them, and mosquitoes cannot stand the effect of the sulphurous steam. The people of Ohinemutu are thus delivered from three of the pests which afflict other parts of the Colony.

One cooking-pool was used communally by the whole community:

Some of these springs are of considerable size, one, on the edge of what may be called the place [i.e. town square, plaza], an open space on which there is a common cooking­ place and hot plate, is so deep, that it appears of a black colour, and as it is not guarded by a fence, is the scene of frightful accidents. The eldest son of our host fell into it, and was instantly scalded to death.

3.35. Johnson visited an area of springs "to the eastward of the pa", presumably the springs now within Kuirau Park. Some springs here were of particular value for cleaning clothes and medicinal purposes: 102

We passed on the way some extensive kumera [sic] gardens, and soon got among thickets of manuka, when we were suddenly startled by hearing a hollow roar, and seeing close before us a jet of boiling water thrown up several feet into the air; on approaching the spot, we saw a large circular aperture in the rocky depOSit, into which the water had nearly sunk out of sight, but the hollow sound being again heard after a few minutes, we were warned by our gides to retire, and the boiling water again spouted up as before. This intermitting action continued the whole time we were near the spot, and in the winter, this geyser is said to eject its water to the height of fifteen feet and more. It is related on one occasion that a marauding party of the Ngatituwharetoa, a Taupo tribe, had come here with hostile intentions, and had from the warmth of the circumjacent ground, bivouacked aound the aperture, when an unusual stream of water issued from it to a great height, and propelled by a powerful wind, overwhelmed a great number of the marauders, who were scalded to death, an event which the natives of the pa attributed to the wrath of an avenging atua , or spirit, punishing them for their

102 Ibid, 160.

60 unprovoked aggression. The water thus thrown out, is received into a rocky basin below the immediate source, and is used as a washing place by the natives; I therefore expected to find it highly alkaline, but in this I was mistaken, for it did not affect the usual tests for alkaliS, but deeply blackened sugar of lead, thus showing that it was strongly sulphureous. It is probably the entire absence in its composition of the acid, which prevails in all the other springs, that renders it suitable for washing, as acids harden any unctuous substance. The natives find, that the other springs do not cleanse their greasy garments, and consequently have recourse to the one in question where an absence of any opposing principle permits the boiling water to perform its usual purifying office. Not far off, there is a very large basin, filled to the brim with hot water, but not in ebullition, for its surface is like a mirror, and of such a depth that we could not see the bottom of the rocky cavity that contained it, consequently, it appeared of a deep black colour, though when taken out it was quite pellucid. It was acidulous, though so near the one just described; but the most curious object in this extraordinary region, was a pool of perfectly cold water, of a greenish yellow colour, whose soft muddy banks were covered by a white efflorescent crust. It reddened litmus paper intensely, and had a highly acidulous and bitter taste ... Here then were three springs, within two hundred yards of each other, of different temperature and qualities, one boiling hot, a second warm, and a third preternaturally cold. The Natives make use of the latter, as if instinctively for the cure of diarrhoea and dyssentry...

3.36. After his stay at Ohinemutu Johnson travelled to Rotomahana, first visiting Okareka. The party was ferried by canoe to a village situated on a "rocky knoll terminating a long point that projects into the lake". Here Johnston found "a cluster of neat wares and a good deal of careful cultivation in rich soil at the base of the hill".103 He was now in Tuhourangi territory. At Okareka the group was hosted by a Tuhourangi chieftainess, "a handsome interesting-looking woman, but stone blind, notwithstanding which she seemed to be treated with marked kindness and attention by the tribe". They travelled on to Lake Tarawera, which Johnson thought particularly beautiful: it reminded him of a Swiss lake. They reached the village known as Ruakareo (Te Wairoa), and came to the home of Mr Spencer and "his amiable wife". Johnson was impressed with Spencer's "metamorphosing a New

103 Ibid, 163.

61 Zealand pa into a place much resembling an English village". The church was then being constructed: "when completed, it will be a building of which both the architects and the workmen may be justly proud". The following day they travelled to Rotomahana, first crossing Lake Tarawera by canoe to reach a small village (Koutu) situated at the mouth of the stream by which the warm water of Lake Rotomahana flowed out into Lake Tarawera. Johnson describes the village as follows: 104

A few poor huts lying on a narrow strip of land, beneath an impending basalt precipice, and on the plateau above, formed the settlement; this latter spot had been selected from having the double advantage, of a shelving pebbly shore, where canoes could be beached, which is rare in this part of the lake, where there is deep water to the very edge of the steep banks; and a wai ariki , or hot bath, furnished by a boiling stream issuing from the foot of the rock. We were received by a venerable-looking old man, the chief of the place, who informed us that we must proceed to the ngawha by land, as the river was under tapu so that no canoe could enter it, in order to preserve the water-fowl which frequent it at this season, for the purpose of breeding, as they would otherwise be recklessly killed while sitting on their eggs.

At this time Tuhourangi were far from affluent: it was not until the end of the following decade that anything resembling a tourist industry began to emerge:

On ascending the sides of the precipice, by rather a perilous path, we found the larger part of the settlement to be the most poverty-stricken place we had seen on our journey - the huts were falling to pieces, and their inmates in rags. This state of things evidently arises from their having no communication with the coast, consequently no sale for their produce.

3.37. Johnson and his party then travelled on to Rotomahana, following "a path for two miles, over a succession of bare hills, covered with dwarf fern, and patches of wiry grass in the hollows, but our route was sufficiently indicated by the clouds of steam we saw rising above them from the ngawha;

104 Ibid, 169.

62 at length, on reaching the crest of a hill, we came in sight of the lake, and one of the most singular scenes that imagination can picture." Johnson describes the Terraces, for which he gives the names Wakataroa and Wakatarata. Johnson noticed huts in a number of places: 105

After thus passing onwards fo about three hundred yards, we came to a more extended piece of ground, comparatively free from springs, and the natives had erected some huts, and formed wai ariki, and hot plates ~ as at Ohinemutu, for their use when they reside here in the winter, which they do for the sake of warmth, and this comfort they may assuredly can enjoy to any extent that may suit their feelings.

There were also signs of habitation on the islands in the lake:

There are two islands, a short distance from the shore, which, though covered with shrubs and small-sized trees, are subjected to the same action as the main land, as steam issued from various parts, and I was shewn masses of alum found in the crevices of the rocks of which they are formed. They had a number of huts upon them, which the natives inhabit in the winter. [Lake Rotomahana was] .. of a circular form, covered with large patches of rushes, around which myriads of wild fowls were sporting, and surrounded by bare, wild-looking hills ...

3.38. Johnson went on to Te Ngae where" he stayed with the Chapmans for a few days, taking the opportunity to visit Mokoia Island and the thermal area at Tikitere106, and then returned to Ohinemutu, paying a visit to Whakarewarewa on the way. Johnson concluded on the Rotorua region that "it may be anticipated that at no very distant period, when the true character of its waters as remedial agents has been ascertained, and its beautiful localities and salubrious air are known, it will be a part of the country much resorted to by invalids, and by those whose leisure will permit them to vary their residence".

lOS Ibid, 173. 106 In regard to Tikitere, Johnson remarked that "this valley would appear well situated for the site of the hospital which his Excellency the Governor proposes to erect in this part of the country" - ibid, 177.

63 3.39. In 1849 the central North Island region was visited by the governor, Sir George Grey. There exists a detailed journal of this expedition by George Sisson Cooper)07 The party travelled by yacht to Thames, and then travelled upriver to Ngati Haua territory at Matamata and then on to Rotorua via the Mamaku forest. They came to Puhirua, a village on the northwest side of the lake, and later travelled across the lake by canoe to meet to the mission at Ngae. Thomas Chapman was away at Maketu, expecting the governor to take the more usual Maketu-Rotoiti route to the Rotorua area. From Te Ngae the official party subsequently travelled on to Rotoiti and Rotoma, bathing in the hot springs at Waitangi. Christmas day was spent with the Chapmans, Thomas Chapman hurrying home from Maketu to meet the governor in the company of a young chief, Te Haupapa. The party also travelled on to Mokoia and then to Ohinemutu. Stafford summarises Cooper's narrative as follows: 108

The next morning, Thursday, they walked round the pa and were struck by the number of very fme and ancient carvings in the shape of gateways, posts of houses, and so on. The visitors were astounded at the way the inhabitants lived among the boiling springs and mud pools. Afterwards they took advantage of the priest's [Pere Rene, the Catholic missionary] kind offer and took breakfast with him.

The official party then travelled on to Rotomahana, visiting the Spencers (at this time the CMS Tarawera mission was based at Kariri). They then travelled on to Rotomahana. On the way there the issue of the tapu placed on the wild ducks in the lake was discussed with the governor at a small village named Te Ariki or Piripai on the southern arm of Lake Tarawera. Cooper writes:109

This being the breeding season of the ducks and other wild fowl with which the waters of Rotomahana swarm; they are preserved by a most rigid tapu, until the young are quite fledged ... The natives by way of being very civil told the Governor that we

107 George Sisson Cooper, Journal of an Overland Expedition ... in the Company of Sir George Grey, AIML MS 80. Grey's visit is also described fully by Stafford, Te Arawa, ch.54. Cooper later became resident magistrate at Napier. 108 Stafford, op cit, 328. 109 Cooper, op.cit., 220; this passage is quoted in Stafford, op.cit., 329.

64 might, as a matter of great favour, shoot the birds, but they particularly wished it to be understood that that our case was not to be made a precedent for future travellers. His Excellency, however, after thanking the old chief for his kind offer, explained to him that it was customary in England to preserve all manner of game ... This pleased them very much, and that their request we wrote out a notice in Maori and English, telling all future travellers that they were at liberty to go to Roto Mahana and see whatever was worth looking at there, but that they must on no account fire at or otherwise disturb the birds which they might find on the lake.

3.40. The party travelled on from Rotorua to Taupo, visited Te Heuheu (Iwikau) at Pukawa and reached the site of the devastated village of Te Rapa. Here they learned of a serious dispute, which put at risk the governor's plan to climb the volcanic mountains. This was the opposition of Te Herekiekie, who lived at Tokaanu, to the proposal to bury Te Heuheu's (i.e. Mananui's) body in the crater of Tongariro. At this time Te Herekiekie was at odds with Iwikau due to the latter's selection as Mananui's successor after the latter's accidental death in 1846.110 Cooper writes of this matter and of the thermal areas alongside the lake as follows: 111

The shore of the lake between Te Rapa and the fall of Waihi, a distance of about 3/4 of a mile, abounds in warm springs which issue from the earth just at the the brink of the lake and where the Natives have formed several Waiariki or tepid baths by enclosing a small space around the hot spring with large stones and logs of wood. Here are to be found at all times immense numbers of wild duck 3 or 4 different kinds which delight in paddling about in the warm water along the beach. They are of course very tame, as on account of the proximity to the fallen pa they are held strictly tapu, at least from the natives, though we obtained full permission to shoot as many as we liked. Close to the waterfall are two or three small huts inhabited by the Pukawa natives who have a few patches of cultivation (which looked remarkably well, the soil being of very

110 See John Te H. Grace, TuwhiJretoa, pp 429-51. Both Iwikau and Te Herekiekie were exceptionally able and distinguished chiefs. Te Herekiekie, although the younger man, was nevertheless senior to Iwikau (Mananui's brother). Te Herekiekie's disappointment at the selection of Iwikau was considerable but the strain between the two was finally resolved by the intervention of the missionary Thomas S. Grace. lwikau, amongst his other accomplishments, was a distinguished poet (see Grace, op.cit., 438). 111 G.5. Cooper, Journal of an Overland Expedition .. , Part 3 Taupo to Taranaki, typescript, AIML MS 80, p. 13.

65 superior quality in that spot). having satisfied our curiosity, and the waterfall having been sketched by our indefatigable artist, we returned to camp to dinner. The reports of the intended opposition of Puhaha (Te Herekiekie) to the design of our friends to • deposit the remains of their late Chief in the crater of Tongariro, having been renewed and the subject much talked of this afternoon, it was determined to visit his settlement tomorrow in order to ascertain if possible whether he meant to use force, or in fact what he really intended to do, as it would would have been manifestly improper, not to say culpably foolish, for our party either to have attempted to use force for the acomplishment of our design of ascending the mountain, or to have accompanied a party of natives who were determined to carry out their intention vi et armis and had resolved, as it appears they had, to fight to the last in defence of what they looked on as their right.

The official party travelled on to Tokaanu, to find that Te Herekiekie was not there, having"gone to Whanganui to collect a taua for the purpose of making good his threat against Te HeuHeu". The governor spoke to Te Herekiekie's wife and his brother and sister, who "all agreed in saying that they had no objection to the pakeha party ascending the mountain, but were determined Maoris should not, and that if we went with them we must take the consequences ".112 In these circumstances, to their considerable disappointment, Grey and his entourage thought it best to abandon the proposed climb. As Cooper puts it, "had we persisted in our first intention we should have inevitably found ourselves in the middle of a native war, and the Governor would in all probability be considered by many persons as the chief cause of the quarrel. It was decided instead to travel on to Taranaki via Mokau.

3.41. In 1850 Lieutenant-Colonel A.H. Russell of the 58th Regiment visited Te Ngae, Ohinemutu and Rotomahana. He recorded his experiences in a journal, a typescript of which is held by the Auckland Public Library.1 13

112 Cooper, ibid, 15. 113 Lieut-Col A.H. Russell, Expedition from Auckland to the Hot Lakes, Pinke Terraces and lake Taupo in 1850, Typescript, APL MS 847.

66 Russell first reached the mission station at Te Ngae, and in the next section of the journal records his impressions of Mokoia Island:114

On the margin of the lake surrounding the little Island, are several hot springs surrounded by a natural crust of stone deposited, I conceive by the warm water, and by which they are alone separated from the cold water of the Lake. In these natural baths the natives seem continually immersed, sitting up to their chins and gossiping with each other. The Island seems well cultivated with wheat and tobacco which the natives about these parts of the Island (of N.Z.) cultivate for their own use, but do not bring to much perfection. It is very inferior to what they buy from Europeans, but in the interior it is not possible to buy, so they do what they can for a substitute. The smoking of tobacco is quite a passion with Maoris, and is indulged in from the cradle to the grave by men, women and children of the earliest age, the women putting their pipes into the mouths of the children they are suckling.

The party went on to Ohinemutu, in the company of Haupapa, an inhabitant of the village who had served as a guide. Russell writes: 115

The Pah is singular in being built amongst a number of hot springs, a few yards from the shore, which formed into baths and basins, amongst which the wharries [sic] are built, and the hot water runs in small streams in all directions and at all temperatures. Some of the springs are used as baths, and others as cooking places. We had a basket of potatoes cooked for us, and I found they were done in twenty minutes. I observed the children bring down their basket of potatoes, and tying them by a string to a fence which surrounded the boiling spring, leave them there for the necessary time, when, drawing them out by the string, they carried them away to their Wharies. One of the springs which seemed most used as a bath was of a deep red colour, but I could not perceive whence it derived its colour. The whole Pah is covered with steam which rises from the springs, which are of all sizes and shapes, and considerable care is necessary in walking amongst so much hot water, the noise of which, as it bubbles and boils around you, is very curious. The ground also is hot and in many places large slabs

114 Ibid, p.14. 115 Ibid, 15-16.

67 of stone are laid, forming warm platforms on which the natives dry their Taua berries for food.

However Russell (who, if his journal is any guide, seems to have had a very good opinion of himself) was displeased with the inhabitants of Ohinemutu, and complained of their "indifferent, and even disrespectful manner".

