9: The Urukehu

In 1930, a book written by James Cowan was published. Within it are some interesting comments about those he encountered. Keep in mind that when the observations were made (in the 1920's) Maori had only been interbreeding with Europeans for about 40 years in any real numbers. Obviously it has been occurring sporadically since the early 1800's.

Page 29-30

"That the fair-haired lighter-complexioned strain in the Maori came from Asiatic shores there is little doubt. It is not always easy now to distinguish a pure fair-haired urukehu, so widely spread is European blood. But in the Urewera country on the head-waters of the Wanganui River, in South Taupo, and certain other parts of the interior that have been comparatively isolated until recent years, the urukehu (literally “red-hair”) can still be seen as in the olden days, undeniably pure Maori, and with a dull golden tinge in the hair that a careful observer can clearly distinguish from that of the half-bloods. As far back as 1772, Crozet, the French navigator, who came to the Bay of Islands with Marion du Fresne's expedition, noted this and other Caucasic characteristics of the race. Describing the Ngapuhi people, whose stockaded villages dotted the coast-line, he says, “Their colour is, generally speaking, like the people of Southern Europe.” Some of the men were as white as the French sailors, and there was a young girl of fifteen or sixteen “as white as our French women.” Crozet saw several people “with red hair.” But while noting the numbers of the tall fair-skinned, straight-haired people with little beard (no doubt the hair had been eradicated in the usual way with shell tweezers), and noting also the somewhat yellowish complexion of some, he recorded the presence of the more Melanesian type, shorter in stature, “slightly frizzled” as to hair, more swarthy and more bearded than the others, in fact more negroid-looking. Crozet did not know of the Western Pacific race we now call Melanesians, nor did he know anything of the history and migrations of the Maori; his testimony is, therefore, all the more valuable as a faithful observer's record of the very evident differences of type in the Maoris seen in even the one district visited—a district where the ancient differences of physiognomy and other physical points have now been obliterated by the pakeha blend."

Page 212-214

"The late Mere Ngamai, a venerable lady of Te Atiawa, who was born on Kapiti Island, told me of the mata-huna worn by her grandfather, the Puketapu (Taranaki) chief Rawiri te Motutere. Rawiri, a warrior of the early part of the nineteenth century, who died about 1860, had a very light skin for a Maori—he was an urukehu or “fair-hair”—and his face was beautifully tattooed. He was very proud of his complexion and of his perfect moko, and he wore on special festive occasions, and also when travelling, to shield his face from the sun, a mask made of the thin but strong rind of the hué-gourd."

Page 212-214

One night as the people of a little tribe on the Upper Waitara River, in Taranaki, sat smoking their pipes around the fire in the wharepuni, the rambling white man who was camped with them asked Hakopa, the chief, to tell him of the fairy people of the bush, of whom he had heard much but whom he had never had the fortune, good or ill, to encounter in all his wanderings.

“Friend,” said the old man, “the Patu-paiarehe are still a numerous people in this land, and their dwellings are the great bunches and bushes of kiekieand kowharawhara which you see growing in the forks of the forest trees. They live ever in the forest, and you may pass their homes a hundred times and never see them, yet they are still there, as I myself well know, for I have seen them in the night and heard them singing their fairy songs.”

“And I, too, have heard the Patu-paiarehe, and I do not wish to hear them again.”

It was Te Rii, the Red-head, who broke in on old Hakopa's explanation of the habits and customs of the Patu-paiarehe. Te Rii was a Ngati-Maru man, a bearded middle aged fellow with a shaggy head of hair that had the fair coppery tinge called urukehu. He had lived nearly all his life in the bush country of the Upper Waitara, and talk of the fairies and the woods set him story-telling. He handed his pipe to his neighbour at the fireside, a young woman, who put it in her mouth and sucked at it.

“It was up on the ridge of hills called the Pae-Patupaiarehe that I fell in with the fairies,” said Te Rii. “This ridge of rough mountainous land is covered everywhere with thick forest. It lies away on the upper part of this Waitara River, not far from Purangi village. The bush there is full of birds, and it is a grand place for the fruit of the kiekie, but there is a peculiar thing about thekiekie there—the fruit is quite red inside, instead of being white as it is elsewhere. This is because it is the food of the fairies; and if we go there for that fruit we shall have to propitiate them with a karakia, else things may perhaps not go well with us.

“Immediately a stranger, a Maori or a pakeha of this outer world enters those tapu forests his presence is detected by the fairies, and they will sometimes play strange tricks on him. He will perhaps hear a strange wild woman's voice calling, thin and high, our Maori cry of welcome to visitors: ‘Haere-mai e te manuhiri tuarangi,’ and so on, but when he follows in the direction whence the invitation came, he will find no one—it was the phantom voice of the Patu-paiarehe.

“Now, some years ago, I went up to the Pae-Patupaiarehe hunting the wild pig. Up near the top of the forest range I killed a pig, and after cleaning it I strapped it on my back, with bands of flax over each shoulder, and started to return to my camp in the bush below. The country was all ridges and gullies—so, like the fingers of my hand—and everywhere the trees, and ferns and shrubs grew thickly and were tied together with vines and kareao, and the fairy flax, the kowharawhara, grew in great bunches of long leaves in the tree-forks. I walked on and on, and scrambled through the gullies and up and down steep banks, and after travelling a long time I suddenly came on the very place where I had killed the pig. I had lost my way. I started off again, and walked and walked, with my pikau of dead poaka on my back getting heavier and heavier. At last, after I had travelled a great way, seeing nothing but the trees around me, I found myself back at the same place again!Aue! It was witchcraft or something very like it, I thought. I began to be in great fear of the fairy forest, but it was now very nearly dark, and I could not travel out of it by night. So I camped where I was, and kindled a fire with my flint and steel to keep myself warm and frighten the Patu-paiarehe and the Maero away. And I lay down by the fire and kept it going till late. I had thought to stay awake all night, for fear of the fairies, but I was very weary, and I fell to sleep.

