Tākitimu

Sir Tom Davis, a former prime minister of the Cook Islands, wrote, in the form of a novel,[1] an account of 300 years of voyaging of the Tākitumu by his own forebears as told in their traditions.

Accounts from the northern East Coast indicate that the Tākitimu left Hawaiki after two brothers, Ruawharo and Tūpai, took the canoe from their enemies and escaped to New Zealand.

A Ngāti Kahungunu account of the Tākitimu is given by J. H. Mitchell, according to whom the explorer Hoaki and his brother Taukata had travelled to New Zealand from Hawaiki in the Tutara-kauika, searching for their sister Kanioro, who had been abducted and taken there by Pou-rangahau.

[3] Four stones, Kohurau, Ka-ra, Anewa, and Pounamu were used to make five adzes, named Te Awhiorangi, Tewhironui, Rakuraku o Tawhaki, Matangirei, and Hui-te-rangiora.

Te Awhiorangi, the most sacred of these adzes, was used by Tamatea to ceremonially cut through the waves, clearing the way for the canoe to travel over the sea.

[4] The canoe was first roughly shaped at Titirangi hill and then taken to Tamatea's house at Whangara, where the carving was completed in an extremely sacred enclosure which was off limits to women and commoners.

[8] It consisted of rauawa (boards attached above the hull), haumi (extensions to the front and back of the boat), taumanu (thwarts), a kāraho or rahoraho (deck), a tauihu (figurehead), rapa (sternpost), whitikotuku (frame for an awning), tira (masts), puhi (plumes of feathers), kārewa (buoys) and hoe (paddles).

Here Tamatea left the Tākitimu, entrusting the command to Tahu, whom he instructed to find a source of pounamu or greenstone (nephrite jade).

[13] When the Tākitimu reached Te Papa, near Oraka on Nukutaurua (the Māhia Peninsula), the tohunga Ruawharo left the canoe to settle.

At the island of Waikawa at the south end of the Māhia Peninsula, the crew established an important shrine, which was later the site of a whare wānanga called Ngaheru-mai-tawhiti, which J. H. Mitchell says became the chief source of mauri for the whole East Coast.

Later, part of this roller was recovered and used by a rangatira named Kopu Parapara to build a house at Te Hatepe, which inherited the tapu of the Tākitimu.

Despite this, Tahu Pōkai led the Tākitimu onward to the Arahura River on the west coast of the South Island, where he found the source of pounamu which he had sought.

[16][18] J. H. Mitchell reports a story that T. W. Ratana attempted to visit the site of the Tākitimu in the early twentieth century, but was thwarted by a supernatural fog.