3.42. After visiting Whakarewarewa Russell travelled on via Okareka to Lake Tarawera, and stayed with the Spencers who were based at that time at Kariri (Galilee). Plans were being made at the time to move the mission to what was to become Te Wairoa. Russell was irritated to learn that it would be impossible to travel by canoe across Lake Rotomahana at that time of year:116

We were greatly annoyed here by a piece of intelligence which we now heard for the first time, viz. that from 1st September to 1st January in each year, Roto-mahana is "Tapu", or sacred on account of the duscks which breed here in such numbers as to make it a favourite preserve of the Maoris, and consequently they will also not canoe upon the lake between between those months, lest the ducks should be disturbed.

Russell visited Rotomahana, finding that the tapu on taking ducks extended not only over the lake but also over the river running down into Lake Rotomhana. He describes the Terraces at length in his journal, and then gives some information about some of tne other springs and small lakes of the area. One passage is of particular interest:

Third: Roto Kanapanapa, a very curious little lake of a perfectly pea-green colour. surrounded by hills of red and white calacreous stone. It is about 120 feet long by 60 feet broad, and the whole basin immediately surrounding the lake and its neighbourhood seems to have sunk to its present level. There are many hot springs of steam and mud near it. The natives eat the mud in small quantities and seem to like it. I tasted it, and found it very like slate pencil in taste as well as colour: the red ochre as well as a white earth which is extremely soft and smooth, seemed to be used by the natives for soap. I observed them while in their baths send their children to a distance for it, and cover their hands and bodies with it. Some of the stone here had been quarried out in

116 Ibid, 22.

68 slabs and removed to where the ground is hot, to form tables on which to dry their taua berries.117

3.43. A traveller of a rather different kind was Frederick J Tiffen, a Hawkes Bay settler who managed his brother's Homewood run at Otane.118 In 1857 Tiffen had been asked to go and establish the boundaries of a new run for an acquaintance, but, presumably for his own amusement, journeyed on to Taupo, and then to Whakatane via Orakeikorako and Rotomahana, before returning overland to Napier. He described his adventures in a long and rather artless letter to his sister Belinda at Homewood.119 Tiffen's letter reveals that anyone who spoke Maori and had a horse could travel about the interior of the country without too much difficulty: Tiffen could normally hire guides except when the community he was visiting was concentrating its energies in harvesting wheat and other crops. Occasionally he and his guides would be accompanied by other Maori just for the novelty and the enjoyment of travelling about. He visited Orakeikorako then the site of a substantial settlement: 120

Other maories started with us but we left them at the next guides pa where my guide obtained a horse from his matua (mother) and away we went in fine spirits, over hills and through a bush and along a bit of a plain till we came to a pa called the Korake Korako[sic] where Hoepa said he would obtain his brother as my future or rather further guide. When we arrived at that pa with the long name we found the maories very busy fortifying the pa against an opposite tribe which were living on the coast. All around the pa was a double fence of small Manuka sticks (about 2 in. in diam) tied perpendicularly with about two or three inches space between each stick and a foot between each fence - thus allowing room for firing within and leaving but a chance of a ball finding its way direct to the enemy within. Inside the fence is a trench about 5ft deep by 4 ft wide so the besieged will be well protected. I don't believe there will be a shot fired there however but the fact of contending tribes fortifying their pas often prevent bloodshed entirely... This is certainly an interesting spot and I find I must say

117 Ibid, 30. 118 See Ian McGibbon, "Tiffen, Henry Stokes", New Zealand Dictionary of Biography, vol i, 1990, 539. 119 F.J. Tiffen, letter, MS 3786, ATL.(typescript) 120 Ibid.

69 much about it for it is lively with springs, steam and flowing water in addition to its fortification and excited inhabitants. From the pa is visible at least 30 hot springs which can easily be detected by its volume of steam. Before I had my dinner I went to bathe in one that the maories had made of temperate heat by allowing the necessary quantity of boiling water to run into a hole of cold water.

Tiffen also mentions a white clay, "very smooth and wet and much resembling pipe clay, only whiter." This the Orakeikorako people used as a kind of soap. Tiffen tried it out and found it "agreeably smooth and greasy in its feel when used as such".

3.44. After staying at Orakeikorako Tiffen journeyed on with his new guide towards Rotomahana. They camped for the night at Te Kopia where there were was "an old hut or two". Here there were more springs. Tiffen notes the Maori practice-of carefully naming or "christening" the springs:

These springs were situated on a rough flat and a person had to walk very carefully about them or there is a good chance of sinking into some soft matter or other, perhaps scalding... AlI springs, or body of springs, are Christened as the maories called it - these are christened Kopia ...

He travelled on to Lake Rotokakahi (Green Lake), coming to a village named Kaiteriria. In the lake was the island pa Motu Tawa, the island "of lofty elevation and planted with many peach trees among the huts". He stayed with the Spencers at Te Wairoa, finding them "a straight laced family". Breakfast was an "immense dish" of fresh water crayfish from Lake Tarawera; he learned, as he put it, "that the lake below them was noted for its productions of that nature". Tiffen went on to the Terraces, being conducted across Lake Tarawera by Maori paddlers to the village of Ohungi. He describes Maori children bathing in the pools, seemingly oblivious to the pouring rain. He was guided to Rotomahana and a large part of his long letter to his sister is taken up with a laboured and not very successful attempt to describe the Terraces. Referring to a spring near Rotomahana he notes:

70 I did not make tea here for I was wet enough outside to answer for the inside ... Close to the said spring are two pa's, now much dilapidated, but were formerly occupied with opposite tribes, whom three years ago became contending tribes. But for what? For a bit of land about Roto Mahana which was not worth an acreage tax even, let alone blood. In the contest there were about 30 maories killed and many wounded and the result is that neither tribe occupies their pa but allows the land to remain neutral, but for how long is particular doubtful.

3.45. In 1858 S. Percy Smith, chief surveyor and later doyen of the Polynesian Society, travelled to the region in a party of six Europeans with Maori guides.121 This group travelled to the region from the direction of Taranaki via Waitara and Mokau. From this direction they reached Te Heuheu's122 village at Pukawa on 17 January 1858. Despite the growing politicisation of the late 1850s and Te Heuheu's support for the King movement, Smith and his companions met with a very friendly reception (Te Heuheu invited the group to his house for dinner and later for tea). Smith noticed that many of the houses at Pukawa were empty, perhaps evidence of Maori population decline:123

This morning we breakfasted off the whitebait or inanga , which is so common in Taupo; and it is very nice fried. Though still raining, we managed to take a stroll down to the lake and about the pa; but I must say we were somewhat disappointed in Pukawa. It may have been a large and populous place at one time, but now it is fast sinking into decay. There are not more than 15 houses inhabited, if so many, and we scarcely saw anyone but Te Heuheu and his women. Not far from his house is a splendid pataka, or

121 The genesis of Smith's account is described by Nancy Taylor (Early Travellers in New Zealand, 350-51): "The Alexander Turnbull library has the smaIl notebook, five inches by three inches, its pencilling in some places very faint, in which Smith wrote his daily notes of the whole journey, right back to New Plymouth. It has also a printed pamphlet, with some tipped-in watercolour sketches, sketch maps covering most of the route, a few annotations, and some manuscript notes written in by him much later, in 1919. The pamphlet is reprinted here... This pamphlet was also reprinted, with rather blurred black-and-white reproductions of the drawings, by the Taranaki News in 1954." This report uses the text reprinted in Taylor op cit; page refs. are to Taylor. 122 I.e. Te Heuheu Tukino III, Iwikau. See Elizabeth Hura, "Te Heuheu Tukino III, Iwikau", Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol 1, 1990, pp 448-49. 123 Ibid, 365.

71 store house; and it is elevated on four red posts, in fact the whole concern is painted red. The doorway end is beautifully carved, the carvers seeming to have vied with each other in making the ugliest faces for eyes and letting in the biggest bottoms of glass bottles for eyes. I believe that at the meeting called together to erect this, the Maori King movement was first mooted. In it Te Heuheu keeps all his household goods, such as plates, chairs, dishes, basins, wheat, &c.

3.46. By 23 January the party had reached Rotokawa. Smith writes:124

At seven we passed Rotokaua or bitter lake. Upon tasting the water we found it had not been named in vain; it tasted of a combination of alum and rusty iron. The lake is about a mile long north and south, by half that width; and at the northern end there are several hot springs, which no doubt accounts for the taste of the water. There are immense numbers of ducks on it, but they are strictly tapu ..

By the 25th they had reached Rotomhana and the Terraces:125

... At about seven we came to a hill overlooking Rotomahana, from which clouds of steam were rising from the innumerable hot springs that surround this lake. We were rather disappointed in the lake as to prettiness, it being encompassed by high hills, with dead-looking fern growing on them, and in some places a little manuka on the edge of the lake; nevertheless, the view from this hill is very grand; in the distance towards the north, are the Horohoro mountains, with their table-like tops and steep sides; under them is a peep of Tarawere lake, and again in the line, at the northern end of Rotomahana, is the beautiful and celebrated Tarata cascade. On the left or western side was the Wakatarata, another warm cascade, resembling the Tarata in appearance, but with the colours more varied. In the middle of the lake are the pretty Chinese-looking islands of Puwai and Pukara, covered with houses and manuka. The lake must be a very Paradise for ducks, which breed in immense numbers in its tepid waters; whilst numerous toreas and pukekos are to be seen bathing in the warm water, or feeding amongst the rushes. Having rested some time, we descended and crossed a warm stream and swamp, through some manuka scrub, and passed many boiling springs.

124 Ibid,371. 125 Ibid, 373-75.

72 On account of the latter, it is very dangerous to step out of the path, for you stand a good chance of getting boiled to a jelly before any assistance could be rendered you. In many places the crust of earth over the boiling cauldrons below is so thin that that it shakes as you walk across it. Everything about has a boiled look, with the exception of the manuka trees, which seem to flourish well. After crossing a delightfully warm stream running from one part of the lake to another, we put on our boots and scrambled through some scrub to a few houses, used by the Maories when they come here to catch ducks. The houses about Rotomahana seem to be all very cosy little places, often built over a hot spring, which always keeps them warm. Scattered about amongst the houses are an immense number of large square slabs of white stone, laid in a horizontal position over hot springs, and are used by the natives for drying tawa berries;126 this, I believe, being the only place in New Zealand where they can be done. All the birds about the lake are strictly tapu at this season, therefore we were unable to shoot any.

The name of this settlement at Rotomahana was Ohana. Smith noticed the formed Maori bathing pools nearby:

After leaving Takapu [another deserted Maori settlement], we passed through some manuka scrub, in the centre of which is a large boiling pond about 40 feet in diameter; the water in the middle was springing furiously up, sometimes to the height of ten feet, and at others only three. It was surrounded by rocks and manuka, and appeared to be very deep. It is called Hahapu. The water from it ran by a channel cut in the rock into some baths, which were well paved and sided with large flat stones.

3.47. From Rotomahana the party travelled on to Tarawera via the Kaiwaka river which ran between the two lakes. Smith thought that Lake Tarawera "far surpasses Taupo and Rotomahana in beauty". Passing Moura, "a pretty pa built at the southern side of the arm on the top of some beautiful white cliffs" the party reached the village of Kauehape, "where we partook of some

126 [The manuscript diary describes the drying process: "they are put over a hot spring and steamed for 48 hours, then taken out and the Pulp taken away, then steamed again and spread out on the stones I mentioned before and dried. They are sometimes eaten raw but have very little Taste but when boiled and eaten with sugar are very good."] (N. Taylor's footnote, ibid, 374.)

73 potatoes, dried crey fish, and tutu wine". The party travelled on by canoe to Te Mu (Te Wairoa), and like many visitors were much struck by its orderly and "English" appearance:127

We then ascended a rocky path, and on the top, to our great surprise, came upon a broad cart-road, with trenches cut on each side,& c. but we were more surprised, a little further on, when, upon turning a comer we beheld a regular village laid out in European style, instead of being huddled up together in a heap, as most Maories live. We were met by a number of Maories, who shook hands all round, and guided us to the chiefs house, which seems to be used by travellers. The chiefs name is Kemp, and he seems to be a nice, straightforward, honest man, dressed entirely in English costume. There was an Englishman named H. Sampson located here to impart instruction to the natives. J.M. had a letter to Mr Spencer, which he went to deliver, and was kindly invited to stop at the mission house till we left Tarawera, which we expected to do in a day or two. The Maoris have a mill here, and we brought from them 40 lbs. of flour at 2d. per pound.

The next day Smith went on a visit to Rotokakahi (Green Lake). He passed the flour mill, - "a very nice, strongly-built little place: the stonework was done by the Maoris, and speaks volumes for their mechanical skill" - and crossed the Wairoa by a substantial bridge, this latter being "made entirely by the Maories as a surprise for Mr. Spence~ when he returned from a journey once". At Rotokakahi they visited Motutawa Island, where there was then a substantial village, "a pa with a great many carvings about it". There was also a church, "built of grass, [which] looks very neat and comfortable. On the southern side of the lake they visited another village, Kaiteriria ("all its inhabitants Catholics"). On another occasion some of the party had a day's excursion from Te Wairoa to Whakarewarewa, where there was also a village. In this passage Smith also refers to Lake Rotorua and Mokoia:

Mr S[pencer], J.M., A.S., and myself therefore started for Rotorua lake. Passing Rotokakahi, Tikitapu, and a piece of bush, we entered some fine grassy valleys, along which we continued until we came to two paths; we proceeded along one that led south­ west for about a mile, then sharp to the north, over some small hills, from the top of

127 Ibid, 376-77.

74 which we beheld Rotorua, the largest lake except Taupo in New Zealand. I believe it is about 12 miles long by 8 broad. It has the large island of Mokoia near the middle, which was once the stronghold of all the maories about here, and was considered impreganable until the great Hongi, having hauled canoes overland from the Bay of Plenty, took it and massacred most of its inhabitants. It is now a celebrated place for kumeras [sic]. We descended, and, walking cautiously among the hot springs, arrived at a settlement called Wakarewarewa and partook of some potatoes cooked in one of the boiling springs, without any disagreeable taste, as we expected tern to have. The springs about here are not near so fine as those of Rotomahana, though I believe sometimes there are some splendid jets of water shooting up to the height of 30 feet; they were not at work during our visit, though we saw the spots from whence they rise. After having admired all there was to be seen, and bathed ourselves in a basin about 50 feet square, one end of which is quite hot, and the other, adjoining the river, quite cold, (from the latter, a Maori who was with u caught some crey fish, and taking them to a boiling spring just above our bath, cooked and presented them to us), we returned to the Wairoa by the route we had come.

3.48. Another man of science to visit the region was the German geologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter. A member of the Australian geological survey, he travelled to New Zealand as the geologist of the Austrian government's world-wide scientific expedition on an Austrian naval frigate, the Novara. In New Zealand Hochstetter met Julius Haast, another German scientist, and they both participated in a major expedition into the North Island interior.128 Hochstetter was in the Rotorua region in April 1859. Hochstetter was fascinated by the geology of the central North Island which he describes in detail in his Geology of New Zealand published in Vienna in 1864 as a part of the published records of the Novara expedition.129 Hochstetter's descriptions of the thermal areas are undoubtedly the most scientific and informative account left to us from the nineteenth century and his treatise is a text of real

128 c.A. Fleming, "Hochstetter, Christian Gottlieb Ferdinand von", Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol. I, 1990, 199-200. 129 F. von Hochstetter, Geologie von Neu-Seeland, Wi en, 164; English translation c.A. Fleming (ed), Geology of New Zealand, Government Printer, Wellington, 1959.

