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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 3, Issue 4 (August 1, 1928)

Crossing the Frontier River

page 27

Crossing the Frontier River.

A mile south of Te Awamutu Station the railway crosses the Puniu River. An insignificant stream this, almost hidden by weeping willows. Unless you keep a lookout for it you may cross without noticing it. But it is worth a glance and more, for it was, and still is, a river of great political importance. This quiet river, meandering down westward to join the Waipa, is the northern boundary of the Rohepotae, or King Country. It was the olden line of demarcation between the Waikato and Ngati-Maniapoto tribes; it was made the southern limit of fighting and land confiscation when the Government conquered the Waikato; it was for twenty years after the war the frontier beyond which the Queen's writ did not run; and the frontier where trespass by white men was more than once punished with bullet and tomahawk. In 1884, a year before the first sod of the railway line south of the river was turned, Puniu was proclaimed the northern boundary line of the Rohepotae no-license district, a huge “dry” territory that takes in the whole King Country. The pact made between the Government and the Maori chiefs of that day still holds good. It was agreed that no intoxicating liquor should be sold in the King Country, and so you must not forget that you may not legally buy a drink anywhere between Te Awamutu and Taihape—a matter of 166 miles—on the Main Trunk, or Pipiriki if you go down the Wanganui River, or Urenui if you go by the coast road to Taranaki.

The northern part of the Wellington Provincial District. From the highest part of the Main Trunk line (South and east of Mt. Ruapehu) the railway descends into the fertile Rangitikei Valley and out on to the beautiful agricultural and pastoral lands of the Manawatu.

The northern part of the Wellington Provincial District. From the highest part of the Main Trunk line (South and east of Mt. Ruapehu) the railway descends into the fertile Rangitikei Valley and out on to the beautiful agricultural and pastoral lands of the Manawatu.

The “Rohepotae,” the Maori name for this territory, means literally a circular boundary like the rim of a hat. It was first applied to the country in the early “eighties” when the great Wahanui and his fellow-chiefs resolved that no sales or leases of land to the white man should be made within the district from the Puniu and Kawhia Harbour southward to the White Cliffs (Taranaki) and the Upper Wanganui. The term “King Country was given in the “sixties,” after the defeated Waikato and their allies under King Tawhiao had retired to the south side of the Puniu. Tawhiao's headquarters for many years was Tokangamutu (the present Te Kuiti); then Hikurangi, a beautiful spur of Pironga Mountain; Te Kopua; and, lastly, Whatiwhatihoe, on the Waipa River.

It was seventeen years before the King and his men laid down their guns in token of final peacemaking. It was not until 1888 that the Waikato in a body at last left the King Country borders, where they had lived on their allies, and returned in a flotilla of canoes, a picturesque tribeflitting, to what was left to them of their olden homes on the west side of the Lower Waikato.