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Fairy Folk Tales of the Maori

When Tamaohoi Awoke

When Tamaohoi Awoke

“This is where the wizard's house stood,” said Tamarahi, as we came to the brow of the hill at the Wairoa, the buried village above the west end of Lake Tarawera. The lake spread out below, flat, shining, motionless; beyond, the mightily-scarped battlements of Mount Tarawera gloomed over the waters, sinister, shattered heights of rhyolite. Near the edge of the bluff there was a little level space, indicating the site of one of the old-style dug-out huts, half-subterranean, for warmth in winter.

“This is where Tuhoto Ariki lived,” said my companion; “Tuhoto the last of the great magicians and wonder-workers of the Arawa. Here he was dug out by the rescue-party after the eruption of Tarawera, when Wairoa was buried deep under mud and stones and when a hundred of Tuhourangi perished beneath that volcanic rain—truly the rain of the gods. For it was Tuhoto's ancestor the Atua who sent that awful rain to punish and destroy the people of the Wairoa.”

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Tuhoto, the Ariki, he who had the powers of the air and the underworld at his command, lived there all alone in his little whare, dreaded, hated by his kinsfolk, for he had the evil eye, and none would venture near him. It was he who brought about the destruction of Wairoa and the devastation of the surrounding country in the fearful outburst of Tarawera. Pakeha science may not support this, but what does the pakeha know about makutu and the power of calling dread spirits from the sky and from the earth? Listen to the Maori story, as we rest here on this lofty look-out place, with the cliff-bordered Lake Tarawera spread out before us and the grim scarred old mountain that made all this trouble lifting his rock palisades and his ruined crown nearly four thousand feet into the sky ten miles away.

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The tale of Tarawera begins long before that eruption of 1886: indeed it takes us back five centuries to Tamaohoi, the atua, the genius loci of the Mountain, whom Tuhoto invoked. This Tamaohoi, say Tuhourangi, was the first inhabitant of Tarawera; it was he who gave the name to the lake and peak. He was a chief of the page 147 tangata-whenua, the ancient people of the land, the tribes who inhabited New Zealand before the Maori sailing canoes of the last historic migration had crossed the Pacific to these islands. Like many another remote ancestor he is accredited with the power of a god. Tamaohoi was a ferocious cannibal and was accustomed to waylay and kill and eat passing travellers. He lived on the shores of the lake below the steep scarps of the mountain when Ngatoro-i-rangi, the high priest of the Arawa canoe, landed at Maketu with his followers and explored the country southward to Taupo and Tongariro. Tamaohoi's man-eating habits angered Ngatoro-i-rangi, who decided that the ogre chief of the tangata-whenua would be best below ground. So going to Tarawera, he stamped upon the mountain-top and formed a huge waro or chasm. Into this, by virtue of incantations and his sacred priestly powers, he caused Tamaohoi to descend. He literally stamped Tamaohoi into the waro and then closed it over him; and there the cannibal son of the soil remained as the demon and presiding genius of the mountain.

There Tamaohoi slept in the heart of the slumbering fire-mountain; and in the recesses page 148 of that fissured peak the people who came after him laid their dead to rest, and a mighty tapu in course of generations enveloped Tarawera's forested head. But at last Tamaohoi was called from his dark waro to work a deed of vengeance.

Tuhoto, old warlock that he was, had incurred the dislike of his tribe, who treated him unkindly and went on with their merry drinking and dancing ways, scornful of the venerable wizard and his warnings. He saw the ruin of Tuhourangi demoralised by the pakeha's grog, the young women debauched; a tribe fast going to perdition to make the pakeha tourist's holiday. And to avenge his injuries and to punish a thoughtless drunken people, he set the spell of death on Te Wairoa. He betook him to his pagan prayers; he uttered his most potent incantations, the fatal magic of the makutu. and he called upon Ruaimoko and Tamaohoi, the spirits of the volcano, to punish the wicked kainga.

The people were not without warnings of their fate. The waters of the lake rose and subsided in an unaccountable manner; and some days before the catastrophe the phantom canoe was seen on Tarawera's page 149 waters by the matakité, those of the wise and understanding eye—the ghostly warcanoe which was wont to appear before some tribal disaster, gliding across the waters towards the funeral mountain, with its double row of occupants, one row paddling, the other standing wrapped in their flax robes, their heads bowed, their hair plumed as for death with the feathers of the huia and the white heron—these were the souls being ferried to the mountain of the dead.

But all the omens and all Tuhoto's dark words passed unheeded; and suddenly in that black midnight the earthquakes shook the land, lightnings flashed, a great wind passed in a hurricane that burst over the mountains, and with an awful roar Wahanga and Ruawahia, the northern and middle peaks of Tarawera, burst forth in huge black clouds and fireballs and showers of red-hot rock and ash. The mountains were rent in twain; lightnings set the forests on fire; and then the enormous rift made by the bursting of Tarawera split down into Rotomahana lake. The whole lake—water, mud, islets, wonderful terraces and all—was blown into the air with the roar of all the world's artillery. Thousands page 150 of feet into the lightning-split sky shot the mountain top and the lake bottom and the islets all mingled in one black cloud, and down it came again; falling for hour after hour—hot mud, rock, ash, huge stones, raining upon Te Wairoa, and the Tarawera lakeside villages Te Ariki and Moura, until everything was buried. Over a hundred Maoris were killed, also seven pakehas, and the whole country as far as the eye could see was covered in a dreadful coat of grey.

Thus perished Te Wairoa's people, by the hand of the volcano gods. As for Tuhoto, was it not enough for Tuhourangi that after the four days he had spent entombed he was uncovered alive, smiling grimly, mumbling his magic karakia? Tamaohoi had shielded his tohunga descendant from the death-blow dealt to the tribe, sufficient proof that the wizard was the agent in the destruction of the Wairoa.

Yes, for four days and nights the ancient wizard was buried in his low-roofed thatched hut, covered with volcanic ejecta. Yet he was dug out alive, to the amazement of the search parties and lived for some days afterwards. He said he was in the Reinga, the spirit world, when the digging party let daylight page 151 into his volcanic tomb. He had been saved from death by the walls falling outwards and a portion of the roof protecting him. The ancient pagan did not seem particularly pleased at being disturbed; as for the Maoris, they were disgusted at his resurrection. “Why didn't you leave him there?” they asked the searchers, and they suggested that the best thing that could be done with the dangerous old wizard was to cover him up again. But the pakehas went to much trouble to keep the tohunga alive. They carried him into the Rotorua Government Sanatorium, where he was carefully tended by doctors and nurses. He was a hundred years old, but he might have lived longer, say the Maoris, had not the Sanatorium people sheared off his long white hair. As everyone knows, it is a very serious matter indeed to cut a tohunga's hair. So the ancient wizard died; and he was buried with the rites of the Christian Church, and never did his spirit return to trouble the Arawa. But he had wrought them woe enough; and to this day the site of the buried village is tapu through and through. Wairoa is green and beautiful again with grass and foliage and flower; but the ban is on it to page 152 this day. Not a soul of Tuhourangi will return to the fields and sweet streams of Wairoa. Tuhoto's curse and Tamaohoi's venging hand rest on it for ever.