75 importance. Writing of the Maori classification of the hot springs Hochstetter remarks:130

The phenomena are quite similar to those of Iceland, and just as the Icelanders distinguish among their warm springs hverjar, namur, and laugar, so the Maoris too, make a distinction, though not so sharp, between puia, ngawha, and waiariki. The hverjar of Iceland are either permanent flowing springs, containing the boiling hot water in continuous ebulition and boiling, or intermittent, containing water which boils up violently only at definite intervals; at such times it rises to boiling point but the rest of the time is in a condition of rest, and often cools off to a notable degree. To the hverjar belong, e.g., the famous springs of Haukadal, the Great Geyser, and the Strokkur. The puias of New Zealand correspond with springs called hverjar in Iceland. With this word in particular, which is chiefly used in the Taupo district, the natives distinguish, for example, the intermittent geyser-like springs of Tokanu on Lake Taupo, of Orakeikorako on the Waikato and of Whakarewarewa on Lake Rotorua. One of the intermittent springs of Whakarewarewa is especially· called Te Puia. In addition, however, puia has also the general meaning of crater or volcano and is employed not only for active volcanoes but also for extinct ones (e.g. on Auckland Isthmus). To the namur belong in Iceland the solfataras and mud pots of Krisuvik and Reykjahlid, which have no intermittent qualities, no periodic eruptions; they are mud and sulphur springs, in which a blue-grey mud is in continual bubbling activity. Non­ intermittent springs corresponding to these, and especially the solfataras interspersed with hot springs on lakes Rotomahana, Rotorua, and Rotoiti, are distinguished as ngawha by the natives of New Zealand. Finally, laug (warm bath) in Iceland is a spring of which the water level remains at rest and never gets into an upwelling boiling condition; such springs suitable for baths, or natural warm baths, the Maoris call waiariki.

3.49. The first thermal zones he describes are those on the southern shore of Lake Taupo. After describing in detail the surface features at Tokaanu Hochstetter remarks:131

130 Ibid, 140-41. 131 Ibid, 143.

76 The natives moreover use the steam holes for cooking and have special huts for the winter, erected on warm ground. They call the hot springs puia and distinguish papa­ puia, the springs with clear water which deposit siliceous sinter, and uku-puia, the boiling mud pools and small mud pots.

At North Taupo he refers to the springs near the present Spa Hotel and at Tauhara, and also briefly refers to Lake Rotokawa and gives a full description of Karapiti (the meaning of which he gives as 'encircled, circular'). He then describes Orakei Korako in detail, giving the Maori names of some of the springs, and notes:132

To these springs are attributed considerable medicinal powers. In Orakeikorako, we met an Irishman belonging to the port of Napier who told us that he had been brought there lame with gout, but had been restored to health after a short course of baths.

Hochstetter then describes the springs along the base of the Paeroa fault, including "the great fountain Te Kopiha" (Te Kopia)133 and the springs at Waikite.

3.50. His next subject are the amazing sights of the Rotomahana region. He notes that the "small dirty green lake" teems with waterfowl and swamp birds: ducks, water hens, pukeko and oytercatchers.134 The springs at Rotomahana themselves, including the terraces Te Tarata and Otukapuarangi, "are among the most magnificent known in hydrothermal regions anywhere".135 Other features he gives the names for are Ngahapu, a huge spring near the shore of Lake Rotomahana, Te Takapo, a sinter basin near the lake "containing clear, almost boiling water",136 the "valley or ravine called Waikanapanapa, i.e the glittering water"137 and the acid lake Rotopounamu. There were signs of a Maori settlement at Rotomahana but

132 Ibid, 149. 133 Ibid, 150 134 Ibid, 153. 135 Ibid. 136 Ibid, 157. 137 Ibid.

77 by this time it had been abandoned, although bathing places were still in use:138

From the Waikanapana valley, opposite the two islands Pukura and Puai, the shores of the lake become steep and rocky, hot springs stand on the shore below lake level, and on the hillside stand the scattered huts of the deserted settlement Ngawhana (or

~hana). Here natives have constructed regular water courses for bathing purposes, have produced rectangular basins from sheets of sinter, and have connected them with the springs higher up the slopes of the hill by tiled channels. The flat sheets of siliceous sinter deposited over hot places are said to have served for the drying and dessication of Tawa-berries.

Nearby was a spring called Koingo (lithe sighing") and the great solfatara Whatapoho. On the southeast side of the lake was another spring, Whakaehu and three small lakes, Rangipakaru, Te Rua hoata and Wairake. Explaining the name Te Rua hoata in a footnote Hochstetter states:139

The lake of Hoata; hoata is the name of one of the taniwha which brought the sacred fire to Tongariro.

Along the outlet into Lake Tarawera were still more springs. many of which had been individually named:140

Somewhat further from the lake, in a small side valley, lies a spring Atetuhi, and in the swampy lowland at the north-west end of the lake the spring Te Waiti. Moreover, at the outlet of Rotomahana into Lake Tarawera, on both sides of Kaiwaka River, still other numerous ngawha can be seen, important enough to have been individually named by the natives, such as te aka manuka, te mamaku, te poroporo, ta mariwi, makrowa, te karaka, etc., which I was not able to study at close quarters.

138 Ibid, 158. 139 Ibid, 159. 140 Ibid, 160.

78 3.51. Hochstetter's party camped on Puai, one of the islands in Lake Rotomahana, which Hochstetter found to be a unnerving experience, "hardly different from living in an active crater". Following the instructions of their guides the party cooked their evening meal in the springs:141

On the south side of the island lies a boiling mud pool, and siliceous sinter blocks strewn about point to great hot springs in former times. In numerous places hot steam still pours out, which we used for cooking, following the natives' instructions. By digging only a little in the ground, or cleaning the rock crevices of the crust that has been formed in them, a ready made oven is produced in which, over a layer of fem fronds, potatoes and meat can be cooked in natural steam... The island Pukura (i.e. red clods) lies to the east, separated from Puai by a 40 ft channel. It is of the same nature as Puai, only somewhat smaller in extent, but a few feet higher, and has likewise a few huts.

3.52. To round off his account of the Rotomahana district Hochstetter draws attention to the medicinal qualities of the springs there:142

In all, about 25 major ngawha can be counted at Rotomahana; I do not even venture to estimate the number of small springs which occur at innumerable points in the area occupying about two square miles. Since these magnificent thermal springs in the experience of the natives, have proved very curative to chronic skin diseases and rheumatic complaints, it is to be expected that the remarkable lake will become an important watering place and health resort in later years, when the European population has become distributed throughout the North Island.

3.53. Hochstetter then describes the springs at Rotorua itself. He says that the name "Rotorua" means "hole lake" or a "lake that lies in a circular depression" which is an alternative to the meaning usually given to Rotorua ('second lake'),143 He writes that:l44

141 Ibid, 161. 142 Ibid. 143 Ibid, 163. 144 Ibid, 164

79 The chief settlement on the lake, the old Maori pa Ohinemutu, is renowned far and wide in New Zealand for its hot springs and excellent baths (waiariki). Ruapeka Bay forms the central point of the spring area. There hundreds of vents of manifold form and shape bubble, gush, and steam.

Hochstetter explains that the inhabitants had different uses for each of the springs:14S

The natives have separate bathing springs, separate cooking springs, and others in which they do their washing. In places where merely hot steam emerges from the ground they have erected vapour baths (Turkish baths), built huts for the winter on the warm sinter flats of the spring depOSit, and as an especial advantage it is boasted that no vermin reside in these natural hot houses. The whole atmosphere in and around Ohinemutu is always full of steam and sulphurous gases. This, however, seems to be nothing but an advantage to the inhabitants; since they are known to be a particularly robust type of Maori.

Hochstetter visited Whakarewarewa, where he gives the names Waikite, Pohutu, Parikohuru and Paratiatia:146

Parikohuru and Paratiatia are the names of springs which supply the great bathing pools 50 ft and more in diameter, in which the natives, men and women, promiscuously, take baths for hours at a time. all smoking their pipes in comfort and chatting together.

3.54. Lastly, Hochstetter describes lithe solfataras of Rotoiti" - Tikitere, Karapo, Te Korokoro, Te Waikari, Te Tarata, Harakeke Ngunguru, Tihipapa, Papakiore, and Ruahine. At Ruahine he noted Maori use of the hot steam vents for cooking:147

Ruahine has the appearance of an active crater. Its crater-like basin lies on a hillside sloping towards lake Rotoiti; on its floor boils black mud, which is spattered several

145 lbid,165. 146 lbid,167 147 Ibid, 168-9.

80 feet high in the air by the rising and bursting steam bubbles. The column of steam rising here is designated by the natives Te Whata kai a Punikirangi, i.e. as the place where food is hung up for Punakirangi. Yellow masses of flowers of sulphur adhere to the variegated beds of clay. Black muddy water flows out of the mud pool. The valley in front of the basin, however, is covered with sulphur and sinter incrustations, from which steam rises from more than a hundred small vents. Here, too, the greatest caution is needed not to break through into boiling mud. The natives use the vents emitting pure steam for cooking.

3.55. In 1860 Lieutenant Henry Stratton Bates, of the 65th Regiment, and Alex St Clair Inglis visited the region. This journey happens to be very well documented. Lieutenant Bates' diary of this trip was published in The Auckland-Waikato Historical Societies Journal in 1969.1 48 A copy of Inglis' unpublished diary of his travels is held by the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington. 149 Accompanied by Maori guides, Bates and Inglis travelled on horseback from Napier to Taupo, which Bates describes as follows:

We cross over in a Canoe to Pohipe's150 place Nuku Hau and enjoy the luxury of a bathe in the Lake. Hear that Pohipe has not yet gone to Patere but will be here tonight which is very good news as we hope to get horses for Roto Mahana from here a Canoe arrives from Heruhamana with [... ] and after a hearty dinner we smoke our pipes with great Content [ ... ] the Scenery very beautiful all round. We cannot see the whole of the Lake but can see the stretch away for about 30 miles the banks generally high with bold headlands jutting out there is one island in it where there was a pah once. The Natives say there is a Taniwha in the middle of the Lake the Water there being very red (all the rest of the Lake a very deep blue) and that he has his den only a few inches below the surface. They never cross the lake, but skirt along the shores being afraid of

148 "Lientenant Bates rides to Taupo in 1860", Auckland-Waikato Historical Societies Journal, (No.14), April 1969, pp 2-7 [Bates, Part 1] ; "Lietenant Bates visits the Pink and White Terraces in 1860", Auckland-Waikato Historical Sccieties Journal, (No. 15), September 1969, pp.2-6, [Bates part II]; "Lieutenant Bates returns to Napier from the Pink and White Terraces in 1860". Auckland-Waikato Historical Societies Journal, (No.16.), April 1970. pp 22-26 [Bates Part III] 149 Alex St Clair Inglis, Diary titled "Bubbles from the Boiling Springs of Taupo", MS 3784, ATL. 150 Te Poihipi Tukairangi, the prominent pro-government chief who lived at the villages of Nuku Hau and Tapuaeharuru (both on the site of the present town of Taupo).

81 the Taniwha. At the W. extremity Tongariro an active volcanoe 9000 feet high. The Native Chiefs are buried on the mountain in order that it may never be sold. It is impossible to ascend to the top the cone being perpendicular.

Bates writes, in similar vein:151

Taupo Lake is said to be inhabited by a Taniwha or monster (one of these gentleman seems to be as necessary an appendage to a New Zealand lake as a ghost is to an old English country house). In the centre of the lake this gentleman has his den and round it the water is said to be of a deep red hue and immediately over his den of a bright blue; the den itself is only a few feet below the surface. This Taniwha is said to destroy all canoes venturing near his den and consequently no native dares to cross the centre of the lake. When fishing or going in canoes, they keep near shore. The lake is very deep, in most places it is said to be unfathomable, and owing to the fear entertained by the natives of crossing the lake, neither white men nor maoris have ever been in the centre of it. It is conjectured and beleived by an English missionary, if not by others also, that there is a whirlpoolin the centre of the lake, as 14 rivers run into it and only one (the Waikato) runs out. This may explain the belief entertained by the natives of the existence of a Taniwha. In rough weather there is a considerable sea running in this lake. Round the shores are a great many pas and settlements of natives.

Inglis records that they stayed at a Whare called the Whare Pakeha, "quite a large new one with 3 rooms" and "very clean, with new mats spread on the floor". Perhaps this is an early instance of Maori at Taupo attempting to encourage the development of a tourist industry in their area.

3.56. From Taupo Inglis and Bateswent on to Orakeikorako, where Inglis noted how the soil near the springs was used as soap "with which we daubed ourselves". Bates described Orakeikorako as follows: 152

Just as thesun was sinking behind the hills we reached Orakei Korako, a Pa situated on a hill overlooking the Waikato and surrounded by numerous hot springs. As we were told that the natives had left this place, we had expected to have to sleep out on

151 Bates I, p.6. 152 Bates II, p.3.

82 account of the numerous fleas that always infested deserted whares, but we were pleasantly surprised at finding some old people in the Pa. Turning our horses loose, we took a kit of potatoes and hues (gourds) with us and guided by The Hawk [Te Kahu, their guide] walked down to a large boiling spring by the river. Having placed the kit of potatoes and hues over a small puhia to be steamed, we went on to a large plateau or flat of stone about fifty yards long and twenty-five yards wide overlooking the Waikato which flows deep and rapid at one extremity of but below the level of the plateau; and at its other extremity a cloud of steam hung over a puia which was boiling noisily up in the centre of a large basin of water. The water which in the first basin was at boiling heat, then flowed in little channels along the plateau into other rocky basins. Into one of these which our guide selected we entered. We found the water very hot, in fact as hot as we could bear it. It was now moonlight. We found the bath very refreshing after our day's journey. It certainly was a wonderful scene, a few yards from us the puia whose steam enveloped us was boiling fiercely with a loud noise which increased or subsided at intervals.

3.57. Travelling the usual route via Rotokakahi Inglis and his companion reached Te Wairoa on 23 March. By this time the local economy is already showing signs of adapting to tourism:153

In about an hour came in sight of Te Wairoa a large missionary settlement laid in the form of a town, with streets the houses having chimneys and little gardens and a very good road through the settlement along which we managed to spur our jaded steeds into a canter. At the side of the road near a Flour Mill a large board [is] erected with the different rates of fares for Tourists to the lakes.

In the company of Maori guides Inglis was ferried across Lake Tarawera by canoe and then conducted on to Rotomahana. Inglis describes the scene as follows:

The first view is very remarkable. It lies in a hollow evidently a crater. The banks are covered with boiling springs and emitting volumes of steam. The soil being of red, yellow and white ochre gives the whole a most extraordinary appearance. It empties

153 Inglis, ibid, diary entry 23 March 1860.

83 itself into the Tarawera Lake. It (Rotomahana) abounds with Water Fowl, ducks, pukeko and sea birds which appear to delight in the warmth of their abode. There are several islands comprised of misshapen rock and ochreous hills filled with boiling cauldrons and jets of steam intermingled with Manuka trees and Native huts. the whole surface is very hot and covered with fragments of former puia. The two large fountains at the W. and E. extremity of the Lake are the most wonderful sights in the world and certainly ought to rank as the first of the Seven Wonders.

4. THE WAR YEARS 1860-70

4.1. This report must unfortunately pass over the chaotic and disruptive decade of the 1860s. For information on the fighting in and around Rotorua the reader is referred to the accounts in Cowan's The New Zealand Wars and in Don Stafford's Te Arawa and The Founding Years at Rotorua. Te Arawa fought mostly on the side of the Crown. War began in 1864 when Te Arawa resisted an East Coast detachment's attempt (the so-called Tai Rawhiti army) to cross their territory in order to link up with the Kingitanga forces in the Waikato. In this resistance Arawa were supported by Rawiri Kahia, Hohepa Tamamutu, Poihipi Tukairangi and othe~ Taupo chiefs and their followers. Arawa resistance was assisted and encouraged by William Mair, the resident magistrate at Taupo. Mair later commanded Arawa detachments, and his younger brother, Gilbert, clerk of the court and interpreter at the Resident's Magistrate's Court likewise became involved in the fighting around Rotorua. In 1869 Gilbert Mair was placed in command of an Arawa detachmet which accompanied Whitmore's force in the invasion of the Urewera region. Te Arawa were affected both in the early and later stages of the wars, and Te Kooti in fact crossed right through Arawa territory in 1870. In a famous incident Te Kooti arrived near Ohinemutu and was about to negotiate a truce when Gilbert Mair and a group of younger warriors flung down the white flag carried by the Ngati Whakaue chief Peter a Pukuatua and immediately attacked Te Kooti's advance guard. Mair was of the view that Te Kooti was planning to deceive Arawa leaders and was planning on a massacre, but Belich states that this charge is unproven.

