Paikea

.

Ruatapu is shamed

Ruatapu became offended when her father Uenuku elevated her younger half-brother Kahutia-te-rangi (later known as Paikea) ahead of her. When Ruatapu was about to use a comb belonging to Kahutia-te-rangi, Uenuku rebuked her, pointing out that Kahutia-te-rangi was of high rank while Ruatapu was of low birth (because her mother was a junior wife). [In other accounts, the rebuke came when Ruatapu dared to walk on the roof of Uenuku's house.]

Ruatapu's revenge

Angry and ashamed at her father's disparaging comments, Ruatapu built a canoe, or "waka". When it was finished, she lured Kahutia-te-rangi and a large number of the other sons of Uenuku, all of them young men of high birth, aboard her canoe, and took them out to sea to drown them. She had knocked a hole in the bottom of the canoe, temporarily plugging it with her heel. When far out at sea, she removed her heel, and the canoe sank. Ruatapu then went to each of the young men in turn, and drowned them. However, Kahutia-te-rangi recited an incantation invoking the Southern Humpback whales ("paikea" in Māori) to carry him ashore. [In some versions, Kahutia-te-rangi became a whale; in others, he rode on a whale's back.] Kahutia-te-rangi was the sole survivor of his sister's evildoings and assumed the name Paikea as a memorial of the assistance he received from the whales. [The murderous Ruatapu was herself drowned in some accounts.]

The waves of Ruatapu

The episode where Ruatapu threatens to return as the great waves of the eighth month may explain other accounts where Ruatapu is portrayed as having invoked a great flood (likened to the Biblical deluge). Such accounts or conclusions may be the result of Christian influence. According to Ruatapu's account, 'After Ruatapu returned to land, she came to this island. Paikea was already on the shore, waiting for Ruatapu. And when it came to the long, heaped-up [waves] of the eighth month, Ruatapu appeared with her war party of three persons: the war party were Te Ihinga [The Shuddering] , Te Warenga [The Curling-over] , and Te Marara [The Dispersing] . So then the regions of the earth were covered over, lost to sight under the spray of her war party. After this she went back again to her home; her body was a jellyfish' (Reedy 1993:149).

In the Ngāti Porou accounts translated by Reedy (1993, 1997), Ruatapu shouted out to Kahutia-te-rangi that she would return to fight him: 'The great waves of the eighth month, they are me! I am then approaching!' (Reedy 1993:143, Reedy 1997:85 is similar). In an endnote , Reedy says 'In the eighth month of the Māori calendar, in the early summer, large waves known as ngā tai o Rangawhenua, Rangawhenua's waves, sometimes break upon the shore on the East Coast. In this episode Ruatapu announces that in the eighth month she will take this form, and follow Paikea' (1993:231, note 101).

ee also

*The Whale Rider - a book (by Witi Ihimaera) and film inspired in part by the story of Paikea and Ruatapu.

Notes

References

* R.D. Craig, "Dictionary of Polynesian Mythology" (Greenwood Press: New York, 1989), 198-9, 237.
* Reedy, Anaru, "Ngā Kōrero a Mohi Ruatapu, tohunga rongonui o Ngāti Porou: The Writings of Mohi Ruatapu" (Canterbury University Press: Christchurch, 1993), 142-146.
* Reedy, Anaru, "Ngā Kōrero a Pita Kāpiti: The Teachings of Pita Kāpiti" (Canterbury University Press: Christchurch, 1997), 83-85.