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Story: Āporotanga, Tuakana

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Āporotanga, Tuakana

?–1937

Te Whakatōhea leader, Ringatū tohunga

This biography, written by Tairongo Amoamo, was first published in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography in 1993. It was translated into te reo Māori by the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography team.

According to tradition, Tuakana Āporotanga was born about 1852. His mother was Mākawa, daughter of Te Āporotanga, who was a leader of Ngāti Rua, a hapū of Te Whakatōhea of Ōpōtiki. His father was Charles Frederick Leggett, an Englishman who arrived to settle in Ōpōtiki probably in the 1840s. Mākawa and Leggett married in accordance with Māori custom and made their home at Te Tahatū, in the small river valley of Te Rāhui dominated by the imposing pā of Mākeo. Besides Tuakana the family included his elder brother, Te Riaki, and a sister who was sent to Sydney, New South Wales, to be raised by an uncle, J. W. Russell.

Throughout his life Tuakana related principally to Ngāti Rua at Ōmarumutu. Its marae and ancestral house, Tūtāmure, are situated on a coastal terrace. Ngāti Rua take their name from Ruatakenga, who was a grandson of Muriwai, the sister of Toroa, captain of the Mātaatua canoe. While descent from Muriwai meant Tuakana was well connected within the Mātaatua district, it was his lineage from Tautūrangi of the Nukutere canoe that was of particular importance within Te Whakatōhea.

While Leggett no doubt influenced the upbringing of his children, his time with them was tragically short. Tuakana grew up in a household which included the elders Te Huaki and Hōri Kingi, who educated him and Te Riaki in the manner of the Māori. The household was in turn part of an energetic and vibrant community of 300 or 400 people. They cropped and farmed, hunted whales and traded. Tuakana became skilled in the historical traditions of his people and knowledgeable about land boundaries, place names and pā sites. He was versed in traditional medicinal knowledge, an expert on the geography of his forested ancestral lands, and was proficient in gathering food and surviving in this environment.

In January 1863 Charles Leggett, suffering from a lung disease, died at Patapata, Coromandel. Fifteen months later Tuakana's grandfather, Te Āporotanga, was killed after the battle of Te Kaokaoroa. The death of Te Āporotanga was a major catastrophe for Tuakana, Ngāti Rua and Te Whakatōhea. His death marked the passing of the last of the old Te Whakatōhea chiefs, leaving the tribe and Ngāti Rua with no men of real influence. This loss was to be of major significance when Pai Mārire (Hauhau) missionaries arrived in Ōpōtiki in February 1865. Pātara Raukatauri and Kereopa Te Rau swayed Te Whakatōhea to their cause, and on 2 March the local Anglican missionary, C. S. Völkner, was taken by an armed party of Hauhau and executed.

Ngāti Rua were caught up in government reprisals. In early September 1865 a punitive force of about 500 men arrived in Ōpōtiki. The scene that met them was one of well-established villages with richly carved and decorated houses, fertile valleys cultivated with crops, groves of peach trees and an abundance of livestock. In the hunt for those responsible for Völkner's death, crops and homes were destroyed and people were killed. While there was a general resistance to the military, the capture of the Hauhau pā of Te Tarata and Te Puia convinced most of Te Whakatōhea that it was useless to oppose the occupation of their district, and Ngāti Rua, numbering over 200, surrendered in October. Following the confiscation of their most productive lands their life and fortunes declined markedly.

After Te Kooti's escape from the Chatham Islands in July 1868, Ngāti Rua were subjected to conflicting pressures either to join him or to align themselves with the government. Illustrating the ambivalence prevailing among Ngāti Rua, it is said that his elders directed Tuakana to follow Te Kooti, and directed Te Riaki to join the government side. This decision meant that should either of the brothers be taken prisoner and find his life at stake the other would be in a position to intercede.

The time Tuakana spent actively fighting was short, but it nearly cost him his life. In a skirmish with the military, he was shot across the right shoulder while escaping. On 25 March 1870 Waipuna pā at Maraetahi, in the Waioeka Gorge, was overwhelmed by government forces and Ngāti Rua prisoners taken by Te Kooti on 7 March were released. This virtually ended the fighting in the Ōpōtiki district.

By the late 1880s Tuakana was a leader of the mission to establish Te Kooti's Ringatū church within Te Whakatōhea, and his mana as a healer grew. He combined the function of healer with that of priest. Sick people wanting the services of the healer Tuakana gave him a penny, to which their illness was then ritually transferred. At a later time Tuakana burnt the pennies and buried them in a secret place. Those undertaking new ventures or seeking safe travel would likewise ask for his blessing.