84 4.2. As to the social consequences and effects of the wars on Te Arawa little has been written, but it seems that the war contributed significantly to a lessening of Arawa autonomy and a widened contact with the outside world. In 1861, Thomas Henry Smith was appointed Civil Commissioner at Maketu, and in 1863 a construction of a road from Maketu to Rotoiti began, although its completion was delayed due to the war.

4.3. Lieutenant-Colonel St.John left an account of Ohinemutu in 1867 which was published in his book Pakeha Rambles through Maori Lands. 154 He writes:155

Of all the queer places I saw in my life, Ohinemutu is certainly the queerest; it is a good sized Maori village, the whares, among which are some tolerably large, following each other in a sort of street along the little bays and indentations of the lake, and comprising, at the time I now speak of, one rather more elaborate than the rest, intended for the reception of visitors; now, regular accomodation exists. Everything is of course pervaded by a brimstony flavour which soon however ceases to be noticed; and the effects of the atmosphere and of the baths are visible in the shiny skins and bad teeth of the inhabitants ... To a laxy man, Ohinemutu must be a aparadise ... the the boiler is one of nature's prOViding: you put your kumeras, potatoes, what not, in a kit, tie a string to this, chuck the whole into a pool of water, and lie down by the side of your cauldron until the viands are done. It is only the epicure in search of roast meat who has to trouble himself about firewood; and, even then, should his soul desire pork, he finds the animal ready scalded and has only to slay and cook. It was really amusing to watch the pigs luxuriating in the comfortable warm mud at the edge of the black pools; they they were, wallowing about in the height of porcine enjoyment, and, as the first feeling of heat disappeared, first giving one roll and then another: by-and-by however, there would be one tum over too many, piggy found find himself in rather hotter quarters than he liked, and then there was no end to the squeaking and grunting and floundering about and general scamblification which would follow; but master poaka in each case came

154 The part of St John's book describing his own journeys is reprinted in Taylor, op.cit., pp. 507-55. The extract quoted above is also reprinted in Stafford, The Founding Years in Rotorua, p.49. 155 Taylor, Early Travellers, 545.

85 out minus a good many of his bristles; so after seeing a pretty constant repetition of this little game, I came to understand how it was that most of the Ohinemutu pigs walked about in a hairless condition. All about the village these sights were constantly repeated, and one small bay was literally a gigantic warm bath. The whole time we were there this presented a lively scene; it was always full of Europeans and natives swimming about, racing, diving, ducking each other, and disporting themselves like so many mermen, and mermaid ens too, for, clad somewhat after the fashion of Biarritz or Leuk, the dusky beauties of the pa frolicked in the water as gaily as on shore ...

5. TOURISM AND SOCIAL CHANGE 1870-1886

5.1. As the tourist industry burgeoned in the 1870s, following the visit of Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh, to the region in December 1870156 the written accounts of visits to the Rotorua-Taupo area likewise proliferate. It is not possible in this report to cover this later literature fully. Most large public libraries in this country carry holdings of late nineteenth-century books of the "Travels in Maoriland" variety, few of which fail to describe the thermal areas of the central North Island. These include contributions from some of the notable luminaries of the Victorian literary world, in particular the novelist Anthony Trollope and the historian J.A. Froude. The Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, visited Rotomahana as early as 1870, and carved his initials on Otukupuarangi, the Pink Terrace. The intention here is to use this later material selectively and to focus on the less accessible manuscript journals and diaries.

5.2. Lieut Herbert Meade's book A Ride through the Disturbed Districts of New Zealand157gives a detailed picture of the thermal regions in the immediate aftermath of the wars. Meade describes Ohinemutu in some detail as a place "built in the very midst of the hot springs" where the

156 For a dicussion of the Duke of Edinburgh's visit see Stafford, The Founding Years in Rotorua, 133-36. Various governors also travelled to Rotorua and Rotomhana during the 1870s: Sir George Bowen in 1872, Sir James Fergusson in 1874 and the Marquis of Normanby in 1876. 157 Herbert Meade, A Ride through the Disturbed Districts of New Zealand, together with some account of the South Sea Islands, John Murray, London, 1870.

86 inhabitants live "in a perpetual cloud of steam. "158 He notes the value the inhabitants place on the springs:159

The Maoris aver, however, that this atmosphere is by no means unhealthy for human beings, though it drives away all mosquitoes, sandflies, and vermin; whilst the warm and highly-mineral baths, which are close at hand, in every direction, are a sovereign remedy for cutaneous and other diseases.

He continues: 160

The whole village is built on a thin crust of rock and soil, roofing over one vast boiler. Hot springs hiss and seethe in every direction; some spouting upwards and boiling with the greatest fury, others merely at an agreeable warmth. From every crack and crevice spurt forth jets of steam or hot air, and the open bay of the lake itself is studded far and near with boiling springs and bubbling steam-jets. So thin is the crust on which these men have built their little town and lived for generations, that in most places after merely thrusting a walking-stick into the ground beneath our feet, steam instantly followed its withdrawal. Nature is here the public cook. Food is boiled by being hung in a flaxen basket in one of the countless boiling pools; nature also finding salt. Stewing and baking are performed by simply scraping a shallow hole in the earth, wherein to place the pot, and covering it up again, to keep the steam in; or by burying the food between layers of fern and earth in one of the hot-air passages ... In an open space in the middle of the settlement, stone flags have been laid down, which receive and retain the heat of the ground in which they are sunk. This is the favourite lounge; and here at any hour of the day, but especially when the shades of evening are closing round, all the rank and fashion of Ohinemutu may be seen wrapped in their blankets, luxuriously reclining on the warm stones. Here the inhabitants met this evening, to hear what news the travellers [Le. Meade, Mair, Te POihipi Tukairangi etc] had brought, and to have their usual 'korero,' or debate, on passing events.

158 Meade, ibid, 34. 159 Ibid. 160 Ibid, 35-6.

87 At this time alcohol had had no impact on life at Ohinemutu:

It is very lucky that there is no liquor to be had in the place: fancy, after a jovial night, having to find one's way home, without a single false step, on pain of being boiled to rags!

5.3. In 1873 the Rev. John William Bishop visited Ohinemutu and Rotomahana. By this time it was possible to travel to the region by coach from Tauranga. Bishop travelled to the area on horseback, making the return journey in the bone-shaking coach. He describes Ohinemutu as follows: 161

... and we emerged from our bath feeling anything but comfortable, the nasty sulphureous smell of the water was most disagreeable, but we put the horses to a gallop, and two miles ride brought us to Ohinemutu, such a miserable-looking place, with plenty of little native whares, and plenty of Maories standing about, but only two wooden shanties, called hotels!

The hotel at which Bishop stayed was a Maori establishment, instancing the effects of tourism (and also documenting an interesting effort by local Maori to develop their own hotels at a time before European hotelkeepers had apparently begun to dominate the industry at Ohinemutu):

The little hotel (only a wretched wooden house) where I staid, was kept by a Maori and his wife; "Johnnie" could talk English very tolerably, but Mrs "Johnnie", whose black frizzly hair, tattooed mouth, and white dress, gave her a very comical appearance, could only talk the Maori language; she kindly assisted me in the drying business, chatting merrily all the time. Johnnie gave us sausages, beef steak and potatoes (cooked in a hot spring) for our dinner, and roast fowls for teaj he is a good cook, and as he can talk a little English, he has quite a thriving little business in Ohinemutu.

The reference to "Johnnie's" command of the English language is interesting. Two observations can be made. Clearly Maori in Rotorua were finding it

161 Rev John William G Bishop, " A Month's Tour through New Zealand", September 1873, MS4069ATL.

88 economically worthwhile to learn English. Secondly, it was now possible for visitors who spoke no Maori to visit the hot springs.

5.4. Bishop travelled on to Rotomahana via Te Wairoa, which he describes as follows (once again illustrating the development of a fledgling tourist industry which was soon to rapidly consolidate itself):

...In about an hour reached our destination on the banks of the Wairoa where it runs into Roto Tarawera. Here "Peter the Frenchman" kept a small hut which acted as an hotel, and wanted to know what he could do for us, but we had no time to stay with him, and so purchased some bread and bacon from him to take with us, and left our horses in his charge; then calling the natives together we began the higgling business for a canoe and crew to take us across the lake and up into the river to Roto Mahana; they had two canoes, and at about 2.15 we started in the lightest one paddled by four Maoris.

At Rotomahana, after the inevitable breathless description of the two Terraces, Te Tarata and Otukupuarangi, he gives some evidence of the destructive activities of some of the visitors. He had been hoping to see where the Duke of Edinburgh had written his name on the Pink Terraces (on his visit in 1870) but this had been "quite effaced", the "stone itself having been much cut out by some mischievous hands and carried away as a prize". Bishop also gives an illuminating account of the coach trip back to Tauranga:

Up next day at 4.30, paid a little bill of L1.13.10 and left Bennet's hotel on the back of his coach horses whose back celebrated a painfully acute angle, while the driver and a boy rode two more horses down through the swamp to the main road, the moon was still shining, and the sun just beginning to give a rosy tint to the horizon; after riding for half a mile we came to the coach, and gladly dismounting, the horses were harnessed, and then the real torture began. The coach travelled with a hop-skip-and-jump motion all day, the latter half of the journey I had five fellow travellers whose sympathy was pleasant, as I could see in their wry faces when we all came down with a hard wooden bump after being pitched high up in the air that they too recognised the painfulness of the situation.

89 5.5. The stresses caused by tourism which seems to have expanded rapidly from 1873 onwards are starting to become apparent by 1875. Charles Blomfield was a painter who made his reputation by his well-known paintings of the Pink and White Terraces, Mount Tarawera and so on. His paintings of the Terraces mainly date from after their destruction by the Tarawera eruption of 1886. Decsribing in his diary a visit to Rotomahana in 1875 Blomfield writes:162

Fri Dec 31st 1875: We left our camping place soon after sun rise. The fern was very wet. We went round the lake [Rotokakahi] to the settlement on the other side and were directed the right path to Wairoa, a station [Le. a mission] on the north end of Tarawera. A creek connects the lakes Kakahi and Tarawera. It is shaded with bush and very pretty. Wairoa is a large settlement. The natives get their living by [] people over to Rotomahana in canoes. They are very jealous of anyone finding the way by themselves. We had our dinner at the Frenchmans who keeps a lodging house here in a whare. He has every convenience, good beds and is a good cook. He showed us the track but warned us the Maoris would not let us go without some bother. However we made the attempt and succeeded without any difficulties, and after losing ourselves once or twice we camped on the bank of the far famed Rotomahana opposite the great Te Rata with a spring of good cold water not far from us, a desideratum in these parts.

Blomfield and his party spent the next three nights camped out at Rotomahana where he took a number of photographs, which he presumably used to work up into paintings in later years. The following Monday they returned to Te Wairoa only to find themselves embroiled in a dispute with local Maori.

Left the lake at dawn and arrived without mishap at Wairoa about 9 o'clock. We were congratulating ourselves upon seeing the lake and the terraces so easily but when we got to the Frenchmans the natives laid a complaint against us for trespassing in forbidden ground without leave, and for smashing the terraces with the hatchet. To the first charge we pleaded guilty but said we did not see any notice that people were not

162 Charles Blomfield, Diary: A visit to the Thermal Springs District 1875-76, MS 30, AIML, Folder 3

90 allowed on the lake.1 63 To the second we gave the lie direct. One old woman took up our little axe and refused to believe but that it had been used to break pieces off the Terraces. We declared we had not taken it away from the tent where we camped and that it had only been used to cut firewood. It was no use. This woman, who we heard owned the White Terrace, and her brother who also owned land there, wanted utu or money for the trespass. We went with them to an Englishman who heard the case stated on both sides and acted as interpreter. He said they had no legal claim upon us and advised us to take our swags and march off and if anyone interfered with us to knock them on the head.

/I Acting on the first part of his advice" Blomfield left and was glad to put Te Wairoa behind him on this occasion. This incident illustrates a determination by the owners of Rotomahana to guard their property rights and to keep control of the benefits of the tourist industry. There would be little benefit accruing to Tuhourangi if tourists could simply wander to Rotomahana and the Terraces and camp there as long as felt so inclined. It also reveals growing Maori exasperation at the constant vandalism practised by tourists at the Terraces: tourists in all ages seem to be unable to resist the temptation to carve their initials on the places they visit and to bring pieces away with them as souvenirs. By avoiding the Maori guides and camping out on the lake without permission, Blomfield, who was in many respects an engaging and sensitive person, seems here to have fallen into the common attitude of colonists that Maori land was a variety of public land rather than being private property.

5.6. Another visitor of the 1870s was Max Buchner who published an account of his visit to the thermal areas in a book published in Breslau in 1878.164 By the time Buchner wrote there was a regular coach service running twice a week to Taupo from Napier and Tauranga. Buchner found Taupo a

163 Though as Blomfield himself admits, lithe Frenchman" had warned him that local Maori would resent any attempt to visit the Terraces without permission. 164 Max Buchner, Reise durch den Stillen Ozean , Breslau, 1878. English translation of extracts relating to New Zealand, typescript, RM.

91 desolate and dreary place, the country round about Tapuaeharuru (Le. Taupo town) Ita barren desert devoid of population":165

No craft lends life to the wide green expanse of the lake whose waves beat monotonously on the muddy banks, there's not a tree to be seen and nothing around except scrub and manuka bushes. Isolated dome-shaped mountains tower above undulating hills. Apart from 5 or 6 wooden huts the only signs of white habitation are two larger buildings with stables and a little further away the constabulary forces barracks.

Buchner noticed a group of six or seven soldiers saunter past; "about the same number of young Maori women, with whom the former live, popped up behind the huts, lit their pipes and chatted animatedly in their musical language". The government presence also manifested itself in the presence of a "broken-down craft with a smart little steam engine" used to cross the lake on government business to Tokaanu. Thus the community at Tapuaeharuru was very different from that visited by Inglis and Bates in 1860. There was also an excellent hotel:166

But in the midst of this dreary comer of the world there is a splendid hotel which boasts all kinds of English comforts. It has good, clean beds and perfect food and is run by a fellow-German from the Rhine who, with the help of only a young, newly-arrived Italian immigrant and no other servants, manages the whole business as cook, barman, stablehand and chambermaid. How upset and angry the hotelkeeper of an ordinary town would be if anyone suggested that he should clean boots, make beds and sweep out rooms. But I've never slept or eaten as well in a German town as I did in isolated Tapuaeharuru with its dozen wooden huts.

5.7. Buchner proceeds to give a description of Ohinemutu which must rank as one of the frankest and most vivid anywhere in the literature, free from the reticence and condescension of so many English-language accounts. Buchner was fascinated by Ohinemutu, describing it as "not only the most

165 Buchner, ibid, 115. 166 Ibid.

92 interesting place in the whole of New Zealand, it is the most interesting in the whole world",167 It was interesting both for its amazing boiling springs but also "because of its Maoris as well as for its boiling underground". He estimates the Maori population of Ohinemutu at this time as about 300, who still retained "their old customs and way of life". He describes the town as follows: 168

From the hot swamp near the shore rose an isolated slope about 100 ft. high planted with European willows with the village built on it facing the lake. At either end of the very rough and ready street which went through it, are two good hotels for tourists and in the middle there is a store with a few other buildings. This is the white quarter. Everything else is Maori and consists of untidy, scattered unfenced huts with narrow paths winding between them. A little higher up, perched on a spur of the hill is the communal building, long and wooden with a roof that almost touches the ground on both sides. In the front there is an entrance under a gable and two glass windows high up. The interior and exterior are very stylishly decorated with wood-carvings, and a bell swings from an ornament at the edge of the roof. The huts are low with flax walls and thatched roofs and they seem very shapeless and rough as living quarters. The storehouses, however, which are unfenced, are neater, made of wood and resting on three posts about 3 feet off the ground. Their flat roofs remind me of Swiss style dovecotes. A carved figure decorates the gable and there are carvings all round the edge of the roof. In the doorways there are anachronistic European padlocks.

