History of Hastings – Rose Mohi

Barbara Brookfield: Welcome. Tena koe, Rose, our speaker tonight, our wonderful executive member who brings so much to Landmarks. We so look forward to hearing what you’ve got to say … so we’ll let you get on with it.

Rose Mohi: Thank you.

… so we’ll let you get on with it.

Thank you. Well welcome to you all, it’s lovely to see you. The Maori history of Hastings … this is very much Hastings, I’ve tried not to go outside the boundary of Hastings.

When we get to it, as we begin anything when we’re Maori talking about this land, Heretaunga Ararau – that’s Heretaunga of Arcadian pathways; Heretaunga Hauku Nui – Heretaunga of the heavy dews. So the heavy dews means that we get water all the year. Well, we did once. Heretaunga Haaro o te Kaahu – Heretaunga the beauty of which can best be seen really by the hawk in full flight over the Plains; and Heretaunga Takato Noa – Heretaunga where the chiefs have departed from in their Arcadian pathways. And that’s how we start whenever we talk about Heretaunga.

[Showing slides]

So here we are in Heretaunga – the Plains. You know this well, and we’ll see this picture a few other times. So we go from the rivers – this was actually a delta, best describes it; it’s got the rivers coming down and giving us all that water. Well it did once; who knows what now, but you are all well familiar with this.

So, pre-colonial days – Maori didn’t live in Hastings ‘cause that was our food supply, so we lived on the hills round about and kept the waters free.

So this is Tane-Nui-a-Rangi … now that’s on the Napier Road where the wool store is … that’s Tane-Nui-a-Rangi, and that was inhabited by the people who were Rangitane. They lived here with us back in the day, and as you can see they had quite a fortified pa. This is in the Pakowhai Pa; this is how it was. These are drawings done by colonial artists who came in with the Forces.

These are two pa sites that you might find interesting. This one here is at the base of Te Mata Peak. It’s hard actually to see it when you’re up there, but this is the Tukituki [River] along here, and that’s what I call the Webster’s Limeworks over there.

And this is Horonui. Many of you familiar with Horonui? First turn on the right when you leave Hastings. And this is an extraordinary pa site and it’s not like one anywhere else in the country, ‘cause it’s on the flat. And you can see the lines here where they’ve set up; they’re ready to have a battle. There’s houses; and we don’t know why it’s on the flat. Really unusual. We’ve surmised about it – maybe these people were where they hid the old people. And up the top, up here, is a very large pa in the very first Heretaunga Wharenui. And that is an enormous hole, it’s about twenty feet deep and like, from me to Barbara at the back, and this size. Maybe they were hiding people in them, who knows? We were up for lots of people wanting our lands unfortunately, but we had year-round food.

So there we were happily living here, thinking we were in heaven. Things were pretty quiet; we had odd skirmishes amongst ourselves, various hapu doing this, and brothers and cousins fighting one another … nothing very serious. And there was a battle at Roto-a-tara in 1822, and that was the first time Waikato and Taupo came over. And we rebuffed them that time and they went home with their tail[s] between their legs. But we knew they’d be back, and two years later they came back and they came with guns, and we didn’t have guns, so they had the pou, and they shot us out of the water.

We had retreated – we knew they were coming; we’d retreated to live on this bit of land here called Pakake, and that’s the name of the battle.

This is a sketch by Rhodes, done in the 1850s; now Pakake is near the Iron Pot, and the Customs House is probably placed exactly where it was. And all the chiefs that [who] stayed behind went into Pakake, and they were all either taken prisoner or killed, or drowned.

However, we’d split up. We had a bit of trouble here because Pareihe, who was a chief, said he wasn’t going to stay here and wait for them to come and kill us. He lined up with a Nga Puhi chief who had guns, and they took a whole lot of people to Nukutaurua [on Mahia Peninsula] for safety. They were there for twenty years; we were out of the province for twenty years before we came back, and when he came back, Pareihe put all the chiefs back in the places they should’ve been to start the community again.

