Sidestep: Central Otago early history
The tangata whenua of Central Otago
The first who lived in the South Island were the Eroero (or Maweroero) people, who had fair skin and hair the colour of tussock. Some say they were fairy folk, others that they were unkempt and hairy creatures, and others say that they were real people who were responsible for the earliest rock drawings. These were the true tangata whenua of the south; different to the tall stature tangata whenua of the north who always lived in the Waikato region but had no need for defensive pa or earthworks so little is left of them, apart from a few hidden burial sites. (Interestingly, the name Eroero is an old Melanesian name meaning sly or or to be 'deceitfully cunning'). Even the first Maui is said to have seen people near Hokitika when he passed by (yes, as far back as that). Near Duntroon there is a river and caves that was once called Maerowhenua (land of the Maero). We have long said we believe our skeletons will belong to an ancient Melanesian stock. Will they be the Eroero? The name given in the old stories seems to suggest this also. No living person can trace their whakapapa back to the Maeroero, if they could there would be a strong Melanesian/Asian component. One day we will find out.
After them came the Rabuva’i (Rapuwai - meaning to explore places). It is said that they did not arrive on a waka (canoe), but that they were always here - "they sprang from the ground", multiplied rapidly and it was generally agreed they were first (excluding Eroero [teh oldest]), but no one knew where they came from. They were the ones who ventured far and wide and named many places in the south. They were absorbed into Waitaha
After them came the Hawea people; on the waka Kapakitua it is said. They were a strong intelligent people who were specially selected to take part in a voyage of exploration. The principal chief of the Hawea waka was Taiehu. Lake Hawea is named after these people. It seems that a group of Hawea managed to remain seperate and distinct, even during the time of Kai Tahu, who hunted them.
A little later came the Waitaha people on the waka Uruao, others say they were the Rapuwai. Some say that Kapakitua was not a waka but the ceremonial adze on Uruao, and that the Hawea people were a hapu (subtribe) of Waitaha. This ceremonial adze had strange markings not like Polynesians styles at all, and only on one side. The principal chiefs of the Uruao waka were Rakihouia and Waitaa (or Waitaha). They named the Matauu (or Mata-au, now Clutha River) after their landing point at the mouth of this river. The early peoples travelled through Central Otago to the pounamu sources further west, and also stayed seasonally to use food resources such as moa, water birds, weka and eels. Silcrete and porcellanite were quarried from outcrops in Central Otago. The whenua ki uta (inland areas) were used seasonally in conjunction with coastal settlements. It was in the days of Rapuwai and Waitaha that a great fire destroyed the forests and many people, and that it was set by Ue trying to flush out Moa.
There is talk of the Kati Waraki, but that would mean white skinned people so we'll leave that one alone for now.
The centuries up to the present saw successive waves of tribal groups from the northern island (Kati Mamoe and lastly, Kai Tahu) move into the area, fight, destroy and intermarry with earlier groups, but there was continuity in the use of Central Otago as a seasonal food source and a route to the pounamu areas which Waitaha found. The relationship between iwi and the inland areas has continued to the present. The Central Otago landscape is filled with names and stories arising from the long associations with the area. Only some are in common use. Some examples are given here: Makahi (Mt Aspiring) is important in the history of the creation of the area. The mountain is an atua (god) whose full name is Makahi a Tuterakifanoa. He dug out lakes, valleys and harbours and clothed the earth with plants and creatures prior to the coming of mankind. Kopuwai (the water swallower) stands high on the Old Man Range. All of the Otago/Southland area that lies south of the Waitaki and Landsborough Rivers is known as Araitauru (or Araiteuru). The name comes from a waka with the same name which was wrecked off the coast near Moeraki. The survivors came ashore and explored the land, naming the hills and mountains after those who died and those who survived. On board the boat was a giant of a man named Kilikili Katata. He brought his grandson Aoraki safely ashore on his shoulders. Aoraki (Mt Cook) is named after this boy, and the lower peak of Aoraki is Kilikili Katata. (Interestingly, this name comes from Melanesia not Polynesia, and we have been saying that our skeletons are part of the Melanesian crop at the very least and not of the Polynesian crop at all.)