Buchner's account contains one of the very few descriptions of the interiors of Maori houses, evidencing the extent to which Rotorua Maori material culture had changed by this time:

The interior furnishing of the huts couldn't be simpler and is as rough and unsightly as the exterior. Stuck in the straw walls were a couple of toothbrushes, a comb, a mirror, an axe, a flint and a variety of objects, mostly half-broken. From the roof hung several short paddles with spoon-shaped blades and there were some planks with grimy bits of pottery sitting on them. The floors were bare earth and the bedding lay in the comers,

167 Ibid, typescript translation, RM, 5. 168 Ibid.

93 not raised off the floor, surrounded by a wooden frame and covered with thick bunches of springy fern and woolen covers. The wealthier ones have linen sheets and feather pillows. With these latter there is a higher standard of cleanliness and the woollen blankets have brighter colours and gayer patterns. In the middle burns a fire which

seems to be more for warmth than for cookin~ as the hot springs are so much handier.

5.8. Buchner identifies a number of applications of the geothermal resource in mid-1870s Ohinemutu:

The underground heat is used by the inhabitants in three ways. Large flagstones in the floor of the hut and in front of it are warmed from below and old men and women crouch over these natural stoves all day long. Other springs are neatly surrounded with rocks and are set aside for cooking. Still others, not quite so hot, serve as baths.

Buchner goes on to describe bathing practices at Ohinemutu. It appears that by this time the Pakeha residents were joining in the practice of a long evening soak in the pools. He also instances another aspect of the tourist traffic which English writers tend to avoid discusing: prostitution. How widespread this was becoming is, however, difficult to judge. Despite his recognition of the existence of some prostitution, Buchner also emphasises the general "respectability" of public behaviour at Ohinemutu. (For a - discussion of this issue see Ngahuia te Awekotuku's Ph.D dissertation, an extract from which is printed in her Mana Wahine Maori (1991)169). Buchner writes:

That little pool is the most luxurious bath a human being could want and at that time it was the communal meeting-place and recreation area of the Europeans and Maoris of both sexes. Especially on warm evenings before it gets dark everyone in Ohinemutu gathers hereand, just as in Italy people go for walks at sunset, everyone here swims in the warm water and then sits in the warm mud of the shallows with only one's head sticking out, gossiping for a couple of hours in a circle of brown men and women. There is never any question of clothing being worn, and they are still talking about an old man

169 Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, "Kai Arahi: Women and Tourism", extract from Ph.D. thesis liThe Sociocultural Impact of Tourism on the Te Arawa people of Rotorua", Mana Wahine Maori, New Women's Press, Auckland, 1991, 96-99.

94 who once appeared in a bathing costume and caused much hilarity and curiosity amongst the natives, who wouldn't rest until they had satisfied their curiosity as to what lay behind the bathing costume. This primitive classical nudity is doubly surprising in this country where nine-tenths of the population consists of almost overpoweringly respectable pious people. The women and girls abide by strict rules and go in and out as little as possible, avoiding exposing their charms. I've never seen in reality anything like that frontispiece in Lt. Meade's book on New Zealand showing classically-formed bathing beauties looking like European lilies, cavorting under the spray from a powerful geyser... It struck me that there was never indecent behaviour between the sexes in the bath, not a sign of eroticism, although Maori ideas on this are very liberal and the presence of so many single girls in Ohinemutu can only be explained by a certain cosmopolitan source of income through foreign traffic.

5.9. Buchner gives a vivid picture of the scene on the way to the bathing pools:

Figures squat before their straw huts on warm flagstones, enveloped in thick woollen clothes,with black clay-pipes in their mouths. Often they pull the blankets right over their heads so that one only sees a shapeless bundle from which the stump of a pipe sticks out. In a violently steaming spring, obviously set aside for cooking from its clean appearance, baskets with potatoes, crayfish and freshwater mussels hang on crossed sticks and chattering groups of women watch the preparations with obvious enjoyment, passing the time in smoking, shouting and laughing. We were immediately the target of their wit as we wandered past and evry other word we heard was "Pakeha" (European). Cracked plates laden with food lay around, and well-fed black, hairy pigs snuffled and grunted happily from one to another. Behind every patch of bush there are several bathing-spots. In each one a dozen brown children sit crammed in so that one wonders how they can move - hitting, splashing, tumbling around, falling over each other and making a noise that echoes through the village .... An Ohinemutu child leads a very carefree life. All day he runs around naked, steals an odd potato, mussel or crayfish and every so often goes and sits in the warm water to warm himself ... Even the adults love this way of life. Any time you visit Ohinemutu you will find half the population sitting in baths to left and right.

95 Ohinemutu is a bathing spa in the truest sense of the word and full use is made of it by tourists and spa-visitors, as well as the maori population.

5.10. From Ohinemutu Buchner followed the standard tourist trail to Rotomahana. He describes the process of making arrangements for guiding and travel with local Maori at Te Wairoa:170

For the trip by water form Wairoa to Rotomahana there is a tariff according to which each traveller must use tow canoeists at 5s. per day. We had soon assembled out eight lads and got busy discussing the terms with them. The photographers had a lot of luggage for which special payment was demanded and this led to protracted bargaining. The Maoris tried to speak English and the English to speak Maori so that neither understood the other. The Frenchman interrupted now and then and the Irish then turned on .the Frenchman; the whole scene would have been highly entertaining if the cold hadn't made it uncomfortable for standing around.

Buchner's party travelled on to the Terraces. Buchner was disgusted by the proliferation of graffiti carved into Otukapuarangi:171

One can only reach the second, south-east terrace by canoe. Unfortunately it has been disfigured by numerous visitors' names being carved on it. Next to an Auckland tailor made famous by his American type advertiSing I even found the Duke of Edinburgh immortalized in this tasteless fashion liTe Plines, te Plines" (the Prince) my guide pointed out to me, The prince had set a very bad example. Every Englishman now does the same. If his royal highness had only taken more interest in the rotting sculptures at Ohinemutu and bought some of them he would have shown a healthier example for the English tourists with their mania for imitation. With an expanding market the Maoris could have returned to an art for which their ancestors had so much talent and for which the present generation still shows a great gift, and perhaps and industry would have grown up which would have drawn a noble, lovable race back towards the bleSSings of work.

170 Buchner, typescript, ibid, 14. 171 Ibid,16.

96 5.11. One Henry M. Morton left a journal of a visit to the region, a copy of which is held by the Auckland public library.172 The manuscript is undated, but as it clearly predates the Tarawera eruption of 1886 and refers to sittings of the Land Court relating to Rotomahana it should be dated from some time between 1882 and 1886. Morton travelled to the area what was by now the standard route, first by steamer from Auckland to Tauranga (which was itself dependent to a degree on the tourist industry), and from there by coach via Oropi and the Maungarewa Gorge to Ohinemutu. The coach journey took 9 hours. Morton gives an informative picture of Ohinemutu as it was in the early 1880s:173

At the back of our hotel is a tongue of land full of hot water holes, little bubbling pools of boiling mud, and steam issuing from the ground in every direction, [ ] with trees and and patches of vegetation. which is of course prolific. On this curious spot, running about a third of a mile into the lake, there is a Maori settlement. Most of the boiling pools have been utilised, some for cooking purposes, others for hot baths, for the Maori can stand a pretty hot temperature. A large hole is made of a suitable size near the boiling pool, the ground round the top is covered with flat stones, and the boiling water conducted in at pleasure, and the Maoris can then lie in the bath or on the stones around the top. There is a large runanga house here, the interior of which, as well as the door posts, exhibits a large amount of skill in the Maori carving. The interior is covered with devices of various kinds, but in the absence of windows the place has a gloomy appearance. The free use of polished shells in the carving, however, gives a very pretty relief to an otherwise heavy appearance. Just by a tall flagstaff is erected, the upper part of which, with a strangely designed figure-head, is not yet in its place. It appears this is waiting Sir George Grey's promised visit to the neighbourhood, when the top, with the Union Jack, will be raised as a sign of peace and good will between the two races. The Maoris are busy preparing the evening meal as we pass through the settlement, and the kits of potatoes and whatever else there is to make up the meal are bubbling vigorously in the pools, but most of them salute us with the usual "Tena koi" [sic].

172 Henry M. Morton, Notes of a visit to the lake District, NZ MSS 683, APL. 173 Ibid, pp 7-9.

97 5.12. Morton paid a visit to Whakarewarewa to find that the Maori owners were rather tenacious in ensuring that visitors paid their fees: 174

After we had seen a little, our Maori guide was very anxious to take us to one path which he told us would lead to the greatest of the wonders, but at the entrance was a stile guarded by an old Maori lady, who made a charge of 'one herin' for passing. She held out her dark hand for her fee, which she seemed extremely anxious to get possession of, and on payment of which we were allowed to pass on.

Later he travelled on to Te Wairoa:

There is a very pretty little island at one end of Rotokakahi caUedMotutawa, and in a very sheltered spot in the comer of the lake a native settlement called Kaiteriria. Soon afterwards we come in sight of the native settlement of Wairoa, consisting of two hotels for the accomodation of tourists and also to assist the natives is spending what money they can make in acting as guides and boatsmen to tourists at Rotomahana and the Terraces,175 and the many ways by which alone a Maori knows how to obtain money. One hotel also combines the business of general store in the settlement, the other is at present closed up. All goods are of course very dear here, the cost of 2d. for carriage from Tauranga being a heavy increase on first cost. There is a small flour mill driven by a race from the Wairoa, but it appears to be little used now. The chief Te Kepa has a very fair weather-board house, and the school and teacher's house is a very respectable building, which has been much enlarged recently. It is surrounded by a very nice garden and paddock. Overlooking this, and quite hid in the acacia bush which surrounds it, is the old mission house, called tiThe Mu" though none of the natives know the origin of the name. Close by, but more in the foreground, is the native church, a very respectable structure in Gothic style.

174 Ibid, 11. 175 But see Peter Waaka's remarks in his essay "Tarawera - 100 years before the eruption" in Ian Rockel, ed., Tarawera Eruption Centennial Exhibition 1886-1986, Rotorua District Council, Rotorua, 1986, pp 11-13 at p. 13.

98 5.13. J.H. Kerry-Nicholls' account The King Country, published in 1884, two years before the eruption, is full of details about Rotorua and Taupo.176 In many ways this book ranks amongst the fullest and most detailed of all the accounts. He is one of the few visitors to remark that the inhabitants of Ohinemutu buried their dead in the thermal ground: l77

Not only do the natives use the springs for bathing and curative purposes, and not only do they warm their houses by their means, and perform all culinary duties by their aid, but they actually bury their dead among them. I went down to the further point of the native settlement, where there is a small graveyard situated among boiling springs and steaming fissures that crop up everywhere over the ground, as if the volcanic fires below were just ready to burst forth and swallow up the living with the dead. Portions of curious carvings, old canoes, and grotesque figures in wood lay scattered about in every direction, and one was apt to wonder how it was that they had not been long since been destroyed or carted off to grace some antiquarian museum as relics of a rude art which is fast falling into decay. But these remnants of native industry were all tapu, and were as sacred in the eyes of the Maoris as would be a piece of the "true cross" on the altar of a cathedral in Catholic Spain.

5.14. Kerry-Nicholls gives much information on the curative properties of some of the Rotorua Springs. A spring at Sulphur Point named Te Kauhanga, "the Pain Killer"at "is very efficacious in cases of acute rheumatism, and many marvellous cures are said to have been effected by it" .178 Closer to the lake is the spring Te Pupunitanga, livery beneficial in cases of acute rheumatism and cutaneous disorders" .179 At Whakarewarewa "many of the numerous springs here possess great curative properties".180 Kerry-Nicholls also visited a group of springs at Te Koutu, north of Ohinemutu: 181

176 J.H. Kerry-Nicholls, The King Country, or Explorations in New Zealand, London, 1884 (Capper Press reprint 1974) 177 Ibid, 59-60. 178 Ibid, 64. 179 Ibid. Ill) Ibid, 65. 181 Ibid, 66. This part of his book also contains the following passage which, if no particular relevance, the author cannot forbear quoting: "Soon afterwards I passed in front of a

99 I was shown round this locality by a native guide, who took me to a large hole where a warm spring, called Kahotawa, bubbled up in a mixture of greenish mud and scum. Its black sides were overgrown with ferns, and a few sticks were placed acros it in a mystic, cabalistic kind of way. When we got near to it, I noticed that my guide drew back, and when I motioned for him to follow me, in order to explain the mystery, he informed me in the most solemn way that it was tapu for the Maori, but not for the pakeha. He afterwards stated that it was sacred to an aged chief, or rangatira, who had been buried in it. I did not envy the old man his last resting-place, for I had never seen a grave that looked so much like a cauldron of hot turtle soup.

5.15. Kerry-Nicholls visited Rotomahana and the Terraces and Geyser Valley at Wairakei, both of which he describes at length, and also passed through Orakeikorako. He reached Tokaanu, which was now a "jealously­ guarded" entrance to the King Country. Of Tokaanu Kerry-Nicholls writes:182

The Tokanu River runs through the settlement. and it is in the vicinity of this stream that the principal springs are situated. All the springs, solfataras and fumaroles hereabout partake of the same character as those of the other centres of thermal action around the lake, and are used by the natives in the same way for the curative properties they possess, as well as for cooking, bathing, and other purposes .... There is a considerable Maori population at Tokanu and its neighbourhood, and many of the natives are remarkable for their stalwart build, a condition which no doubt arises, in no small degree, from the healthfulness of the climate, as well as from the fact that they whare built within a few feet of the lake, where there was an open bath right in front of the doorway. It was formed of a few slabs let into the ground, like a square box, to hold the water. A small warm spring filled it, and then ran over its sides into the lake. I should not have taken any notice of this simple contrivance, had it not been for the fact that a maiden of some seventeen summers was reclining at full length in it, in the simple yet attractive costume of Eve, and with a short black pipe in her mouth. I had stepped round the comer of the hut, and was within a foot of going head-first into the bath before her well-rounded form met my gaze. She was, however, in no way disconcerted by this contretemps, but, fixing her dark eyes upon me, said, in the most unconcerned way imaginable, "Tenakoe, pakeha". There was not the slightest tinge of immodesty in her manner; she simply lay shining beneath the sun, with all the grace with which nature had endowed her, looking like a beautiful bronze statue encased in a block of crystal." 182 Ibid, 162-3.

100 secure the choice of a greater variety of food than that obtained by many of the less favoured tribes of the interior. The principal staple of diet, here as elsewhere, is pork and potatoes, but besides this the lake yields several varieties of fish, which are held in high esteem.