I often think of those people who fought us, [who] came to live here. They wanted food of course, but when they got here, you got food; they could get that, but they didn’t know how to live off the land. All of you here will know how to live off Hawke’s Bay land. What do you do? You go to the sea in the summer, and in the winter you can go up the hills and get birds or something. In between, the chiefs usually had eel weirs. In that [the] wonderful fertile Plains there were eel weirs assigned to every family. So they had food … they had year round food.

Tuwharetoa, Waikato, everyone else who came down – they didn’t have that. They wanted what we had, but they didn’t know how to look after the land; they didn’t know how it worked, so in twenty years’ time they’re virtually all gone because we knew how to live on this land, just like you all know how to live on this land now. It’s quite different.

So he comes back. Pareihe takes them up to Pakake. If you are near West Quay [West Quay] and you’re not far from that Custom House, I was told [that] under those roads is just full of bones … bones forever under there. So we were decimated, really.

I brought this up because as I was researching I looked at the very first edition of Bay Buzz that came out in 2011; and these were the hazards that were mentioned then, in 2011. Look – earthquake, pandemic – well, we’ve had one of those; we’ve also had an earthquake. Floods, fire involving hazardous substances – well, we’re waiting for that, we’ll probably get it. [Chuckles] Electricity failure – well, we got that; pests, diseases hitting food production or forestry … probably got that happening. Tsunami … well, we’re waiting; rural wildfire, release of hazardous chemicals into the air, and coastal erosion. Well, I’m a bit sorry that more attention wasn’t paid to this list or we wouldn’t have suffered so badly last year.

So what happens? We have an earthquake, [1931] and I’ve said this is a personal story, and of course it is. So in the earthquake it was my mother’s first day at school. She lived with her parents in Napier. Her father’s half-brother lived on the hills above Havelock [North], and they sat in those hills and watched the land doing this; they watched the trees hitting either side, and watched the waves of land over the Plains. Then my uncle thought he better go and find his brother and sister-in-law and children.

Now, he gives a description; it’s not as bad as that but it felt like that the way he described it when I was little. He had to get across the bridge over the Ngaruroro [River] and he would tell us how he went back and got this farm truck, and went flying over and got to us. So that’s Uncle Ian that [who] saved us. He got my grandparents, my mother, and brought them back to Hastings, where they lived under tents; they were on the tennis courts, sleeping in tents. You’ve seen every other picture of the earthquake.

So the floods … the floods have been serious here. We’ve had them often. They’re very serious. This is 1885 I think, this one, and this is where the Ngaruroro changes its course. It stops going down to Longlands, it goes straight through to Pakowhai, floods Pakowhai and comes down [chuckle] … you see we should’ve been ready for some of these things, shouldn’t we? It’s already happening.

So who were the founding fathers of Hastings? This one here is my great-great-grandfather, and this is Henare Tomoana, his younger brother. They were the two men who went to court in 1866 and claimed the ownership of the Heretaunga Plains. When they got to court, they said, “Through our whakapapa” – they had different fathers – “we have the right to all of that land.” And they were told, “Oh, but you’ve got to bring eight others in.” We had a ten grantee rule, so eight others came in and joined and got on the piece of paper, at which Karaitiana said, “Well, can they sell without us?” “Oh”, the judge said, “no, they can’t.” But guess what they did? And we lost it; so they wanted settlers, they were very keen. They knew what was coming.

He had started a school – in 1857 there was a school at Pakowhai. That headmaster, when he left there, went and taught at Havelock [North] Primary. And Henare started Te Wānanga, which was the local newspaper giving Maori stories and everything. And they were both members of the Upper House, and both became members for Eastern Māori, not at the same time. Henare took over when Karaitiana died.

But there weren’t just two founding fathers, there’s four. So we’ve got Thomas Tanner, of which [whom] a lot has been talked about and whatever – we have Tanner Street in Havelock. It wasn’t always Tanner Street, either – somebody felt kindly towards him. He was a ‘rush and bust’ man.

