Community Contributed

Te Wi kainga, Ohau

A former Mua-upoko village located on the right bank of the Ohau River three-quarters of a mile upstream from the Kuku Stream junction. Its situation was on a sand-dune terrace over-looking the river, up and down the course of which it commanded an extensive view.

Location

Map VI Adkin

Traces of midden refuse - marine molluscs and burnt stones-were still visible at this place in 1937 but all else had disappeared.

Te Wi was the place where, in 1822, Te Rauparaha narrowly escaped massacre at the hands of the wronged and menaced Mua-upoko. The most reliable published account is that of S. Percy Smith though even there a few geographical errors due to incomplete knowledge of the locality have crept in. It appears that despite an agreement between Mau-upoko and Ngati-Apa on the one hand and the advancing Ngati-Toa immigration on the other to live together in peace, a Mua-upoko woman named Waimai was killed by the invaders at Te Wharangi on the Manawatu River. The Mua-upoko chiefs and elders then recognised the menace to their people of such ruthless co-inhabitants in their territory; they decided that Te Rauparaha, the leader and master-mind, must be killed, and they made their plans accordingly. The Ngati-Toa were too strong for direct attack and recourse had, of necessity, to be made to wile and stratagem. Under all the circumstances it seems hardly impartial and just to stigmatize the action of the Mua-upoko, as Bracken has done in his poem, The March of Te Rau-paraha, as `base' and `treacherous', and to exalt Te Rauparaha to the role of `hero'.

Te Rauparaha was invited to settle on the Wai-kawa River and the spot he selected - on the left bank just above Te Kotahi reach - has since been known as Pa-Te Rauparaha. He had been promised a gift of canoes, and while at the Wai-kawa, he and his people were invited to a feast of eels at Te Wi. Te Rangihaeata suspected danger but Te Rauparaha dismissed the idea and proceeded to Te Wi with a party of about twenty of his close relatives. The Mua-upoko provided a great feast to which the visitors did full justice, but during the same night the Mua-upoko surrounded the several whare in which their guests were sleeping, Te Rauparaha occupying the house of the Mua-upoko chief, Toheriri. Suspicion was aroused when Toheriri got up and left the house. The alarm given, the wily Te Rauparaha avoided the proper exit by breaking through the raupo wall of the whare and escaped to his pa on the Wai-kawa, but several of his own family and other close relatives were killed. One of these was Te Poa, his son-in-law, the husband of Te Uira, and the local people of Ngati-Tukorehe hapu know the place as Te Poa, not Ti Wi (although that was the original name), to this day. In the hand-to-hand combat that ensued, the Muaupoko were naturally better armed and prepared, and amongst those slain were one of Te Rauparaha's sons and two of his daughters. For the moment the Ngati-Toa were utterly routed, but failing in their main objective, viz., the death of Te Rauparaha, the Mua-upoko tribe ultimately had to pay dearly for their deficient success. It was this massacre that a year later led to the almost complete annihilation of the Mua-upoko tribe by the implacable Te Rauparaha.

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