5.16. This study could not be complete without reference to the classic account by Makereti (Maggie Papakura), The Old-Time Maori. Makereti, a most remarkable woman whose life and work has been described in two essays by Ngahuia Te Awekotuku183 was a popular tourist guide at Whakarewarewa who married Richard Staples-Browne in 1912 and moved to England, where she wrote her book intending to present it as part of her Oxford degree in anthropology.184 Makereti was born at Whakarewarewa in 1872 and knew the village, its history and way of life intimately. She gives much information concerning the use of geothermal resources. Concerning cooking and obtaining food at Whakarewarewa she writes:185

In parts of the thermal district, food was cooked in the boiling or steam holes. At Whakarewarewa where I lived with my kroua Maihi te Kakauparaoa and his sister Marara who brought me up, we never had any fires at all. All the food was either boiled or steamed. Kumara, potatoes, or taro would be placed in a tukohu, a basket made for this purpose from the leaves of the toetoe (pampas grass), and the plaited string at the top would be pulled, so closing its mouth. This would then be placed in the parekohuru (boiling spring), and at the end of the spring would be tied to a peg in the ground near the edge of the hole. After a quarter of an hour or so, the tukohu would be lifted out and placed in a hangi, or natural steam oven dug and prepared in the ground, and left for about ten minutes to steam. The basket of kumara or potatoes could also be rinsed through the boiling hole and put into the steam hole straight away without boiling. Food cooked in these hot springs was very nice to taste. Meat, birds, or fish were generally steamed and tasted good.

183 Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, "Introduction", to Makereti, The Old-Time Maori, New Women's Press ed., Auckland, 1986; and "Remembering Makereti", in Mana Wahine Maori, New Women"s Press, Auckland, 1992, 155-162. 184 See the introduction by Ngahuia te Awekotuku to the New Women's Press 1986 edition of The Old-Time Maori. 185 Makereti, op.cit., 165-66.

101 5.17. She describes the seasonal patterns of life at Whakarewarewa:186

How well I remember my young days when we lived at Whakrewarewa with my koroua Maihi te Kakauparoaoa and my kuia Marara his sister, those two fine old people of the old order who lived their good and simple life, not knowing a word of English. We lived mostly at Whakarewarewa during the winter season, going to Parekarangi now and then to get potatoes and other foods, as nothing was grown at Whakarewarewa owing to the heat of the ground. We had a rua kai (food pit) on the site where the government now have a so-called model pa, for we owned the land then.

And in a very revealing and informative passage which illustrates how use rights were allocated Makereti describes the process of collecting tawa berries and cooking them using geothermal heat:187

Tawa berries were an important food of the Maori. The fruit was abou t an inch long and like a dark-coloured plum when picked fresh. When ripe, it was eaten as a fruit and was juicy and not unpleasant to taste. The kernel is very like the seed of the date; and very hard. These berries were collected in plenty in baskets, many being picked up from the ground where they had dropped. The kernels were cooked in a hangi for several hours, then dried in the sun, and stored for future use. If cooked well, they would keep for a long time. My own hapu of Wahiao gathered their tawa berries at Moerangi, Kakapiko, Parekarangi, and other places, and took them to cook in the boiling and steam holes of Whakarewarewa. The baskets of tawa were first cooked in the boiling water for a few hours, and then placed in a steam hole in the ground and left to steam for two or more days. They were then spread on the papa hohatu, the silica formation beside a boiling hole, to dry. After this they were put into a pataka (store-house) where they would keep for years. Berries which were needed for immediate use could be eaten as soon as they were cooked, but the dried and stored tawa had to be soaked in water and placed in a hangi for several hours until they were soft. They were dark brown, and the water in which they were soaked was quite thick when the tawa was ready to eat. We had plenty when I was a child, and I used to enjoy them. With a

186 Ibid, 167, 187 Ibid, 207.

102 little sugar, they were very nice indeed. A woman who was mate wahine (menstruating) was not allowed to cook tawa berries, nor would she think of it. The belief was that if she did so the berries would be mata, and would not get cooked. Nga hapu of Tuhourangi gathered berries at Pakareka, Tutaekeha, Tumunui, and other places, and took them in baskets to be cooked in the hot springs at Rotomahana and Whakarewarewa. A rahui, a sign that the place was tapu and belonged only to those hapu, stood at Otamakari over these places. Some of the hapu of Tuhourangi who gathered tawa berries in the above-mentioned places were Ngati Taoi, N. Tuohonoa, N. Te Apiti, N. Tutea and N. Umukaria.

6.0. THE LAND COURT IN THE CENTRAL NORTH ISLAND

A. The Fenton Agreement and the Coming of the Court

6.1. The prelude to the arrival of the Land Court at Rotorua was the Fenton agreement of 1880. It is not proposed in this report to give a full description or analysis of the Fenton as this has been covered fully in my earlier report to the Waitangi TribunaI.188 The prime motivation on the part of government was to end the rather unsatisfactory (from the Crown's point of view) land tenure situation at Rotorua and to ensure that a spa could be developed under government auspices. The starting point was the assumption that Rotorua Maori would not sell land to the Crown, meaning that some new arrangement had to be found, as was explained in an important memorandum written by the Native Secretary, T.W. Lewis, in 1890:189

The Hot Springs Country of New Zealand and especially the Rotorua District has been for many years famous, not only in this and the Australian colonies, but throughout the world generally, for the beauty of its Lakes, the wonders of its thermal springs and

188 R.P. Boast, The Legal Framework for Geothermal Resources: A Historical study, Report to the Waitangi Tribunal, 1991, pp 4-16. A copy of the agreement, transcribed from a MS original held at National Archives is in ibid, Annexures, vol. A, Annexure 2. 189 Report by T W Lewis, Native Secretary, to Native Minister, 12 May 1890, copy of letter attached to pleadings in claim by Eruera Te Uremutu et aI, pleadings, in separate bundle attached to 15 1,16514 (Rotorua Township), Parts 2 and 3, NA.

103 silica foundations, and perhaps still more for the well known marvellous healing qualities of the principal baths. The Natives, from time immemorial have attached the greatest importance to the District, and very highly valued the baths which were largely used by them for the cure of skin and other diseases. What is now the Pukeroa Reserve, a hill commanding a beautiful view of the Rotorua Lake and surrounding country, was formerly the site of a celebrated Pa, and the scene of numerous engagements to secure the conquest of this much coveted spot. During the administration of the Hon. Mr Rolleston as Minister of Lands, and the Hon. Mr Bryce as Native Minister, negotiations with the Natives were entered into by Mr Fenton (then Chief Judge of the Native land Court) under the direction of the Government, with a view to the opening up of the Rotorua District, and the establishment on the borders of its Lake of a township, which it was considered might emulate, if not surpass in importance, some of the spas of the old world. It seems at the time to have been taken for granted that the acquisition of the land necessary for a Township, and of the principal springs, by purchase, was impossible. Whether this really was so, cannot now of course be positively stated, personally I am inclined to think that it would have been better for the natives, for the District, and for the Government, if, instead of the course adopted, earnest endeavours had been made to buyout the interests of the Natives. Had this been accomplished all misunderstanding and complications as to title would have been avoided. In my opinion the liberal granting of reserves, say, on a principle of tenths, or in such other manner as might have been found desirable and attractive to the natives would have induced them to sell. Whether or not the course suggested was possible for the acquisition of the land in the first instance, it was not, so far as I am aware, attempted. Mr Fenton entered into an agreement with the principal chiefs under which a township was to be laid out, which was to remain the property of the Natives, the Crown to stand in the somewhat peculiar relation of Agent for the Owners, with power of leasing the sections for 99 years. It is not necessary to mention here the other conditions of the agreement made by Mr Fenton, but I should state that at this time the land had not passed through the Native Land Court, and the principal chiefs with whom Mr Fenton negotiated were assumed to be owners. It was a part of the agreement that the land should be put through the Court, which was done in due course, and a certificate of title issued to the ascertained owners, under "The Native Land Act 1880".

104 6.2. For his part Fenton sent a long report to Folleston after the execution of the agreements190 which among other things is informative as to the nature of Maori local government at Ohinemutu:191

I should add that I found in existence, at Ohinemutu, a regularly organised head body with Chairman, Secretary and officers. It was constituted as a Land League for the prime object of preventing alienation to the Crown, and in a secondary degree, of obstructing or assisting, as the case may be, in association with private persons, but it subsequently assumed other powers and duties, and had acquired a position of some importance, being accepted by the tribe as the Witanagemot was accepted by our fathers, with little more than its own influence and strength to enforce its decrees.

This Komiti had already begun its own process of conducting hearings into ownership of land and awarding titles on the basis of Maori customary law. l92 It was with the Komiti, which held its regular meetings at the Tamatekapua house at Ohinemutu that Fenton conducted his negotiations.

6.3. The main consequence of the agreement was that the Native Land Court began sitting in Rotorua and the Rotorua blocks passed the Court in rapid succession. A long and tenacious resistance to the Court on the part of the Arawa tribes collapsed completely. The consequences of sale and rapid land alienation which were associated with the Court in other parts of the country followed just as inevitably at Rotorua and the surrounding areas,

190 It is often forgotten that as well as the main agreement, essentially concluded with Ngati Whakaue, Fenton made a separate arrangement with Tuhourangi. Copies of both agreements can be found on file MA 13/79. The Tuhourangi agreement is reproduced in Boast op.cit., Annexures, vol A, No 3. Unlike the main agreement the Tuhourangi agreement was never formally ratified and in 1882 Fenton advised Rolleston that the agreement with Tuhourangi "need not be noticed": see Boast op cit, vol 1, 17. 191 Fenton to Rolleston, December 181880, MA 13/79. NA. 192 See the letter to Fenton from Makari Hikairo dated 12 August 1881 (MA 13/79) complaining about aspects of the Land Court's decsion concerning the Pukeroa-Oruawhata block, where the complainant stresses that the blocks in question had already been adjudicated upon by the Komiti. "They were investigated before the four judges of that Tribunal, and some pieces were awarded to us by reason of our claims under Maori custom (a whakataua ana etahi 0 auapiihi kia matou irunga ano i 0 matou take Maori)". The Court's action in vesting Pukeroa­ Oruawhata virtually wholly in Ngati Whakaue caused much annoyance to other tribes.

105 with the difference that the Thermal Springs Districts Acts reserved monopoly land purchase rights to the Crown. Individualisation meant that the Crown could purchase the interests of individual shareholders and then apply to the Court for a partition order in its favour. The Pukeroa-Oruawhata block had its own special problems, succinctly described by Lewis:

Mr H T Clarke was appointed by the Hon. Minister for Lands to complete the arrangements made by Mr Fenton, and in pursuance of his powers he made a second agreement. The Two agreements are mentioned and confirmed by "The Thermal Springs District Act 1881 Amendment Act 1883". To enable Mr Clarke judicially to ascertain the relative interests of the owners in the block, in order that the rents of the township might be properly divided amongst them, he was appointed a Judge of the Native Land Court. Mr Clarke's apportionment has been made the basis upon which the rents have been distributed, and the purchase by myself - so far as it has gone - carried out. As I have pointed out in a previous memo I think Mr Clarke made a mistake and gave himself a vast amount of unnecessary work by conducting his appointment under the provisions of the Native Lands Division Act an Act which was undoubtedly never intended to be applied to the unique conditions of this Township Block. This division of the land has alrady created serious difficulty and will, I fear, lead to further complications. I have now however reason to believe that fortunately the division is, so far as the land is concerned, ultra vires. The valuable portion of mr Clarke'S work is the allotment of the relative interests of the natives in the rents or other proceeds of the Block. Mr Clarke treated the interests as 1100 shares, and has divided these shares in different proportions amongst all the owners named in the certificate of title. All the time the township was laid out and leased, there was a sanguine belief that the place had before it an important and prosperous future. It was generally supposed that the Government who evidently took a great interest in the scheme, would use every effort to make it a complete success. The Terraces were still in existence. A Railway was projected by a private Company to bring Rotorua within a day's easy reach of Auckland, and when the leases were offered in Auckland by auction, although the upset prices were high, they were exceeded, and a vigorous competition ensued for sections within the Township, and for the day of the sale everything looked couleur de rose; the natives moreover imagined that large revenues arising from the land as rents, would be assured to them, and went into debt accordingly. Strange to say, the sales

106 were hardly ended when the purchasers of the Leases began to repent of their bargains. I understand that a considerable number of the purchasers neglected or declined to take up the Leases or pay the rents agreed upon, others stuck to their bargains until an opportunity was offered to them by the Government in accordance with the Thermal Springs District Act 1881 Amendment Act 1883 of relinquishing their leases which I believe several availed themselves of. There are two classes remaining; viz, persons in possession and occupation who do not pay any rent, and those in possession and occupation who do. These latter are I understand very few in number, and the amount of rent accruing in consequence is very small. As to the position of the important question of rents, the Crown Lands Department took legal proceedings to compel the payment by the Defaulters of the rents due, and the suits in the Law Courts in August 1884 occupied a considerabe amount of public attention. I believe that Judgments were obtained in the Resident Magistrate and District Courts, but it was found impossible for various reasons to enforce payment. Subsequently (I think by the combination of some of the Lessees) one or more test cases were carried into the Supreme Court, and the late Mr Justice Gillies reversed the decisions of the lower Courts, principally, I have heard, on the ground that the Ngatiwhakaue were not a corporate body, and could not be a contracting power to a Lease. There I understand the matter has rested. This decsion of course impugns the validity of any of the Leases, and has practically rendered the Crown Lands Department powerless to move in the interests of the Native Owners in connection with them. In addition to the paralysing effect of this judgment upon the interests of the Township, its prospects of prosperity were perhaps even more injuriously affected by the disastrous eruption of Mount Tarawera in June 1886 by which the Pink and White Terraces and Lake Rotomahana were completely destroyed, the character of the Blue lake and other Lakes greatly changed, and the peculiar beauty of the District generally marred by the deposit of Volcanic mud over an area of many square miles. The loss sustained by the District and by the Colony and indeed the World at large by the destruction of the Terraces can hardly be overestimated. I recall on one occasion visiting them with a gentleman who had come direct from the Yellow Stone region, and was moreover well acquainted with the thermal wonders of Iceland, who assured me that though there were in these places grander Geysers and more extensive silica formations, nothing that he had seen could be compared with the marvellous perfection and beauty of the White and Pink terraces.

107 Ngati Whakaue were trapped in a very difficult situation. They could not use Pukeroa-Oruawhata, or sell it, yet could derive no income from it or take any action to collect the defaulting rents. There was one option open to them. In 1889 the decision was taken to sell the block to the Crown. The negotiations were conducted by Lewis himself, not without difficulty. A few owners refused to sell. Rather than seek a partition order the Crown took no further action until 1910, leaving the block technically Maori freehold land. By the Thermal Springs Act of that year the block was converted to Crown land and the remaining non-sellers' interests cancelled.

B. The Nature of Land Court Evidence

6.4. Here again there are limitations with the evidence. In many important cases geothermal places only receive scant mention. Furthermore, although the evidence is certainly being given by Maori witnesses, the context is in some respects an artificial one, in which tribal history is being put to use in documenting and proving claims to land, often exclusive claims. This means that the evidence contained in the Minute Books of the Native Land Court needs to be handled with some care. I wouldargue, however,that the evidence contained in the Minute Books is not so inherently unreliable that the Court records should be discarded as a reliable source. The evidence was given in public before a large and often critical audience. Maori witnesses were often cross-examined very thoroughly by counter-claimants. The real problem was often not the evidence but the inability of the judges of the court to comprehend the complexity of the situation before them. There was also the general problem of the entire Land Court process itself, which required the identification of rightful individual claimants and which failed to allow much scope for overlapping rights. Many of the judgments contained in the Minute Books are amazingly brief and it is often hard to know what factors primarily influenced the judge and the degree to which he grasped the complexities of inter-tribal and hapu relationships. An example is Judge Symonds' decision in respect of the Pukeroa-Oruawhata Block in 1881, the first Rotorua block to pass the Court, where the whole block was vested in

108 Ngati Whakaue (with the exception of a small piece known as Tarewa, vested in Ngati Kea and Ngati Tuara, groups who had fled to Rotorua from Waikato) to the complete exclusion of the other Arawa tribes.1 93

C. Principal Rotorua Blocks

6.5. Pukeroa-Oruawhata was the first Rotorua block to pass the court after the conclusion of the Fenton agreement in 1880. The next key block was Rotomahana-Parekarangi, heard by Judge Mair in 1882. Disputes about names and the distribution of hapu rights within Ngati Whakaue led to a further hearing by Fenton himself respecting Pukeroa-Oruawhata in 1882.1 94 From this time onwards the progress of investigation of title and alienation to the Crown (which had monopoly purchase rights at Rotorua under the Thermal Springs Districts Acts of 1881 and 1883) was rapid. Apart from Pukeroa-Oruawhata and Rotomahana-Parekarangi two Rotorua blocks are of particular interest: Whakarewarewa and Mokoia Island.