We have James Nelson Williams; we’ve got a descendant or two here, I think. So they’re apostles … you’ve all heard about the apostles. There weren’t twelve of them, there were seven. And look at the land block – you can see they’re dividing up the Heretaunga block between them. Wasn’t always a successful division of what went on here. The railway line had gone through so they were pretty pleased with this. Tanner had to give up some of his land because Karamu, the block near Waipatu, was set aside for Maori. Out of every block of land that was taken there was a tenth given back for a reservation. You hear of the tenths in Wellington; there were tenths here in all the lands. So this is what became the settlement of Karamu.

Here’s Williams in Frimley, and we know about Williams in Frimley; he had sixty miles of fruit trees, didn’t he? Sixty miles of fruit trees – apple trees.*

Ormond got a smaller section; two Russells are in this … suppose people here are descended from the Russells. They were a bit argumentative ‘cause they were never quite satisfied with what they got, so some of them went to live out … anyway, that’s Flaxmere land.

Gordon, who actually got [Cape] Kidnappers, but he went into a syndicate with Hill. So that’s at Greenmeadows, around there.

Anyway, that’s Hastings, and so it was sixteen thousand acres. They paid to get it through ‘cause the courts didn’t know what to do about this, and Maori had been forced by debt to pay for this. The eight people that they didn’t want in had run up debts and whatever, and bought alcohol and goodness knows … anyway, it got silly. So they actually ended up paying £21,000 for the land; they were only paying £4,000 pounds a year rent, and they didn’t like having to pay Maori rent. So they got a bit of … whatever … and they thought, ‘We won’t do that. We’ll take it through the courts.’ Well, they [it] would’ve been cheaper actually paying the $4,000 [£4000] a year and then they would’ve had the land anyway. So it cost them dearly. So of course we lost our land, so we’re pretty crabby about that – really crabby, actually.

This is a man called David Tipene-Leach; you might know of him. He is descended from Henare Matua – that’s this man here. I’m descended from this one, and this is Russell – I told you the Russells were popping around every now and again. So Russell and … I think this is Purvis … joined with Maori to complain about what was happening on the Plains.

This man here is John Sheehan. He was the first New Zealand born Member of Parliament. Karaitiana’s getting a bit wary of what’s going on here so he makes John Sheehan executor of his estate; doesn’t leave it to his brothers or his nephews. He had a nine-year-old son he left it to. Anyway, they started this movement which is when they got the Te Wānanga going. So David’s managed to keep all his papers that were left to him by Henare; we’ve lost ours. Earthquakes, fires and everything else. We don’t have much left. So David’s very big on the repudiation movement and what went on. Karaitiana gets into power and he insists on investigation into what had happened, which they did. They ran it; they had two Pakeha and a Maori on it and heard it; it went for … I think they heard for over six months.

But all this causes friction; you know, if you get Maori coming to court and talking, they don’t live nearby, they live somewhere else. They have to come to town, [but] there’s nowhere to stay in town. People don’t want them. They don’t want these people sitting around in the streets who don’t have a house to live in. So there was a start of a Maori club – I don’t know if any of you heard of this – it was on the Marine Parade near what I call the False Teeth, you know, that roundabout? The False Teeth. Well in there, there’s flats, I think they’re called ‘Ranui’, which I’m sure, quite sure, is where the Maori club was. It had sixteen bedrooms – you know, it was based on what they do over in The Hawke’s Bay Club, so people could stay. They do the same there now.

So they had their investigation, and a lot turned out to be fraud and this, that and the next thing. [Chuckle] I’m going to read something now, because although they had the investigation, the investigation said there were [was] no permanent provision for economic future; purchase prices were inadequate; reserves not allowed or inadequate; reserves not secured from alienation; no access to natural resources; no proper enquiry into customary ownership; no independent counsel for Maori; no obligations as far as the Treaty is concerned; and the selling of land forever was not investigated. And Maori didn’t understand that selling of land, ‘cause they thought the land was still there. And it was, you know … it was different. So no further action happened from that; it was a real downer to the local people.