“Nothing harmed me in my sleeping. When I rose in the morning, and I was about to strap my pikau of meat on my back, I saw a stick lying on the ground in front of me. Just as my eyes lighted on it, I saw it move. Aué! He rakau tipua! An enchanted stick! I started forward and seized it.”

“E—ē! but that was brave of you, Red-head,” said one of the women, taking her short black pipe from between her tattooed lips.

“Ae pea!” (“Yes! perhaps it was”) said Te Rii modestly. “Anyhow, I took hold of the stick. As soon as I grasped it I felt it move and draw me away. I did not let go though I knew there was wizardry in it, but it was daylight now, and I did not feel as much fear as in the black night. I retained hold of one end of the stick and it drew me on and away; the fairies had hold of the other end, though I could see no one. I left my pig lying on the ground; the stick would not wait for me to take it, and I thought it best to leave it there as a peace-offering to the spirits of the bush. The stick led me down out of the forest and set me on the homeward path, and then it vanished. And as I left the forest of enchantment I heard a voice call after me, a thin voice from the shadows of the bush,

“ ‘Go, and beware! Do not come into these forests of ours again!’ ”

***

You will note that none of the stories above talk about height, just skin colour and red hair. There was no doubt that Maori regard these people as existing original inhabitants and that their appearance had nothing to do with Europeans arriving in the late 1700's.

The Urukehu and the Patu-paiarehe are not the same people. But many believe the Urukehu were decendants of the Patu-paiarehe who would occasionally steal their women.

Here is another story written by Hoani Nahe, a Ngāti Maru (Hauraki) elder of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He writes graphically of a people called the patupaiarehe and the tūrehu, who inhabited the land prior to the arrival of the Polynesian peoples.

"Now listen. When the migration arrived here they found people living in the land – Ngati Kura, Ngati Korakorako and Ngati Turehu, all hapu or sub-tribes of the people called Patupaiarehe. The chiefs of this people were named Tahurangi, Whanawhana, Nukupori, Tuku, Ripiroaitu, Tapu-te-uru and Te Rangipouri. The dwelling places of these people were on the sharp peaks of the high mountains – those in the district of Hauraki (Thames) are Moehau mountain (Cape Colville), Motutere (Castle Hill, Coromandel), Maumaupaki, Whakairi, Kaitarakihi, Te Koronga, Horehore, Whakaperu, Te Aroha-a-uta, Te Aroha-a-tai, and lastly Pirongia, at Waikato. The pa, villages, and houses of this people are not visible, nor actually to be seen by mortal (Tangata Maori) eyes – that is, their actual forms. But sometimes some forms are seen, though not actually known to be these people … Sometimes this people is met with by the Maori people in the forests, and they are heard conversing and calling out, as they pass along, but at the same time they never meet face to face, or so that they mutually see one another, but the voices are heard in conversation or shouting, but the people are never actually seen.

On some occasions also, during the night, they are heard paddling their canoes … At such times are heard these questions: ‘What is it?’ ‘Who are the people who were heard urging forward their canoes on the sea during the night?’ or, ‘Who were heard conversing and shouting in the forest?’ The answer would be as follows: ‘They were not Tangata Maori, they were atua, Patupaiarehe, Turehu, or Korakorako.’

Eldon Best recorded this from a Maori around 1930

"According to Maori tradition, the first inhabitants of New Zealand were a people of unknown origin, whose racial or tribal name, if any, has not been preserved. The Maori knows them as Maruiwi, which name is said to have been not a tribal one, but merely that of one of their chiefs at the time when the Maori from eastern Polynesia arrived on these shores. The first of these Maori settlers are shown in tradition to have reached New Zealand twenty-eight to thirty generations ago. At that time the Maruiwi folk were occupying many portions of the North Island. They were the descendants of castaways who had reached these shores in past times, and landed on the Taranaki coast. They had been driven from their own land by a westerly storm. Their home-land, according to the accounts given by their descendants, was a hot country—a much warmer land than this In appearance these folk are said to have been tall and slim-built, dark-skinned, having big or protuberant bones, flat-faced and flat-nosed, with upturned nostrils. Their eyes were curiously restless, and they had a habit of glancing sideways without turning the head. Their hair in some cases stood upright, in others it was bushy."

It seems then, that Maori were aware of many different types of people here when they arrived. Those in the south being different to those in the north.

So, some may rightly ask why there is little oral tradition about these predecessors. Yet in the mind of Maori ‘No rangatira is proud of lines from any chief, no matter how important he was in his day, that was defeated, deprived of his mana and committed to the ovens.’ This is why nothing remains. Defeat rendered your life and mana useless.

One thing is for sure, all reports say they had red hair - unlikely for Polynesian origin Maori.

Normal dark hair & skin Red hair and lighter features Pic from museum

This illustrations also shows two separate heads with red hair and paler features

But were the Urukehu tall? Everyone believes so. But there is still no evidence of it and even the stories Maori told Europeans made no suggestion they were taller.

So who are these 'tall ones', many speak of finding in caves and laid out unlike Maori bury their dead? We may never know there true names, but we can date them and record the DNA origins.