6.6. Whakarewarewa has been studied in detail by Peter Waaka.1 95 He summarises its block history as follows: 196

~ In April 1883, the Native Land Court made a decsion on the title of Whakarewarewa. It vested the village and thermal area in six different factions or sub-tribes; three belonging to Ngati Wahiao and three to Ngati Whakaue. The following year a committee with ten members was set up to administer an area of the village known as the Rahui...At the eruption of Mount Tarawera in June, 1886, the Tuhourangi who were living at Tarawera sought refuge with their Ngati Wahiao relatives at Whakarewarewa. Some also fled to Hauraki where they were given land on which to settle. It was partly as a result of this increase in village population that its residents

193 See (1881) 1 Rotorua MB 344. 194 See (1882) 3 Rotorua MB 13. 195 Peter K.S.Waaka, Whakarewarewa: the Growth of a Maori Village, MA theiS, University of Auckland, 1982; and "Whakarewarewa" in Don Stafford, Roger Steele and Joan Boyd, (eds), Rotorua 1880-1980, Rotorua and District Historical Society, 1980. 196 P.K.S. Waaka, "Whakarewarewa" op.cit, p.74.

109 applied to the court for partition. The Ngati Whakaue objected to any subdivision. In November, 1889, the Wharewarewa partition case was heard. It was decided that the six factions were to remain as sole owners but that the three factions of Ngati Whakaue were to receive the major portion. This portion, comprising the land on either side of the present village, was sold to the Crown in 1896.

6.7. Few of the Rotorua blocks led to such complex litigation as Mokoia Island, which necessitated the creation of a separate series of Minute Books for itself.1 97 Mokoia is the subject of a separate monograph by Cecil Watt published in 1969,198 based to a large extent on the voluminous material contained in these Minute Books. The Mokoia case began at Rotorua on 7 Jan 1916 and was heard before Judge C.E. MacCormick, with Tiweka Anaru acting as Clerk and Interpreter. There were some 29 claimants and claimant groups, some claiming the whole island and others only parts of it, mostly representing factions of Ngati Whakaue, Ngati Uenukukopako, Ngati Rangiwewehi and Ngati Rangiteaorere. Judge MacCormick was not thrilled by the complexity of the case, describing it as "about the most unsatisfactory case in this Court's history."199 He stated that he would have preferred to make his award according to hapus but that was not possible due to the way in which the case had been set up. He found essentially that all four iwi had interests in Mokoia and split the island into 1002 shares at 3 shares to the acres. Some of the individual names to be inserted in the order could not be agreed upon and the situation seems to have broken down in confusion. The case came before the Maori Land Court again in 1953200 and before the Maori Appellate Court in 1955.201

197 Mokoia Island Minute Books 1-3. Due to the Maori Appellate Court case on Mokoia heard in 1955 before Judge Morison the manuscript minute books were typed: a copy of the typescript is held by the Auckland Institute and Museum Library, MS 193 AIML. 198 Cecil Watt, Te Motutapu a Tinirau: the Sacred Isle, Whakatane and District Historical Society. 199 (1916) 3 Mokoia MB 85, typescript vol 3 p. 36. 200 See (1953) 99 Rotorua MB 127 Gudge Smith) 201 Mokoia Island Investigation of Title, Appeals 1,2, 3, & 4, Maori Appellate Court Rotorua, decision Friday 11 March 1955 (copy held in MS 193, AIML)

110 D. Taupo and other Districts

6.8. In the North Taupo area, unlike Rotorua, some blocks passed through the Court and into private hands under the ordinary operation of the Native Lands Acts before the Crown gave a monopoly of land purchase to itself under the Thermal Springs Districts Acts. For example the important Tauhara Block of 10, 605 acres, which includes Lake Rotokawa and the surrounding thermal areas, was investigated as early as 1869 when it was vested in two persons, Hare Reweti te Kume and Hare Matenga Taua. (This block was later the subject of a rehearing under the Native Equitable Owners Act: see Judge Scammell at (1897) 12 Taupo MB 84.) (The history of this block is the subject of a paper by Dr Evelyn Stokes.202) Another example is the Wairakei block of 4203 acres which passed the Court in 188P03and which passed into the hands of the tourist entrepreneur Robert Graham, just before the enactment of the Thermal Springs District Act 1881. The very dubious circumstances of the Wairakei transaction were first remarked on by Alan Ward204and have now been dealt with at length by Evelyn Stokes in her monograph on WairakeL205

6.9. As indicated above, research on the Rotorua-Taupo Minute Books is incomplete. In particular very Hitle work has been done on the southern Taupo blocks, including the Ketetahi springs. More also needs to be known about the Bay of Plenty blocks around Kawerau and Whakatane. One very early alienation in this area was Whakaari and Moutohora (Le. White Island and Whale Island) which both passed the Land Court at its first sitting in the region in 1865.206 I intend to cover this in a separate report on these two islands.

202 Dr Evelyn Stokes, Rotokawa Geothermal Field: Submission to Waikato Valley Authority from Ngati Tahu Tribal Trust, Waikato University 1987. 203 Judgment (Judge Macdonald) is at (1882) 2 Taupo MB 224-6. 204 Alan Ward, A Show of Justice, Auckland University Press/Oxford University Press, 1974,256 205 Dr Evelyn Stokes, Wairakei Geothermal Area: Some historical perspectives, University of Waikato, 1991. 206 See (1865) 1 Maketu MB. See generally Maxwell, op.cit,. 14-44.

111 E. Land Court Evidence relating to geothermal features

6.10. In the minute books geothermal features are often mentioned as foci or refernce points for events in tribal history. An example is "Hinemoa's pool" on Mokoia Island. In the Mokoia case evidence for the principal Ngati Rangiteaorere claimants was given by Rangiteaorere Te Kiri. Under cross­ examination by Miri 0 Raukawa he stated:207

I know a bath called Kaiweka. It belonged to Tiki and Tutanekai. Subsequently Tutanekai landed there. There were bowls (kumete) in the bath, one belonging to Tiki and one to Tutanekai. Tutanekai's mana descended to Hohua and Tiki's to me. Hohua is a chief of Rangiteaorere. I know Hinemoa swam across from Owhata. She was attracted by Tiki's flute, not Tutanekai's flute. Latter could not playa flute. But Tiki wanted Hinemoa for Tutanekai. It is jealousy on the part of Ngati Whakaue which makes them say that Tutanekai played the flute. Tutanekai and Hinemoa were married at Mokoia where Tutanekai was living with his friend Tiki.

6.11. The importance of geothermal areas is well brought out in the Tauhara North re-hearing case which occurred in 1897. Here there is evidence describing a seasonal use of Lake Rotokawa to take ducks and to burn kokowai. Hera Peka states:

I went first [to Lake Rotokawa] from Ohake [Ohaaki] ... We went there to bum kokowai and take ducks at Rotokawa. We stayed at Te Takapou and from there we went to Te Ripo a kainga where kokowai was prepared. We came by canoe, from Ohake. When we got to Te Ripo, Parekawa and Perahama stayed there burning kokowai. The kokowai was got at Te Kupenga. We left there and came on to Ngawapurua, then the canoe was dragged overland [Le. from the Waikato River] to Rotokawa, and in the morning the lake was worked. It was always worked in the early morning. Having finished working the lake we went on to Ngawapurua to make huahua. Whilst there we lived on Putere (fern root). Te Pou was the putere ground there. Te Whakatuapiki was the ngawha (hot spring) in which the putere was cooked - it is close to

207 (1916) 1 Mokoia MB 48, typescript p. 23.

112 Ngawapurua - from there we came to Takapou and on to Ohake and from thence after some time to Hapua in the Tutukau Block - it is a large kainga.

6.12. The same case also gives information explaining the Maori nomenclature of hot springs. During the cross-examination of Poihipi te Kume by Hoera Matene one finds the following exchange:208

Q. Have you heard my witness say one of the principal tohus on this block was a waiariki (hot spring)?

A. I did. I deny it - all the land is ngawha. A ngawha is water too hot to stand in. A waiariki is water hot enough to allow it to be used for bathing. A ngawha is a natural formation. Waiariki are generally formed baths - artificially.

Q. Are there any ngawha or waiariki away from the lake [Lake Rotokawa]?

A. Yes, on the hill side among the manuka. On the Parariki stream there are ngawha - no waiariki.

Q. My witness says this waiariki is between Otawarauhuru and Te Rua Hoata on the banks of the Waikato - do you know this?

A. I have never been along the banks of the Waikato so I could not see it.

6.13. Evidence in the same case also shows that the availability of geothermal resources was (as might be expected) important in settlement patterns. Hare Matenga says:209

I will speak of Parariki. The boundary [between the Tauhara North and the Kaingaroa No.2 blocks] strikes the Waiparariki stream and Ngararawhatanui a rapid and from that follws the stream to the Waikato. The tupupaku that I gave are

208 See (1897) 10 Taupo MB 203. 209 Ibid, 244-45.

113 I i

Ngawapurua - from there we came to Takapou and on to Ohake and from thence after some time to Hapua in the Tutukau Block - it is a large kainga.

6.12. The same case also gives information explaining the Maori nomenclature of hot springs. During the cross-examination of Poihipi te Kume by Hoera Matene one finds the following exchange:208

Q. Have you heard my witness say one of the principal tohus on this block was a waiariki (hot spring)?

A. I did. I deny it - all the land is ngawha. A ngawha is water too hot to stand in. A waiariki is water hot enough to allow it to be used for bathing. A ngawha is a natural formation. Waiariki are generally formed baths - artificially.

Q. Are there any ngawha or waiariki away from the lake [Lake Rotokawa]?

A. Yes, on the hill side among the manuka. On the Parariki stream there are ngawha - no waiariki.

Q. My witness says this waiariki is between Otawarauhuru and Te Rua Hoata on the banks of the Waikato - do you know this?

A. I have never been along the banks of the Waikato so I could not see it.

6.13. Evidence in the same case also shows that the availability of geothermal resources was (as might be expected) important in settlement patterns. Hare Matenga says:209

I will speak of Parariki. The boundary [between the Tauhara North and the Kaingaroa No. 2 blocks] strikes the Waiparariki stream and Ngararawhatanui a rapid and from that follws the stream to the Waikato. The tupupaku that I gave are

208 See (1897) 10 Taupo MB 203. 209 Ibid, 244-45.

113 in [Kaingaroa] No.2 on the bank of the Parariki - just at the mouth of the stream where it falls into the Waikato on this block - that was where the whares were. The whare that stood there in my time belonged to Hone te Rawa and Matiu and it was from there - that kainga - the cultivations I spoke of in No.2 were worked. About a chain beyond that or two chains there is a ngawha. That was the waiariki of this kainga and was used from ancient times - it is quite a small one. There is another in Kaingaroa No.2 just below the Church spoken of - a made one... That was why the kainga was occupied because of these waiariki and the cultivations mentioned.

7.0. ANALYSIS

A. Applications

7.1. Firstly, a number of different applications of the resource can be identified, these being:

(a) Medicinal purposes: See Wade, para 2.2. ("the springs at this place [Ngawha] are resorted to by diseased natives from the Bay of Islands; who bring baskets of provisions with them, and remain on the spot to use the sulphur­ warm-bath until a cure is effected"); Dieffenbach, para 2.3. ("the children were affected with cutaneous and scrofulous diseases, especially ringworm and swollen lymphatic glands, and had been brought to this place for the benefit of bathing in the warm sulphurous water, the beneficial effects of which were already very visible" [Ngawha]);Hochstetter, para 2.4. ("the natives have made use of these springs with good results for many kinds of illness" [Ngawha]); Watkins, para 3.11( ... "they know how to treat it; they bathe in the sulphureous Lakes when they can"); Wakefield, para 3.19. ("they travel from all parts to benefit by its healing qualities" [Ketetahi Springs, Mt Tongariro]; Hochstetter, paras 3.49. (Orakeikorako) (lito these springs are attributed considerable medicinal powers"), 3.52.(Rotomahana) (... "these magnificent thermal springs in the experience of the natives, have proved very curative to chronic skin diseases and rheumatic complaints"), 2.23 (Ohinemutu); Meade, para 5.2. ("a sovereign remedy

114 for cutaneous and other diseases"); Kerry-Nicholls, 5.14. (Sulphur Point, Rotorua, Whakarewarewa). See also, Maxwell, The Maori Use of Geothermal Energy, April 1990, pp 24 (Awakeri), 31 (Rotoma: use of sulphur), 31 (Waitangi or Soda Springs), 45 (Papakiore), 50 (Taheke) etc; Stokes, Wairakei Geothermal Area: some historical perspectives, p. 4; refer also to Ngawha Springs case, kaumatua and kuia evidence; R.P. Boast, Ngawha Springs Report, 1992.

Comments:

There is evidence of widespread use of some geothermal areas for medicinal purposes, particularly for the treatment of skin diseases and rheumatic complaints. Some pools and places were particularly important and valued, reflecting long experience and medical knowledge. Some of the most famous spots were the springs at Ngawha in the Bay of Islands, Ketetahi Springs on Mount Tongariro, and the springs at Sulphur Point at Rotorua. One of the earliest documentary references to the central North Island hot springs (Watkins), dating from 1838, makes it clear that the pools of the central North Island were famous for the cure of skin diseases throughout the entire country.

(b) Cooking and Food Preparation: See Williams, para 3.10. ("boiling springs in which the natives cook their food [Ohinemutu]);Bidwill, para 3.13. (note his remark on the shortage of wood for fuel); Wade, para 3.14 (the springs are "ever­ boiling pots, in which they may easily cook their food" ... "potatoes or kumaras are readily let into or drawn out of the boiling water, by means of baskets constructed for that purpose"); Colenso, para 3.17. ('the natives of the village informed me, that, at a spring on a hill at a little distance, the water was quite hot enough for the purposes of cooking, for which they often used it" [Tarawera]), and 3.18. (Ohinemutu); Wakefield, para 3.20 ("here the natives form their ovens, and cook their food very nicely with great expedition"

115 [Tokaanu)); Dieffenbach, 3.22. (Ohinemutu: lithe largest village is is built close to the springs, and the natives have from time immemorial used them as a natural kitchen for boiling their food"):Taylor, 3.29. ('ithe natives cook all their provisions in them ... some are paved over on which they dry their hinanga and shellfish" [Ohinemutu]), 3.30. (Orakeikorako: lias there is no necessity for fires, all their cooking being done in the hots springs, the women's backs are not broken with carrying fuel"); Johnson, para 3.34. (lithe inhabitants of the pa cook their food by immersing it in the boiling springs, which are so numerous near the lake, that almost every house possesses a natural kitchen"); Russell, para 3.41. ("I observed the children bring down their basket of potatoes, and tying them by a string to a fence which surrounded the boiling spring, leave them there for the necessary time, when, drawing them out by the string, they carried them away to their Wharies" [Ohinemutu]); para 3.42. (" Some of the stone here had been quarried out in slabs and removed to where the ground is hot, to form tables on which they dry their taua berries': c.f. Makereti para 5.17 and Hochstetter para 3.50); Hochstetter, para 3.49.(Tokaanu), 3.50.(drying of tawa berries at Rotomahana), 3.53. (Ohinemutu), 3.54. (Ruahine), Meade, para 5.2. (Ohinemutu: "nature is here the public cook. ..food is boiled by being hung in a flaxen basket in one of the countless boiling pools ... stewing and baking are performed by simply scraping a shallow hole in the earth, wherein to place the pot... or by burying the food between layers of fern and earth in one of the hot air passages") Buchner, para 5.19.,(Ohinemutu: "in a violently steaming spring, obviously set aside for cooking from its clean appearance, baskets with potatoes, crayfish and freshwater mussels hang on crossed sticks", Makereti, para 5.16. ("we never had any fires at all"), 5.17. (use of geothermal heat to prepare tawa berries: see also Russell para 3.42 and Hochstetter, para 3.50.).