But we have some other skirmishes going on ‘cause we like getting active about things and sorting things out. We had another battle in 1857 at Pakiaka. That’s at Whakatu, near where Rangitane Street used to be. You go to the back of Whakatu and come out and you’re coming to something that’s now called Hawea Park; there was an urupa where the people who died are there. But that was basically Ngati Kahungunu … us, me … and the Whatuiapiti people, of which the head was Hapuku. And Hapuku, we thought, had been very naughty ‘cause he’d gone to Wellington and sold people’s land, and didn’t tell them he’d sold their land and things. So there was great resentment building. In the end, people will tell you it was just a fight over a bit of bush. But Karaitiana owned the bush and he didn’t want Hapuku going and doing something with the trees, so they called a fight. It went for three days; they weren’t continuous days. They seemed to have taken a couple of days off before they started the fight again. And if Pakeha were coming along they’d say to them, “Oh, stop the fight – you can go through.” [Chuckles] It was quite good. In the end, Hapuku’s brother-in-law, Puhara, was killed and that settled the score. So Hapuku had to move. They said they didn’t want him down on the Plains with them any more; he had to go.

But we’re dealing with Donald McLean, which is always a bit tricky dealing with Donald McLean, [chuckle] and McLean had to get him off, so … it took six months before Hapuku left. And when you read through the documents, you can work out that he left, but he got £400 to go. Well you can imagine what the chief said about that – “We’ve just won the battle and you gave him £400.” So they wanted £400 too, and McLean had to pay. When you read the documentation on Te Mata Peak, it sold three times. That’s quite good.

Omarunui – next battle, 1866. To court – he’s coming down through Wairoa; there’s … mmm, murdering and nastiness. I won’t go into it – I don’t know, I wasn’t there; I can’t say much. But they were coming down and threatening Napier. They didn’t have enough people in Napier to form any sort of defence force, so they ended up arming Maori. We were given guns to go and fight with the Pakeha to protect the Napier citizens. And for that, we were called kupapa. Does anyone know what that means? Traitor. I like to tell people this … that we have put up with that from other tribes ‘cause we fought to keep settlers here. That’s a soapbox and a half, isn’t it?

In 1911, bless their hearts … The Womens’ Christian Temperance Society. You know, there’s quite a lot of alcohol going on. And on my father’s side – this is his grandmother – she was quite keen on money and she actually owned the pub in Woodville – I don’t know [if it] was paying a debt or something – and her son used to just take the pony trap up and just fill it up with beer. She didn’t approve at all, so The Womens’ Christian Temperance Society started. Here she is; they’re coming from Pakipaki. They’ve come to town. You can see she’s got the pram and the goods – they’d’ve had to be up very early to do this in 1911, in August. This is her husband, Mohi Te Atahikoia, and here’s Bishop Bennett. And I don’t know who the others are. It’s a significant movement.

So what’s going on? We’ve got the Williamses and the orchardists having a fabulous time with the best land in the country … the best apple land.

Can I tell you, last night I was at a meeting with some people from Mr Apple, who were telling us it’s the best land in Hawke’s Bay to grow apples. And I know that, ‘cause I remember when we negotiated with Te Ara Kahikatea Road, John Paynter – Paul Paynter – now John, the father, had been around the world looking at soils and whatever. In fact, Paul had bought up leases on the 1943 soil things that were done; where the great soils were. And they still have a lot of those lands. They didn’t buy them all, [a] lot of them are leased. We leased some of ours to them.

But who’s going to pick all this fruit? They didn’t have them [people] coming over from the Islands then, so they were Maori who didn’t live in Hastings; they lived outside at Pakipaki or Omahu or Waimarama or somewhere. They would come in and do the picking. Not only were they picking, they were doing Watties’, and the shearing sheds. And I think they’re the unrecognised Maori workers, that [and] Hastings really lived on their work. I don’t think Maori actually wanted to come and live in Hastings anyway, they were quite happy where they were. But the shortage of workers is something that happened back then – I don’t know, some of you might remember they used to try and change the school academic year so that the kids could go and pick apples more. They’re still trying … well, there you go. This hasn’t stopped. I’ve said enough on that one.

