Abstract
This chapter concludes Part II with a re-examination of several important gaps and issues left silent or unresolved in the official records in an attempt better to understand the relationships between the migrant marriage alliance and three of the leading rangatira of Ngāi Tūhoe: Te Whenuanui II for Te Urewera hapū and the migrant marriage alliance, Tutakangahau for Tamakaimoana hapū, and Numia Kererū for Ngāti Rongo hapū. Numia’s strategy and final triumph emerged in the context of his rising influence as a commissioner as well as rangatira, Te Whenuanui II’s unexpected death and Numia’s exploitation of the opportunity to influence his successor and overcome his support in the migrant marriage alliance, and his uncompromising control of the Ruatāhuna partition. However, Numia Kererū Te Ruakariata died in 1916, in the middle of the Crown purchase campaign that had begun by circumventing his control of the General Committee, having helplessly to witness the relentless pressure upon pupuri whenua ‘non-sellers’ to give up their last shares of ancestral land in each of the original blocks of the UDNR he had worked so hard to establish. Perhaps his uncompromising kaha toa, a warrior’s determination, nevertheless enabled him to foresee the little victories Tūhoe would continue to win in the face of the Crown’s power.
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Notes
- 1.
A detail in this case adds interest to Chap. 6’s account of the Tamaikoha descent group as well as hapū discipline or utu (‘compensation’) practices. Te Oti also got Numia’s admission that a piece of land had been given over by Tamaikoha to Tupaea because of Pihitahi’s “misconduct” (UMB 5: 348). However, Numia claimed that piece was outside the boundary of his claim for N.Hā, and that it had been given to N.Rongo, not N.Hā (i.e., included in Ierenui Ohāua).
- 2.
I suspect that the well-known New Zealand novelist Witi Ihimaera is a descendant of Te Wao Ihimaera or his brother Wharepapa (Fig. 7.1), but am unable to demonstrate it due to the loss of UDNR land in the Waikaremoana expropriation and consequent disappearance of Te Wao, Wharepapa, or their offspring in the UCS records.
- 3.
The appropriateness of Te Haka himself to have succeeded to the ‘title’ of Te Whenuanui I is questioned by knowledgeable Tūhoe. Nowadays the story is recounted that Te Haka was not the son of Te Whenuanui at all, but rather perhaps a nephew, and that the latter’s two older sons both died in the battle of Orakau. This fact is commemorated in a disdainful waiata sung by women to Te Whenuanui when he returned to Ruatahuna as a survivor of that battle. Furthermore, efforts to enable him to have further children were fruitless due to his senility (Tamati Kruger, personal communication 2018). I have decided to discount the implication of this story that Te Haka was not the son of Te Whenuanui I and Turaki II because apparently neither Numia nor Paora objected to each other’s whakapapa as presented in Fig. 8.1. Nor can I think of a motive that might have led Numia to report or accept this if it were not true.
- 4.
On the other hand, perhaps to mark their other key ancestor, Reupene/Rangiteremauri’s sister Tikina had probably been similarly named with special significance after her mother’s father’s (Te Whenuanui I’s) mother Tikina, who was the wife of his father Te Umuariki (Fig. 8.1). Both Tikina (I) and her husband Te Umuariki were great-grandchildren of Arohana (adoptive father of Kahuwī) and thus second cousins. Temara reports that Te Whenuanui (I) became one of the two ‘leading chiefs’ of Tūhoe upon the death of Paora Kingi I, son of Te Whenuanui’s elder brother Te Au, mātāmua son of Te Umuariki. (He does not name the other leading chief but it was probably Kererū Te Pukenui, Numia’s older brother and rangatira of Ngāti Rongo hapū.) Best similarly reports that the Te Whenuanui (I) and Rakuraku lines ‘might be said to be the principle gentes of the tribe’, adding that ‘Kererū and Paora Kingi families were also of importance’ (1973 Vol. I: 223–4). As discussed in Chaps. 8 and 9, although Tūhoe probably generally considered marriage closer than fourth cousins to be incestuous (and still do), and claims to dual descent by Numia as well as Te Whenuanui II may have remained unsubstantiated because they were sensitive, close cousin-marriages like the second-cousin marriage in Te Whenuanui I’s and Paora Kingi’s line may have gained some acceptance as prerogatives of a developing Tūhoe aristocracy.
References
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Webster, S. (2020). Some Plausible Explanations. In: A Separate Authority (He Mana Motuhake), Volume I. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41042-1_10
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