Fascinating story behind city’s creation
The identity of the first people to inhabit the village that grew to be Hamilton city has been the subject of speculation and debate for many years.
The earliest known name for the village and area is Kirikiriroa, which roughly translates as a long gravel bar, but the exact site of the village that took the name has also been a mystery and the source of argument and guesswork.
Ngati Wairere historian Wiremu Puke has provided some details of the history of Kirikiriroa and the ancient people who lived in the region before the arrival of the Tainui at Kawhia. He has also given the site of the original Kirikiriroa Pa as somewhere between London St and Bryce St. Steep cliffs on the river side and a swampy gully provided natural defences that were augmented by a deep ditch and high palisades on the westward side.
These details have been handed down through successive Ngati Wairere generations. None of the original features have survived and even the original layout is no longer known. Recent archaeological discoveries have revealed shell middens and semi-intact agricultural features associated with the original cultivations of the pa.
Puke says Kirikiriroa was an important centre of agricultural activity for Ngati Wairere, who had gardens and food crops in the region for about 300 years. These extensive and fertile soils impressed European travellers, explorers and missionaries to the area as early as 1842. Of particular interest was development of friable soils by the addition of fine gravel from the river and naturally composted plant matter.
These patches of ‘‘Maori garden soil’’ were still known to farmers throughout the region in the late 1940s. One of the few remaining features associated with Kirikiriroa, and the feature that gave the village and pa its name, is the canoe landing site, a gravel cove where canoes were moored and geo-thermo springs discharged into the Waikato River near today’s Claudelands bridge. Puke says the original access to the pa from the river was by scaling the steep cliffs with the aid of vines.
His chronology of occupation gives a fascinating glimpse of the past.
The first known inhabitants of the region were the Mokohape, a hapu, or sub-tribe, of an extensive tribal group known as Nga Iwi (The People) who are thought to have lived throughout the region from as early as the mid-1600s before the arrival of the Tainui canoe on the coast at Mokau and Kawhia.
By about 1700, the descendants of those who had arrived on the Tainui were making incursions inland, giving rise to interactions and eventually to escalating hostilities. About this time, a major war broke out between Nga Iwi over the defeat of the chief Huakatoa in a wrestling match. Huakatoa felt he had been insulted and the Mokohape were attacked at various pa and locations by the followers of Huakatoa, Hanui and Hotumauea and their associated hapu. Several villages and pa were over-run and many of their inhabitants enslaved.
By the 1800s, the Tainui people had evolved into several dominant tribes from west coast harbours to the central Waikato plains, with Ngati Wairere occupying Kirikiriroa and the surrounding district. About 1814, Te Rauparaha, the acknowledged war leader of Ngati Toarangatira at Kawhia and the titular head of Ngati Raukawa at Maungatautari, attempted to invade the Kirikiriroa via the Waikato River, but his army was ambushed to the south by Ngati Koura and Ngati Wairere and driven off.
Te Rauparaha and his people were eventually driven out of Kawhia and Taharoa in 1821, but a new threat came from the north the following year with the arrival of Nga Puhi armed with muskets, and Kirikiriroa was temporarily abandoned as Ngati Wairere went to the assistance of Te Wherowhero in the great battle at Matakitaki in 1822.
Twenty years later, in 1842, Dr Edward Shortland, of the Aboriginal Protection Society, visited Kirikiriroa Pa and stayed overnight on route to Tamahere and Matamata. He is thought to be the first European to stay in the area. By the late 1840s, Christianity had arrived and, in 1849, 49 adult Ngati Wairere people were baptised below the pa in the Waikato River.
In 1856, close ties were developed between Ngati Wairere and the Waikato tribe with Hoera Taonui of Ngati Wairere selected as one of the council of advisers to Te Wherowhero, who became the first Maori King a few years later.
By 1864, the Waikato Land War brought more trouble for the people of Kirikiriroa and the pa was abandoned just before the arrival of the British troops. This time, there was to be no return and Ngati Wairere, the original inhabitants of Kirikiriroa, relocated their tribal seat to Hukanui (Gordonton), where they remain today.
In 1881, the second Maori King, Tawhiao, visited the old Kirikiriroa Pa to mourn the loss of lands to confiscation and the passing of traditional Maori occupation of the site. Four years later, Ngati Wairere ancestral remains at Kirikiriroa were exhumed under the direction of Te Puke Waharoa and taken to Hukanui for reburial.
The final link with Kirikiriroa was broken in 1947, when the wife of Te Puke Waharoa, and last living inhabitant of Kirikiriroa, Kameta Rangikauwau Te Puke (nee Te Tuhi), died aged 104 years on April 15.
Want to get in touch with Tom O’Connor? Email him on tomoc@clear.net.nz.