This is the First World War. This man I think’s the most beautiful Maori man I’ve ever seen, so I have to put him in the picture whenever I get the opportunity. [Chuckles] His name is Henare Kohere and he’s not even from here. He was in the second Maori contingent and he was killed in France in 1916. But this photograph sits at Houngarea Marae, and I don’t know why they have it but they let me photograph it, and I use it because I think he’s beautiful. But what a waste … what a terrible waste.

This man here is my grandfather. He was brought up by his mother and stepfather, and he’d been to Wanganui Collegiate as Michael Simpson. But somewhere along the line he wanted to be Maori again, so he became Te Kauru Karaitiana and he had a commission into the RAF. [Royal Air Force] It cost £100, which was quite a lot of money then to train to fly. By the time he got to England the war was over, but he had quite a good time. And I’ve heard from his cousins that [who] were in London at [during] the war; he’d say to them, “Do you want to come for a spin?” “Oh yeah!” He’d take them up in a plane and do ‘loop-de-loops’ over London. [Chuckles] I don’t know who else knew about that.

Anyway, so what happened after that? Well we know what happened after that. This is the Hastings Emergency Hospital; this was put together by my grandfather’s stepfather, ‘cause he was mayor of Hastings at the time, Horace Simson – there’s a lovely Lindauer print of him in the Council Chambers; very handsome. I can see why she [Angela Elizabeth Karaitiana] married him; it was her second marriage. So these are the people that ran that. Ninety-one people died in Hastings from the flu [Influenza pandemic 1918-20] and seventy-three in Napier. There were large numbers of Maori died, but they were never recorded. I know there were some at Pakipaki and they were just popped in the ground, so it was pretty decisive. But if you live in Havelock, I’ll tell you … nobody in Havelock died. [Doctor Robert] Felkin was living in Havelock then, and Felkin knew about isolation, so we escaped.

Now we go to World War II. This is my father, Bill Mohi, and this is his friend, Henare Marsden. They went into Officer Training at the beginning of the war. My father wasn’t very good at staying home or being in in [on] time, and he didn’t complete the course, so by the time the war started properly he went in as a Private, but got promoted on the field. This man became a Major.

This is my grandfather who went flying ‘loop-de-loops’ over London. When they started the 28th Māori Battalion, they went looking for some officers; there were only four in the country, and he was asked to sign up – he was probably too old really – so he did sign up, and he was in training in Trentham [Military Camp]. And he saw action overseas which he hated, and came back shell shocked. Too old; but there were only four of them and they needed a whole battalion.

What happened in Hastings? This is a picture I love – and I had an old auntie, Paula Chadwick, who once got me to write down on a piece of paper some of their names. These are the queens … these are the great women of Heretaunga. It’s all the great families represented here, and they’re doing a poi in the waka. I don’t know what year and I haven’t dated it or anything, but if you look at the clothes we’re in the forties, fifties.

Economic destruction. Well, that’s the closing of the freezing works. The implication of the freezing works closing – I wasn’t living here at the time I was over in Australia, but I would hear about it – and I hadn’t realised the significance. But when we did our research for our Treaty Settlement – and our research was done by Crown Forestry Rental [Trust]; well, they paid for it. And the man who looked into this issue, when he came to talk to us and report on what he’d found he apologised to us. He’d known about it but never realised how serious this was on the men. These were skilled men, turfed off, back home, nowhere to go, no work. Many of them took to alcohol and many others just faded away. Suicides, too.

However things get better – they do get better. We have a fabulous mayor who suddenly said, “Put all these carvings in the Civic Square.” And we did, we got carvers down … so these carvings, there’s eighteen here, and you all know them quite well. And they’re all looking at their own marae, and they’re fairly well related. So this is Karaitiana here, [he] was a Member of Parliament so he’s got a scroll and a sword, and his son is underneath; my great grandfather.