The name for Cromwell is Tirau meaning many cabbage trees. These were planted in groves at certain places as markers for routes. As they did not grow naturally in the area, so they stood out in the landscape. They were also a source of food and were cooked in umu-ti (earth ovens). Maori developed a number of routes through Central Otago to access food resources and pounamu (greenstone) Atholl Anderson’s maps of the area show a traditional route from the coast to the interior on the north bank of the Mata-au (Clutha River). There was another route from Murihiku to the Wakatipu Lakes up the Mataura River, into the Nevis Valley and on to the Lakes. The Nevis Valley provided the easiest route from the Central Otago Valley basin systems to the Southland Plains and Te Anau and Manapouri. Kaumatua Huata Holmes also recounted an ancient route from Wanaka to Southland that runs from the Wanaka area, up Cardrona Valley, over Tititea saddle into Tititea Stream (Roaring Meg) to the Kawarau, across the natural rock bridge Whatatorere, up the Nevis Valley and down the Nokomai to the Mataura River. The Nevis was known as Papapuni or Paapuni (camping ground). Here is a story relating to that area.
THE STORY OF THE BOUAKAI: The Bannockburn area is the location of an ancient story. A woman named Kofiua had two children, a young boy Kolo and a young girl Maia. Maia had been injured (maybe a broken arm or leg) and could not easily move. A flock of Bouakai (or Pouakai / The Haast Eagle) flew in and were menacing her. Her mother Kofiua became distraught, but she and her son staunchly defended Maia and kept the Bouakai at bay until help arrived. (Bouakai is a Maori name for the New Zealand eagle (Harpagornis), now extinct, which had a wing-span of up to 3 m and a weight of 10–13 kg. They are among the largest birds of prey that have been known on earth. They existed at the same time as moa and became extinct possibly around 500 years ago (Peat 1999:28).) The west branch of the Bannockburn Creek (now Shepherds Creek) was named Bouakai (or Pouakai) after this event. The east branch (Bannockburn Creek) was named Kofiua after the mother. Another stream which runs into Kofiua from the east is named Kolo after the son. Where it meets Kofiua, that ground is known as Maia after the wounded daughter. The story and the named places recall the bravery of the three as they defended themselves from the eagles. Arising from this story, the Bannockburn area is known as Kofiua.
Prehistoric routes and find-spots are all around Bannockburn. These include silcrete blades and the Mataura River Natural bridge. Hamel notes that, before a European road was made through the Cromwell Gorge (mid 1860s), the coach road and walking track ran through low passes in the foothills north of the Hawksburn site. These may have followed Maori routes. There was also a secondary set of low passes from the Earnscleugh Flats via the Fraser Dam area and the Hawksburn site to the Kawarau River (Hamel 1978:122). Iwi knowledge of the area was evidenced by the quite accurate maps and routefinding undertaken by various individuals, such as Reko from Tuturau, who guided Europeans interested in exploring the interior in the 1850s.
Archaeological knowledge of Maori habitation in Central Otago is relatively sparse, and limited to those sites which have been recorded and investigated. Carbon dating suggests that Maori had a presence in the area from around the mid-13th century, at which time moa were being hunted in large numbers. An important moa-hunter site is located at Hawksburn, just to the east of the study area, and this was excavated in the 1970s revealing many earth ovens, the remains of moa and other birds, tool-making sites and possibly temporary shelters. Hawksburn appears to have been principally a moa-hunting camp site occupied for short periods within a brief span of time. Iwi associations with Central Otago were founded on resource-based usage— initially the hunting of moa and other food resources. After moa numbers had diminished, mahika kai were established where each hapu had rights to geographically scattered resources. There is very little published information about Maori occupation of sites within the study area or the Cromwell Basin generally. Anderson compiled available archaeological information on late sixteenth-nineteenth century prehistoric inland sites in Central Otago. He found that during this period there were seasonally occupied settlements in Central Otago which were used as a base for exploiting the area’s food resources, and that coastal Ngai Tahu undoubtedly knew the interior well. It is not possible to definitively link this information to the study area. The only physical signs of Maori occupation found in the study area have been a silcrete blade and a stone flake. The latter was found near the summit of Nevis Road, which suggests that this, too, may have been a route prehistorically. Anderson considers that the absence of Maori living in the interior by the mid nineteenth century was not ‘an accurate reflection of its place in Ngai Tahu settlement and subsistence patterns of the earlier nineteenth century’. There had been occupied villages around Hawea/ Wanaka in 1836, but the occupants were either captured by or fled from a raiding party of Ngati Tama from Golden Bay. Additionally, the arrival of Europeans brought new food types and trading opportunities, changing Maori life from its previous rhythm of seasonal resource-gathering. Once small-scale farming was adopted, families no longer needed to rely on seasonal foods and so reduced their forays inland for tools, flax, weka and eel.