Comments: Cooking is one of the most widely remarked on uses of the hot springs, well-attested at Tokaanu, Orakeikorako, Ruahine and especially at Ohinemutu. Those accustomed to twentieth century comforts can easily forget how laborious and time-consuming cooking was in earlier

116 days. The most laborious and demanding aspect was gathering fuel, which in the division of labour in Maori society was work for women. As Bidwill perceptively notes, fuel was not easy to come by in an area such as Rotorua which was not heavily forested, thus underscoring the critical importance of hot spring areas to support the relatively large Maori population of the district. Richard Taylor's remarks concerning the women's backs not being broken by the need to carry fuel is also particularly worthy of note. However, the role of geothermal resources in food prepration was not confined to cooking. Russell, Hochstetter and Makereti describe how tawa berries were collected and dried on specially-cut stone slabs placed over geothermal pools at Rotomahana. Inan:ga and shellfish was dried in the same way at Ohinemutu and no doubt at many other places.

(c) Central Heating Johnson, para 3.34. ("they are in fact hot plates, which are never cool" [Ohinemutu]); Smith, para 3.36. (lithe houses about Rotomahana seem to be all very cosy little places, often built over a hot spring, which always keeps them warm"); Hochstetter, para 3.49., (Orakeikorako: lithe natives ... have special huts for the winter, erected on warm ground"); 3.53. (Ohinemutu: " ... they have ... built huts for the winter on the warm sinter flats"); Meade, para 5.2., (Ohinemutu: " ... stone flags have been laid down, which receive and retain the heat of the ground in which they are sunk. This is the favourite lounge... all the rank and fashion of Ohinemutu may be seen wrapped in their blankets, luxuriously reclining on the warm stones"); Buchner, 5.8. (Ohinemutu: "large flagstones in the floor of the hut and in front of it are warmed from below and old men and women crouch over these natural stoves all day long").

(d) Washing and Dry-Cleaning Clothes Wade, para 3.16., (Kuirau: " .. .lay fern top or other litter over them so as to condense the steam, and then place their garments at the top, to

117 get rid, by an easy process, of all vermin... ") Johnson, para 3.35. Hochstetter, para 3.53., (Ohinemutu: "the natives have separate bathing springs, separate cooking springs, and others in which they do their washing").

Comment Johnson indicates that Maori had found that the chemical attributes of certain springs in the Kuirau area 'made them particularly suitable for cleaning clothing. The continuation of the practice of washing clothes in hot springs at Whakarewarewa caused some friction in the early twentieth century: Tourist Department staff thought the practice was insanitary.

(e) Bathing This is well-attested by virtually every commentator. See eg Williams, para 3.9. (Mokoia); Wade, para 3.14. (Ohinemutu: " ... the people will often sit in these warm baths three or four hours at a time; and occasionally, in cold days of idleness, they will remain the whole day in the water, having food brought to them, and fire to light their pipes")i 3.15. (Mokoia: lithe natives had ingeniously divided the pool of water into two compartments, connected with each other by a narrow channel, and each having an outlet to the lake... It was so contrived that they could always keep the larger compartment as a constant warm bath, regulating its temperature by letting in hot or cold water as required"); Johnson, para 3.33. ("about a hundred and fifty people of all ages were engaged in bathing" [OhinemutuDi Hochstetter, para 3.50., (Rotomahana: " ... natives have constructed regular water courses for bathing purposes, have produced rectangular basins from sheets of sinter, and have connected them with the springs higher up the slopes of the hill by tiled channels"), 2.23. (Ohinemutu: H. mentions "bathing springs" and steam baths: "in places where merely hot steam emerges from the ground they have erected vapour baths (Turkish baths)", and also at Whakarewarewa: "Parikohuru and Paratiatia are the names of springs which supply the great bathing pools 50 ft and more in diameter, in which the natives, men and women, promiscuously, take

118 ------I

baths for hours at a time, all smoking their pipes in comfort and chatting together"); Buchner, para 5.8. (Ohinemutu: "just as Italy people go for walks at sunset, everyone here swims in the warm water and then sits in the warm mud of the shallows with only one's head sticking out, gossiping for a couple of hours"); para 5.9., (Ohinemutu: "any time you visit Ohinemutu you will find half the population sitting in baths to left and right")Mokoia Island case, para 2.44 ("I know a bath called Kaiweka. It belonged to Tiki and Tutanekai").

Comments: It must be emphasised that Maori engaged in civil engineering and developed bathing pools, diverting water into them and regulating their temperature, as the above sources document. According to Hochstetter, the term waiariki refers to "springs suitable for baths, or natural warm baths" (above, para 3.48.); and in the Tauhara North rehearing case Poihipi te Kume states that "waiariki are generally formed baths - artificially". (above, para 6.11.) The use of the term waiariki to denote a bathing pool, whether artificial or natural, seems to be a particular Rotorua-Taupo usage.Te Rangikaheke's explanation of the term waiariki should be recalled. This term in his view served to link this valuable attribute of the resource back to the ancestral figure of N gatoro i Rangi: Hence the name so given, Waiwera (hot water) is "Wai-ariki". For by this ariki (high chief) it was summoned hither, and reached this island, and here kindled. Hence therefore it is named ''Wai-ariki'', though waiwera is the name (given it) by other tribes and people. (above, para 3.3.) It seems that some pools, such as the pool known as Kaiweka on Mokoia, could belong to particular individuals; others were used by families; others again were the property of the whole community.

(f) Products (i) Kokowai: BidwiIl, para 3.13. ("I saw a large manufactory of it on the banks of the Waikato; a double circle of matwork was formed round a large spring of rusty water, and the curdy carbonate of iron was by this means strained off. After this preparation it is burnt and mixed with oiL."); McLean, para 3.28 (Te Heuli;!hc) gift of kokowai); Tauhara North (ii) Soap: Russell, para 3.42. ("the red ochre as well as a white earth which is extremely soft and smooth, seemed to be used by the natives for soap.. .! observed them while in their baths send their children to a distance for it, and cover their hands and bodies with it... "Tiffen, para 2.16. (Orakiekorako: a white clay, "very smooth and wet and much resembling pipe day, only whiter" used as soap). (iii) Oay: Wade, para 3.15., ("the pipes were cut out of a solid mass of indurated pipe clay, in connexion with the boiling springs, and were so well formed, as to be even a fair model for an English pipe maker"); Colenso, para 3.18., Dieffenbach, para 3.22, (Rotorua: "in some places it is of a white or greyish colour, and when soft adheres to the tongue, in which state the natives use it for making pipes, which, however, are now scarce ... "). Some commentators also refer to a kind of edible clay­ see Dieffenbach, para 3.21. (Te Rapa); Russell,3.42. ("the natives eat the mud in small quantities and seem to like it" [Rotomhana]).

(g) Geothermal greenhouses as an aspect of kumara cultivation Wade, 2.6. (Ohinemutu: "Early in the spring, they place their kumaras in baskets, in these natural hot-houses. leaving them for a month or six weeks to grow out...By this method they gain a month or six weeks in the growth of the plant... The kumaras grown in the neighbourhood of the hot springs are very fine in quality and flavour.").

7.2. Tabulating the use of geothermal resources in this way does not, however, adequately convey a sense of their full importance. The various uses were interconnected. Surface hot pools profoundly influenced settlement patterns. Many communities, including some of the largest and most important, were constructed right in the midst of the springs: at Orakeikorako, Ohinemutu, Tokaanu, and in such volatile spots as the islands in Lake Rotomahana where in places the ground was too hot to even stand on. The impression one gains is that geothermal warmth was vital to Maori ability to settle, thrive and develop a large population distinguished by

120 great cultural vitality in literature (as with Te Rangikaheke) and art (all visitors to Ohinemutu remark on the rare quality and scale of its works of art, a sure testament to a wealthy society) in a region which was otherwise cold and inhospitable. Warm lakes, especially Rotokawa and Rotomahana teemed with ducks, which were an important food source. The Tauhara North case documents the use of Lake Rotokawa as a food gathering place. In what appears to be a seasonal cycle ducks were taken and kokowai collected and burnt (see para 6.11.). Lake Rotomahana was also important for its teeming numbers of ducks, a resource which was carefully managed by the use of a strict tapu or rahui during the nesting season (see above: Johnson, para 3.36, Cooper para 3.39. and Russell, para 3.42.) Geothermal heat had important agricultural applications. The use of geothermally heated greenhouses is noted above. Taylor also notes that simply by growing kumara in the warm ground at Orakeikorako the growing season was shortened (see above, para 3.30). All these applications were reflected in the various accounts of Ngatoro-i-Rangi and the bringing of the warming subterranean fires from the ancestral homeland of Hawaiki. It is also reflected in the fact that almost all geothermal features were individually named. As Tiffen remarked in his letter (above, para 2.17):

All springs, or body of springs, are Christened as the maories called it- these are Christened Kopia.

7.3. It is possible, indeed likely, that the Ngatoro-i-Rangi narrative had not onI y the purpose of explaining the origin of the hot springs and other geothermal features: it also had a political purpose. The Ngatoro-i-Rangi account seems to be principally developed amongst Arawa and Tuwharetoa (although it seems to be well known to Ngati Awa as well.) The story links the origin of geothermal energy not, of course, simply to any ancestor, but specifically to an Arawa-Tuwharetoa ancestor. The hot springs were a legacy to, and the broadest sense the patrimony of, all iwi associated with the Arawa canoe: a kind of national property. Below this level there was obviously an allocation of use rights in the resource amongst iwi, hapu and whanau, but this allocation is not always easy to discern.

121 7.4. The evidence used in this report does not deal systematically with the allocation of use rights to geothermal resources according to Maori customary law. The most useful account in this respect is that Dr John Johnson, whose account of Ohinemutu was written in 1847 (see above, paras 3.32-3.38). There was, he says, one very large communal bathing pool, which seems to have been the property of the whole community of Ohinemutu: sometimes up to 150 people were bathing in it. This particular pool was a heated arm of lake Rotorua, into which the hot water from the springs of Ohinemutu ran. Within each of the fenced enclosures within the village of Ohinemutu, each enclosure belonging, one supposes, to a separate extended family, were one or two boiling cooking pools and sometimes a formed family bathing pool, a waiariki. There were in addition a number of public cooking pools, higher up on the hillslope. Hochstetter also tells us that the pools in Ohinemutu had been divided up into bathing pools, cooking pools, and pools for washing clothes. The picture revealed by these sources points to a fairly elaborate system of use allocation, where "ownership" (meaning, here, rights of use) were split between whanau and hapu, some pools being "private" (family) property and others belonging to the whole community. Apparently exclusive rights to particular pools could belong to one or two individuals of high status, such as the pool belonging to Tutanekai on Mokoia Island.

7.5. Makereti describes the process of gathering tawa berries and cooking them in hot springs. She states that a rahui was placed over the berry­ gathering places to indicate that only some hapu of Tuhourangi had the right to gather food there (above, para 5.16.). There is, however, no indication in her narrative that the rights to use the pools for food preparation were restricted in quite the same way. While the food-gathering places were restricted to hapu, the use of the pools at Rotomahana may have been open to anyone who was Tuhourangi - but again, it is not possible to be wholly certain of this. It also needs to be recalled that visitors in the 1870s notice that rights to certain places such as Whakarewarewa or Rotomahana are associated with some people, but not others, and tend to be quite strictly enforced. It would seem most likely that the rights being asserted in this way are hapu rather than iwi rights, reflecting a hapu as the principal landowning unit.

122 7.6. Ultimately, although one is left with a number of uncertainties about the allocation of rights between iwi, hapu, whanau, and individuals, the principal ownership groupings seem to have hapu-whanau. The other issue which is of relevance in modern litigation is whether rights to use geothermal resources were separate from rights of land ownership. This arises in the context of current-day legal questions, especially whether when Maori sold land they also intended to alienate use rights to geothermal resources. The sources do not reveal much information about this. No doubt it is significant that Maori have taken great care to retain surface ownership at Whakarewarewa and Ohinemutu (as well as at Ngawha and other places). Ohinemutu was very specifically excluded from the Pukeroa­ Oruawhata block in the Fenton agreement. Some geothermal areas have been taken compulsorily (Waiotapu and Awakeri under the Scenery Preservation Act; Orakeikorako under the Public Works Act) but in general Maori ownership of surface features has been maintained until the present day. The one major exception is at Wairakei, sold to Robert Graham in 1882. but that particular transaction appears to be questionable in a number of respects (see Evelyn Stokes' study of Wairakei: Wairakei Geothermal Area: Some Historical Perspectives, Waikato University, 1991). The persistence of retention of surface ownership and the fairly tenacious insistence on rights to income at Whakarewarewa and Rotomahana noticed by tourists tends to indicate that Maori thought use rights regarding geothermal areas to be closely linked to landuse rights in general. In modern parlance, the principal owners of geothermal areas were the owners of the surface features, but this does not exclude the possibility of particular rights belonging to particular families and individuals within the landowning group and broader rights belonging to related hapu who were not landowners. It probably makes best sense to think of landownership not in the absolute sense of the Common Law but as a hierarchy of rights and interests belonging to overlapping and related but nevertheless distinct groups.

7.7. It is also a theme of this report that Maori use of geothermal resources was not static. It evolved and adapted. Some uses remained constant - notably cooking, and bathing for pleasure and for medicinal reasons. Some, such as the more "industrial" uses - kokowai, and the use of clay to make pipes, seem to have declined. This simply reflects Maori selective adaptation

123 of aspects of European material culture which were useful - including factory­ made paints and dyes and imported pipes. Later visitors do not refer to the use of geothermal greenhouses and this may be due to the use of hardier species of potato which are more frost-resistant than the rather delicate and troublesome kumara brought initially from Polynesia. This point also requires further research. On the other hand there were new uses, notably tourism. As indicated in this report, tourism was not wholly new - it seems that in pre-European times the pools of the central North Island were well­ known for the curative properties, and so presumably Maori from far afield must have visited the region. A tourist industry aimed specifically at European visitors began to develop as early as the late 1850s, was stymied by the wars of the 1860s, and expanded dramatically in the 1870s. In the 1870s the region was still essentially autonomous, under Maori control, and yet which was the centre of a fast-growing industry of national importance. (The industry had negative aspects as well for the Arawa.) The industry suffered a major setback with the Tarawera eruption in 1886, which obliterated the Terraces and all the other fascinating features of the Rotomahana region, wiping out the villages at Te Wairoa and other places, and blanketing the surrounding region in volcanic mud. The 1880s were a difficult period for the Rotorua region. When the tourist industry revived in the 1890s it assumed a rather different character, with the key role being now played by the government.

7.8. A note on which to conclude is Alfred Domett's epic poem and artifact of the Victorian world-view, Ranolf and Amohia, a turgid tale of a cross­ cultural love story involving Ranolf, the English hero of the poem, and the Maori maid Amohia. In Canto 17 the couple flee across the Terraces at Rotomahana: From the low sky-line of the hilly range Before them, sweeping down its dark-green face, Into the lake that slumbered at its base, A mighty cataract - so it seemed Over a hundred steps of marble streamed And gushed, or fell in dripping overflow...

124 The thermal regions were a key part of the High Victorian Romantic image of New Zealand.

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