What else happened? After twenty years – I’ve got back here by then – and I think, ‘I’d better get into this Treaty stuff, I think we lost a lot.’ So we started off as ‘he toa takitini’ … mean[s] all of us together. We’re very keen to be all together; always are. And that’s what we called it when we were doing our investigation, then after we’d signed we became Heretaunga Tamatea Settlement Trust – that’s a terrible long name. And we went to Parliament, and this is us in Parliament when we go down to the signing – it was the biggest signing they’d had of people in the Parliament. And my dear friend, Robert McDonald, was making some statement; and I’d driven down with him, or his niece had driven us, and suddenly he’s scuffling in the back of the car and he brings out a big poster, and he’s hand written on it all the things he doesn’t like that are going on, bless his heart. And he was doing it on the forecourt and had to be told, “No, get off – you go down there.” Bless his heart, he always had a point like that. Here we have Jerry Hapuku and Liz Munro, who saw us through this terrible process; anyway, we got there.

So PSGE means Post Settlement Governance Entity. And then we decided to call ourselves Tamatea Pōkai Whenua; well it’s not a lot better, but we all know who he is and we descend from him. We settled a bit earlier than we should’ve; we probably could’ve got more than $100m, but we settled early and we didn’t go to hearings or anything. The Tainui and Ngai Tahu had already got children [of] twenty years, so they were ahead of us. Their kids were coming out of universities and ours had barely got to kohanga. It was just time we moved on.

Oh, we have Waitangi Day now. I didn’t go this year, I was busy doing this. So can I say that Sandra [Hazlehurst, mayor of Hastings] has made a huge difference to Hastings as far as Maori are concerned, and I’m very proud of her for that. And I think she puts up with me, too. [Chuckles]

I thought I’d tell you some of these organisations you mightn’t know about. This is the Māori Land Court on the corner of Eastbourne and Market [Streets], and so you’re sort of in the Courts here, and the Police. But all our records are kept here. Now during the earthquake Napier’s records were lost. Hastings kept theirs so they’re very valuable records. But really they’re just a way of taking your land from you now, so it’s all the same thing.

The Taiwhenua – you’ve probably heard people talking about … they’re going to the Taiwhenua. And when you drive down the expressway and you’re in Omahu Road, you can see that carpark with all those cars – well, that’s this, the Taiwhenua. This organisation provides health services for Maori, but I think anyone can go really, I don’t know. So they have those large buildings opposite the Knowledge Bank. Where’s Mr Knowledge Bank? There he is – this is opposite you. They have mental health services, they have doctors available, the help’s better. And these are the two lovely women you’ll see when you walk in the door.

Look what else we got – Waiaroha last year, the year before. So we’re celebrating; we got all sorts of new things. We got a new leader, Baden Barber; Jerry Hapuku’s here, and here we have more Tomoanas of course … Kotuku; and my cousin and I are there. We wear those blue scarves; if you’ve ever wondered why, many tribes and people around the country, or iwi, have a different colour for what they wear. Well because we’re people from the sea and we associate very heavily with the sea, we wear this, like a paua shell in our scarves. So when you see us in those we’re off doing important things. Hui.

Ngati Kahungunu … well this is our main office; now you won’t find it ‘cause it’s buried down somewhere, two floors up. But this is Ruth Wong – if you go up on the desk, she’s fabulous – she will help you. But here are our chiefs; in there are all our chiefs – oh, there’s my great grandmother. They’re all here.

This is a special picture, I wonder who it is. I did some research in a book on orchards, and I came across this picture at the back. I hope you all recognise Barbara [Brookfield] [chuckle] who’s having a coniption at the back there. a younger happy Barbara. [Chuckle] I really want to pay tribute to you Barbara, and all the work you’ve done with Landmarks. She is so helpful to us; she does all the typing out and all the records – I mean we’ve got Theresa now, too, but Barbara holds us together – she even lets us meet in our house, and even my dogs [are] allowed in the house. The extraordinary lengths she goes to … and Murray’s our Treasurer and if he can’t do the books she does them for him, so I want to say, we appreciate everything you do, Barbara.

[Applause]

[Close] Thank you so much, Rose. I think that was absolutely fabulous, a beautiful weaving together of your personal history and the history of your family and all the people in your life, and the general history of Hastings, so thank you for sharing that with us.

[Applause]

* [Reference: ‘60 Miles of Peach Trees’, The Frimley Canning Factory Hastings, 1903-1913, by Des Harris]