Hone Mokekehu snaring a weka while Brunner and Heaphy rest in front of a hut, 1846

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DescriptionA HISTORY OF BLACKBALL: MAORI AND PAKEHA, early 19th century
The early nineteenth century was a period of turmoil for the people of the Grey Valley. The arrival of Europeans on the coast, first as sealers, later as traders, brought useful things like iron tools and new crops. At the same time muskets, a new weapon, made intertribal warfare a lot more lethal.
Nasty battles between invading and defending hapu were fought in the valley.
A colonial government set up in 1840 began buying land from tribes everywhere in the new colony. Surveying and mapping parties went out exploring. Hone Mokekehu, for example, in 1846 guided Thomas Brunner and Charles Heaphy through the valley of the Māwheranui. A taro plantation was under cultivation alongside the pā at Māwhera. Fish were caught there every summer: ‘eels, soles and white bait, the first of which they preserve in the fat, potted in the bladder of the seaweed termed kelp’. The winter season was when ‘great numbers’ of weka and kereru were ‘obtained in the woods’ before also being cooked and potted in their own fat inside kelp bags. Hapū members travelled upriver from the pā. Four days of travel would get them to Oweka, ‘where they have a plantation.’
Other newcomers in the next few years wrote that the Māwheranui was deep enough for waka to a distance of nearly fifty kilometres from the sea, beyond which it was ‘broad but shallow and rapid.’ Bracken and grass still grew on both riverbanks thanks to constant burning off by the hapū. A walking track followed the north bank of the river, twining its way through the grass and bracken, fording Ford Creek and Blackball Creek. Hapū members who walked the track came, in other words, quite close to the Blackball tableland.
Away from the river was a wide sweep of beech forest, with one very valuable grove of rimu on Ruby Creek. The value of the grove lay in its timber, which was used to make waka. A good rimu would be chosen carefully. Karakia would be chanted. The tree would be felled and its branches trimmed until what was left was a clean log. The log would then be dragged down a track to the mouth of the creek where it would be hewn into waka. A hewing adze found there in the middle of the twentieth century was ‘fashioned out of a white, flinty stone … perfectly cut … almost chisel-pointed.’
The long centuries in which Māori shaped the valley came to an end suddenly.
James Mackay, a salaried official, was sent by the colonial state to korero with Poutini Ngāi Tahui. The leading rangatira of the iwi signed, in 1860, the Arahura Deed. The iwi by the terms of the deed sold their customary title to almost three million hectares of the West Coast. A few reserves covering less than three thousand hectares were set aside for hapū. One was the pā site at Māwhera. Another was land around the rimu grove at Ruby Creek. Almost all the remainder of the valleys, tablelands, hills and high ranges of the old tribal rohe was now in the hands of the colonial government.
One of the tablelands sold to the state was Blackball.
Pic: Hone Mokekehu snaring a weka while Brunner and Heaphy rest in front of a hut, 1846; artist William FoxDate of Photo1846Map^[1]ContributorStevan Eldred-Grigg

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Location (city or town)BlackballPersonHone MokekehuHeaphyBrunner

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Category TagMaori

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Date Created20th February 2021CommentsTheresa Gibson
In the Aglionby or Matukituki (Matakitaki) Valley, looking into the Otapawa, 20th February 1846.
Stevan Eldred-Grigg
exactly, Theresa - good spotting
Rex Bourke
Isn’t Whitebait season is early springtime
Stevan Eldred-Grigg

It is indeed - we have to assume that the observers were defining summer a bit differently from us.
Russell Dey
Assume?
Wayne Morris
No this would be pre-Doc. The Maori would have fished the whitebait when it was there. On the Waimak it is common to see whitebait as late as mid-Feb. They will come in when ready not by some 'white-man's' calender.

Des Wesley
Love this series Stevan. My Dad was born there in 1914.

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Hone Mokekehu snaring a weka while Brunner and Heaphy rest in front of a hut, 1846

Editing is temporarily disabled