His mana as a tohunga was illustrated by two significant events. Before the Native Land Court Tuakana put the case for his people against the claims of their traditional eastern adversary, Ngāi Tai. Crucial to Ngāti Rua's representations was their descent from Tautūrangi, given by Tuakana. As evidence Tawhiro of Ngāti Rua presented to the court the ceremonial adze Waiwharangi, once the property of Te Huki of Ngāti Kahungunu. Ngāti Rua had acquired it after a victorious struggle with Ngāi Tai for the possession of the Waiaua district. Waiwharangi had passed to Te Awanui, the son of Te Āporotanga, and subsequently its apparent loss caused Ngāti Rua great consternation. To their relief, Tuakana found Waiwharangi in the fortress of Mākeo, its presence being revealed to him in a dream. When his uncle died Tuakana took care of the adze.

The second event was the part Tuakana played in the tragedy at the Mōtū River in 1900, when 16 children and two adults were drowned crossing the river by canoe. The anguished parents appealed to Tuakana to help find the bodies. At the scene of the tragedy he conducted his ministrations. It is said that rainbows appeared from the sea, and that where they touched land bodies were found.

As a tohunga, Tuakana would not allow hot water to come in contact with any part of the body. The body was tapu, and as hot water was generally a product of the cooking fire it was contaminated. His living arrangements strictly separated food preparation and eating from his tohunga activities. Nothing associated with daily living and in particular with the cooking environment was permitted into the two rooms that Tuakana used for healing and prayer. Any incursion infringed the law of tapu, nullifying his power to heal and that of the patient to recover. He interviewed the sick in one room, then retired alone to a second room where he prepared his plant potions and recited his karakia.

Despite the Tohunga Suppression Act 1907 Tuakana continued life as usual. His treatment of patients with cold water is said to have led to a warning from the police. In the influenza epidemic of 1918 the Tūtāmure meeting house was used to hospitalise the sick, and hot water, the bane of Tuakana the tohunga, gained entry. To him this was a public desecration of the sanctity of the house of prayer and healing, which he could not tolerate, and he left the marae never to return. At Ōrangipakakino, Tuakana built a small meeting house that held about 20 people. Made of tree-fern trunks and roofed with rushes, it had an earth floor, and from here he continued his church services. His followers included his nephews Amoamo Te Riaki, Hiki-o-rauru Te Hata and their families.

Tuakana continued to keep order in a Māori world which, although rapidly changing, was still affected by deeply held convictions about tapu. In the 1920s his grand-nephew Ngāwai Amoamo accidentally disinterred human bones while preparing ground for planting. In extreme distress he turned to his elder and protector. Tuakana, protected by his karakia, gathered the bones and took them away for burial. He watched and presided over his people's church festivals, and travelled long distances with them by horse and cart, in particular to the thanksgiving festivals of 1 January and 1 July. He was known to have ridden bootless and hatless to the Ringatū marae at Kaiwaka, Tikitiki.

In his later years his wife, Te Ōwai, watched him carefully; he was now inadvertently infringing the law of tapu. Despite her efforts and those of his second wife, Waimātao, items like his pipe found their way into his healing rooms. Such events led to a decline in his mana as tohunga. Throughout most of his later life he was cared for by his community. His last years were spent at Ōrangipakakino in the care of his grand-nephew Tīwai Amoamo and his wife Urututu, daughter of Te Whānau-ā-Apanui tohunga George Gage. His stay with Tīwai was marked by daily prayer and church calendar observances. The cooking of food took place in the kāuta (cooking shed) located a chain from Tīwai's conventional Pākehā home. The task of carrying on his work now devolved to his nephew Amoamo Te Riaki. Family sources say that Tuakana died in 1937 at Ōrangipakakino. His tangihanga was held at Te Tahatū and Waiwharangi passed to Amoamo Te Riaki.

All who remember Tuakana say he was a small man. He had white hair, a small white beard and a very pale complexion. His funeral cortège of carts and horses wound around Mākeo, past Tūtāmure, down to the estuary of the Waiaua River, where in the sand of the Ngāti Rua cemetery of Te Rangi-o-matanui he was buried in an unmarked grave. His memory lives on. 'Kāre tenei tangata i mate. Mā te ara umauma o tana tipuna a Tarawa hoki atu ia ki Hawaiki.' (This man did not die. Following the trail breasted by his ancestor Tarawa he returned to Hawaiki.)

How to cite this page:

Tairongo Amoamo. 'Āporotanga, Tuakana', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1993. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2a12/aporotanga-tuakana (accessed 29 March 2024)