800 – 1100 AD
According to legendary tradition the first visitors to the Lakes District area were the Kati Waitaha. Their chief, Rakaihautu traversed the South Island in his waka (canoe), Uruao and “carved out its lakes with his magical digging stick”. Initially the explorers thought that Lake Wakatipu was part of the sea but when they reached it they discovered it was fresh water and named it Wakatipu-wai-maori (fresh water Wakatipu).
There is still debate about when the first Maori came to the area. However umu ti (ovens) at what is now Dart river bridge beyond the north-western end of Lake Wakatipu have been radiocarbon dated to AD 1227, 1363, 1508 and 1613. The first Maori came to the region via the valley systems of Southland and Otago. They hunted the large, flightless moa bird, which provided a rich source of protein, bones for ornaments and fishhooks and feathers for use in cloaks. The period during which moa were hunted to the point of extinction only lasted for 100 -150 years. So it was that Maori burned huge forested areas and wiped out many species all within 100-150 years of their first arrival. So much for being guardians of the land.
Maori in the Central Otago region, generally visitors, were coming from coastal areas to hunt moa, catch eels in Lake Wakatipu and to use the precious pounamu (greenstone) for tool making. Due to the smaller populations and less competition for the natural resources the people remained nomadic for longer than Maori further north. The emergence of classic or tribal Maori society by the 16th century excluded the south of the South Island.
1350 – 1550 AD
This period was marked by the decline of moa and the onset of the first economic recession. Maori coped with this change in circumstances by replacing moa meat with fish and also a wide range of open country and coastal birds, especially ducks. Another important food source at this time was ti tree (cabbage tree) roots, a staple of Maori diets in this region. The harder economic circumstances combined with the mobile lifestyle probably caused the population to decline slightly. There were probably no more than 1500 people in southern New Zealand by the early 16th century before Kati Mamoe arrived from the North Island
Polynesian settlement of New Zealand (c. 1000 years BP) led directly to the extinction or reduction of much of the vertebrate fauna, destruction of half of the lowland and montane forests, and widespread soil erosion. The climate and natural vegetation changed over the same time, but had negligible effects on the fauna compared with the impact of settlement, burning and hunting. The most severe modification occurred between 500 and 750 years ago, when a rapidly increasing population over-exploited animal population and used fire to clear the land.
The Orthodox Hypothesis accepts that there is a satisfactory suite of radiocarbon dates for early sites around the whole of New Zealand, centred on the 11th century, and, assuming there were only a few immigrants, that colonisation must have occurred about AD 800 to have allowed time for population increase, discovery of obsidian and other stone sources, and development of a trade network. Both the Early and the Orthodox Hypotheses assume that pre-11th century sites will be too small to find and that early horticultural activity in the North Island could be confused with natural fires and non-cultural change in pollen cores. Both these assumptions suffer from the disadvantage that moa and seal hunting sites, even those created by small groups of people, leave substantial traces of large fires and large bones. Since no sites have been securely dated as earlier than the 11th century, and it is unlikely that the first arrivals would have ignored seals and moa for several centuries, the hypothesis is no longer favoured. The Short Prehistory, starting about AD 1150, has received strong support in the last decade from refinement of radiocarbon dating. Intensive excavation of the large early site at Shag River Mouth have improved understanding of early subsistence strategies and population growth. The culled radiocarbon chronology provided an impressive array of reliable dates centred on the 14th century and a few reliable dates centred on the 12th century. More South Island dates were tested and more were found to be reliable than from the North island. 'Acceptable' early dates clustered in the 13th and 14th centuries and none extended back beyond AD 1250. They also assessed a much higher proportion of North Island sites than South Island ones, but still found very few early North Island sites. This may be an effect of the way in which samples were taken and treated in the two islands, but so far the evidence suggests that there was a focus of population and settlement in the South Island.
