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The Pa Maori

Fighting Stages or Platforms (Puhara, Puwhara, Pourewa)

Fighting Stages or Platforms (Puhara, Puwhara, Pourewa)

These were high platforms erected within the defences of a fortified village, and on which a number of the defenders stationed themselves during an attack on the place. Their principal use seems to have been the defence of the entrance and any weak place in the defences of a fort, hence in most cases they were erected opposite the gateway, and, being lofty stages, the defenders thereon were able to use their long spears to advantage in lunging down at any of the attackers who attempted to enter by the gateway. Numbers of stones were usually kept piled on these stages-no mean weapons when used under such circumstances among a people whose missile page 104weapons were few and of an inferior type. These stages are usually termed puhara and puwhara. A native of the Taumaru-nui district applied the name purangi to them.

The puhara was often erected against the inner side of the palisading at the entrance of the pa or fort, but, in the hill or promontory forts, might be placed on a terrace above the level of the entrance, which, however, could be reached by the long spears of the defenders on the stage. Some of these thrusting-spears were as much as 20 ft. in length. From these high stages, stones could be used against an attacking force with, literally, crushing effect.

Williams gives pourewa as the name of "an elevated platform attached to the stockade of a pa (fort)." In one version of the legend of Hine-moa the terms pourewa and atamira are both applied to the platform erected by Tutanekai at Kai-weka, on Mokoia Isle, which platform was apparently such as that termed tapurangi by the Tuhoe folk. The fact is that whata, atamira, pourewa, and a few other names are practically generic terms for raised platforms, and are applied to such erections of different sizes and forms that were used for divers purposes.

Crozet describes the fighting-stages seen by him in forts of the Bay of Islands district in 1772: "Inside the village, at the side of the gate, there is a sort of timber platform about 25 ft. high, the posts being about 18 in. to 20 in. in diameter and sunk solidly in the ground. The people climb on to this sort of advance post by means of a post with foot-steps cut into it. A considerable collection of stones and short javelins is always kept up there, and when they fear an attack they picket the sentinels there. The platforms are roomy enough to hold fifteen or twenty fighting-men."

It was the custom in troublous times to station a watchman on one of these stages during the hours of darkness. His duties were to act as a sentinel, and in many cases a wooden gong was kept suspended between two posts on the platform, which was struck at intervals by the watchman. The sound of this gong, and of the watch-songs sung by the sentinel, warned both foes and friends that the watch was on the alert.

A kind of overhanging stage or platform, termed kotaretare, was sometimes erected in a pa or fortified place so as to project over the palisades for some distance. In some cases such erections seem to have been utilised for the purpose of defending the entrance to the fort. At the siege of Operiki, on the Whanganui River, such a platform was built by placing long poles so as to rest on the stockade and project outside the defences. A platform was then constructed by lashing on cross-pieces of timber. This was for the page 105 Fig. 34—Lofty fighting stages erected at the Chatham Isles by musket armed Maori raiders. (see pp. 106,412) After Heaphy page 106 purpose of enabling the defenders to attack a party of their assailants, who advanced to attack the defences under cover of a huge shield (called a rangi or taiki) made of kareao (a tough climbing plant, the supplejack, Rhipogonum scandens).

Of the Taranaki district Mr. W. H. Skinner says, "In many pa, more particularly those situated in more or less flat country, there was a high tower of wood erected near the main entrance, called a taumaihi, from which the watchman could observe the approach of any one. These towers had two or three, sometimes more, stories floored with poles, and large quantities of stones were stored in them to cast down on an enemy." The term taumaihi, as a name for a stage, or scaffolding, or tower, seems to be confined to a part of the west coast of the North Island.

When the Tauranga-ika pa was attacked by the Colonial forces in 1869, the enemy had lookout platforms erected in tree-tops on the south side of, and away from, the pa (fort).

Square towers, made of timber and containing several stories, are depicted by Heaphy as seen by him at the Chatham Islands, where two parties of Maoris, each in its own fortified place, were at war. The two forts or stockades were near each other, and each party tried to command the pa of the other by erecting a high platform from which to fire down into the enemy's quarters. Hence each party built floor after floor in the race skyward. However, such erections would not have been made prior to the introduction of firearms. See Fig. 34, p. 105.

In some of the native fortified places there was a special stage or elevated platform used as a watch-tower, and on which the pahu or wooden gong was suspended between two upright posts. The watchman's duties included the striking of this crude instrument at intervals. In other places the gong and watchman occupied one of the puhara or defensive platforms, as described above.

