Moutoa Island
It’s the start of autumn as we make this journey up the Whanganui awa (river) on our way to Hiruharama (Jerusalem). Autumn warms me more than any other single season in a calendar year. It has the soft foot fall of a mother checking on her tamariki (children) at night. The poplar leaves are a faint yellow and the air is alive with autumnal whisperings.
It’s also the one time of the year when you can hear the soft sigh of seasonal contentment in the leaves rustling on the breeze, the one season of the year when nothing is asked of you except to sit awhile! I love that about it.
Moutoa Island is a low shingly island. It’s roughly diamond-shaped and about half a mile in length, lying in the course of the Whanganui awa (river), with rapids above and below and on either side of it. The upper part of this island, the only one in the Whanganui is made up of bare shingle and boulders; the lower half is covered with manuka and fern and a few trees. This is Moutoa (“Isle of Heroes”), a famous battle-ground of the River Tribes.
Moutoa lies about half a mile above the village of Ranana (London), and two and a half miles below the settlement of Hiruharama (Jerusalem). A short distance above the island, on the right bank, was the village of Tawhitinui, with its orchards of fruit-trees. There, an old native war track came in from Weraroa, on the Waitotara River. This village was the rendezvous place of the Hauhaus before the battle that decided the political destiny of the Whanganui tribes
“In May 1864, an armed party of the Pai Marire faith arrived at Putiki and challenged Te Pehi and his followers to embrace this new religion. It appears that some of them did. It cannot be said of the war when it came, that this hapu (sub tribe) was on one side or that hapu was on another. People acted variously and changed positions over time. Motives varied. The popular settler view was that the lower river Maori were loyal and the Upper River Maori were not.
In 1864, war came to the Whanganui River in the form of the ‘Battle of Moutoa’, a battle made all the more significant because it was fought between Maori and didn’t involve Government troops. The real issue of the war appeared to be whether an up river group should be allowed to attack the Europeans at Whanganui and could use the river ‘highway’ for that purpose.
The question was whether ALL would be implicated if one war party were allowed to pass through and whether war would be brought to the kainga (village) of the Atihaunui people. The assumption was that the hapu (sub tribe) could control passage along the river.
The Hauhau war party had arrived unannounced at Pipiriki under Matene Rangitauira of the Upper River reaches and he challenged Te Pehi to allow them to move down the river to attack the Whanganui town. Apparently they didn’t assume a right of free passage when travelling for war-like purposes.
To cut a longer story short the Pai Marire incursion was not a re-enactment of a historical animosity between Upper and Lower river hapu (sub tribes) but a threat, as much to Te Pehi and the other Kingite leaders as to those called ‘friendly’. Though they employed different tactics, they were generally inspired by a common strategy of protecting ancestral land, minimising the risk to their people, limiting the conflict and doing what was necessary to limit its consequences as well.”
George Bernard Shaw once said, “We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.” I would just like to say, I feel it might read more appropriately in 2010 this way: “We are made wise not simply by the recollection of our past, but ALSO by the responsibility for our future.” The lessons of Moutoa should teach us that at the very least!