Buried evidence
In the Otago Daily Times of the 5th April, 1873, is the following: “Referring to the statement that live moas have been seen recently in New Zealand, Mr. Ebenezer Baker, Clerk to the Resident Magistrate's Court in Wellington, informs us (Wellington Post) that some years ago he found a moa's feather perfectly fresh near Tolaga Bay. It was about 18in. long, and apparently of the underpart of the wing. The feather was a long while in his possession. The celebrated York specimen was found at Tiger Hill, and the shafts of the feathers still remained on parts of the skin attached to the pelvic region. These were described by W. S. Dallas in 1865 (Proc. Zool. Soc., p. 262). Nothing, however, remained of the fluffy part of the feather.
The first paper describing any well-preserved feathers was read by Captain Hutton before the Wellington Philosophical Society in 1871, and a figure was given which represents an average moa-feather very fairly. These feathers were found, together with moa-bones, buried in the sand, about 50ft. from the surface, at the junction of the Manuherikia and Molyneux Rivers.
About the same time (12th January, 1869), Dr. Thomson, of Clyde, sent to the Colonial Museum twenty feathers found 18ft. below the surface, between Alexandra and Roxburgh. Some of these are in the Museum. The remains found in the Earnscleugh cave, on the Obelisk Range, included the fine neck now in the Otago University Museum, and this retained a number of the shafts of feathers. The Museum has also specimens of moa-feathers collected by Mr. Taylor White from a cave near Mount Nicholas and at Queenstown. Specimens from both of these caves are in the Otago University Museum.
The New Zealand Mines record, August 1897, says at Bald Hill Flat, near the foot of the Old Man Range near Middlemarch in Otago, Maori chizels, wooden bowls and earth ovens were found in the sandstone clay at a depth of 16ft, the bowls being very little decomposed.
Maoris said that when the workers were digging the railway cutting at Puketeraki near Karitane in coastal Otago, they found a shell midden at 16ft below the surface.
MacMillan Brown once wrote: ‘That the pre-Polynesian in New Zealand had used steam ovens is evidenced by their having been found as much as 14 ft below the surface of the spoil, as, for example, on the Manuherikia Plains in Central Otago…The slow accumulation of alluvium, wind-blown soil and humus on such high plateaus forces us to place the age of this back into the thousands of years…
The Stone dagger of the Nevis
In 1917 there was an examination of a camping place, probably of the moa-hunters, situated in the Nevis valley and close alongside the Bannockburn-Nevis road on the crossing side of School creek. Here on a fairly level, shingly, and dry flat, sheltered from the prevailing winds by the sweep of the higher terraces, were two grass-grown circular depressions about three feet in diameter. These were excavated, finding that the pans were very shallow, not deeper than twelve inches at the centre. There was a complete circle of stones bounding each pan, the stones being placed in position with considerable care, each overlapping the next as shingles or tiles overlap. I think that these were hut fireplaces, not ovens, there being a total absence of the burnt oven-stones and midden-material always found about oven-sites. The pans of the fireplaces were filled with charcoal and ashes, over which a layer of silt about three inches deep had been deposited either by the action of rain-wash or by the flooding of the creek which flows past the site at a distance of approximately twenty yards.