Dr. Marshall describes a form of projecting stage, as seen by him at Te Namu pa, Opunake, in 1834*: "Over the only two sides [of the pa or fort] by which it was practicable to escalade their fortress the inmates had raised projecting stages, from the front of which an inclined plane had been carried, serving as a breastwork for the defenders, and helping materially to repel their assailants; one of the means of doing which seems to have been by hurling huge stones, here collected in heaps as if in readiness for such employment, from these stages upon the heads of their enemies. … These stages were called popatos, the meaning of which term I have been unable to ascertain." This name is an error for papatu, a screen for defensive page 107purposes, a bulwark (see Williams' Maori Dictionary), which was applied to the sheltering breastwork erected on the stage. Tuta Nihoniho informs us that the papatu is a breastwork for defence constructed on puhara, to defend men thereon from weapons of an attacking force. It was often made of wooden slabs.

Wakefield, in his Adventure in New Zealand, when describing the Hikurangi pa, above Operiki, on the Whanga-nui, remarks, "On a level point which slopes gradually down to a sudden bend in the river is situated the pa with its double fence and fighting-stages towards the river, and a perpendicular descent towards that reach of it in which the island lies."

All platforms have their uses, and the following item illustrates one of the most unusual thereof. It is culled from an account of the fighting in the Taranaki district in the 'sixties,' said to have been given by one of our friends, the enemy (see Defenders of New Zealand, p. 540):—"McDonnell now erected a platform at Waihi 40 ft. high; and when the surveyors were sent to survey the banks of the Wai-ngongoro River, where the scrub was high and good for ambuscades, the prisoners were told off to do sentry-go on the top of this platform, and told to keep a good look-out for us, and report if they saw any danger, but that if the survey party got fired into, that they would be at once hanged. We knew McDonnell's men would obey him gladly, so we did not interfere any more with the surveyors, lest our relations should be hanged by McDonnell's men."

It is of interest to note that the fortified places of the Tongan Isles, called koro, had fighting stages with bulwark protections, erected over the entrances, as also at other parts, and that something similar obtained in the Fiji Group.

The fighting stages of fortified villages of the Port Moresby district, New Guinea, resembled the projecting kotaretare form of the Maori. Prof. Haddon tells us that they were not level, but sloped upward, and this was also a Maori usage occasionally practised; in other cases they were horizontal platforms.

We have seen that these elevated platforms are termed taumaihi in the Taranaki district. Cooks, Banks and Crozet do not make any mention of a breastwork to these platforms, an adjunct that does not seem to be mentioned by early writers save in reference to post-European forts. Some of our native friends state that the papatu or breastwork, a projecting wall like a fence on the outer side of the stage, was used in pre-gun days as a protection from stones, etc. It was sometimes alluded to as a patu (both vowels long), or screen. Williams gives kotaretare and kahekoheko as names of such stages page 108or elevated platforms in pa as projected outward over the stockade. In some districts the posts supporting a puhara are said to have occasionally been adorned with carving. The puwhara or puhara was a stage that did not project outside the stockade. When the stage was confined to the inner side of the stockade, then it seems to have been about three feet below the level of the stockade, so that the upper part of the latter served as a papatu or breastwork for the defenders. But the kotaretare form of stage projected out over the top of the stockade, hence the breastwork on it was a special structure. See Fig. 35.

Fig. 35—The Kotaretare form of fighting stage. A peculiar form projecting out over the stockade and sloping upward toward the outer part. This form was also employed in New Guinea. The taller post represents part of the defensive stockade. Drawing by Ethel Richardson

In his paper entitled Early History of Rangitikei, published in vol. 42 of the Transactions of the N.Z. Institute, Mr. Downes mentions an island pa that formerly existed in the Awamate lake or lagoon, at Parewa-nui, Rangitikei district, and adds, "When the writer first saw it, many years ago, the island referred to had a peculiar appearance, owing to a number of trees standing with their roots uppermost, the remains of ancient fortifications [? stages], called puwhara, upon which platforms were built. The same thing was noticed at other places when we were children, but not to the same extent."

Puwhara or fighting stages with more than one floor, one over the other, do not seem to have been known in pre-European times in most districts, but it is said that a form known as taranga was page 109occasionally employed. This was a form in which the platform was constructed in two or three sections, at different levels, so that the whole was like a series of steps. In contradistinction to the taranga style of stage, a 'single decker' was called an ahurangi.

* See Personal Narrative of Two Visits to New Zealand 1836. (p. 171.)