In a crevice between two of the stones forming the circle of the fireplace there was found two well polished slate scrapers, one of which when first made, had evidently had two holes piercing it at the top. These may have been drilled or pecked, but as the scraper had had much use after the top had been broken off, it is doubtful which method had been employed. These holes may have been for the suspension of the object as an ornament or pendant, or, more probably, for the reception of the prongs of a forked helve. There is another scraper of the same type in the Otago Museum showing double piercing. At a distance of about ten feet was found another unfinished scraper of a hard black stone. This object was nearly circular in outline and had been flaked into shape. The dagger-shaped implement (shown above) and also the Y-shaped piece (shown below) were both found at the same spot. The first is of a fairly hard micaceous schist with fine layers of quartz, whilst the latter is of quartzite. Possibly this was intended as a three-ended drill, though it shows no sign of having been used as such. It is very similar to the much heralded Oheku Tribrach revealed for the first time on this website.
The five objects enumerated above were all found within ten feet of one of the fireplaces, as were also a large number of different-coloured flint flakes. All were at a depth of about six inches below the surface and covered by a layer of wood-ash and soil. There was a total absence of bone or shell in any form. The second fireplace, which was about ten feet from the one already excavated, was similar. At a few feet distant from it was found a water-worn hammer-stone, a short well-finished adze of a greenish stone, several well-flaked quartzite knives, a fragment of quartz crystal, and a beautifully-marked fragment of highly crystalline stone which showed considerable work and was probably a fragment of a pendant.
Fifty or sixty yards distant from these fireplaces was found a quantity of quartzite chippings, a small piece of soft nephrite, and a lump of a very fine clay of a reddish colour; also a long fragment of moa-bone, a tibia, which showed signs of having been broken by a blow struck roughly at right angles to its axis.
This is the only piece of bone found at the camp-site, but it seems that moa-bones must have been plentiful a little farther out on the flat before the latter had been dredged, for several broken moa-bones were strewn over the tailings, and also a small greenstone chisel, and numerous quartzite flakes. Before gold-mining began there were several acres of camp-site covered with ovens, and moa-bones were plentiful and also several greenstone adzes were found by the dredge hands. The site was dredged some years prior to 1917 and it was thus difficult to form an accurate picture of the original surroundings. With the exception of the hammer-stone all the objects referred to above are now in the Otago Museum. None of these are manufactured from stone found in the immediate neighbourhood.
At a distance of about two miles, but several hundreds of feet higher than the School creek site, on a steep mountain spur, there is a small flat area about twenty yards in diameter. Here were found many flint chippings and crop-stones and a large flake blade of quartzite. Many heavy moa-bones were lying on the surface. There is no sign of an oven at this place. The quartzite blade is in the Otago Museum collection of flaked implements. Fifteen miles upstream from School creek there was a heap of large crop-stones alongside the river, and among these was a sharp fragment of red flint about the size of a florin. No bones were there, nor, again, any signs of an oven.
The most interesting of the finds made by Mr. George at the Nevis site, the dagger is a great rarity, the only other recorded Maori example being the wooden dagger figured by Angas, which resembles the Nevis example in proportions and in the blade being diamond-shaped in cross-section. In the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford, is a Moriori dagger of whale-bone, the blade being diamond-shaped in cross-section. The dagger was probably universal in Polynesia, but cannot have been common anywhere as it is always rare in collections. Its existence at the Chathams proves that it was an ancient feature of Maori culture, while the example “from the interior near Tuhua” drawn by Angas shows that the type persisted till the end of Maori culture. The maker saw that the natural shape of this piece of schist provided the orthodox dagger-blade without further work, and so he had merely to chip out the grip. The chipping is not conspicuous, but it is carefully executed and leaves no possibility of doubting the nature of the piece.
The three-limbed implement similar in shape to the implement from Okehu, Taranaki. This latter piece, which appears to be of dark argillite, undoubtedly came from the Nelson district, and Hamilton's suggestion that it was used as an augur may be regarded as correct. Mr. George is right in doubting whether it was ever used in drilling: there can be no doubt that it is a specialized form of hollow scraper, provided with three hollows. The hand that made this piece seems so practised that one would expect the type to be common. However, at present this example is unique. Its resemblance to Hamilton's three-limbed implement is accidental.
On the whole, the implements found on this site support Mr. George's suggestion, which was based on evidence of another kind, that the site is very old, of moa-hunter date and possibly earlier.
The old tangata whenau of the south then... were likely the EroEro or Rapuwai and it may be they are one in the same?
Who will ever know?
