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From Heritage New Zealand, Spring 2004

Silent Stronghold

by Don Donovan

Kaiapoi Pa was the first great site established after Ngai Tahu migrated from the North Island.

The inscription in both maori and English reads: This monument stands on the site of Kaiapohia the first pa established by Ngai-Tahu tribe after crossing from the North Island to this district of the South Island. Tu Rakautahi headed the subtribe which founded the pa about the year 1700 first calling it the nest of Kaikai-a-waro. His descendents changed the name to Kaiapohia commonly known as Kaiapoi after the pa was regarded as the chief Ngai-Tahu stronghold. Photo: Don Donovan

Built in about 1700 by Moki for his brother Turakautahi, who led that migration, it became the tribe’s largest and most important stronghold, being headquarters of the tribe’s leading chiefs and having a population of more than 1000 by the time of recorded history. It was considered impregnable, fortified by palisades and fosses (ditches) and situated upon a two-hectare peninsula that jutted into a labyrinth of swampy lagoons through which it might be approached only by secret ways.

No doubt the long pasture grasses that now grow on the gentle undulations which are all that remain of the pa’s earthworks conceal remnants - bones and artefacts - of more than a century of settlement. They certainly bear mute evidence of its decline and fall in 1831.

In 1828, Te Rauparaha, the great North Island Ngati Toa chief, presented himself as a friend wishing to trade in greenstone with the hapu, but in reality he was bent on exterminating Ngai Tahu. Well aware of his hostile intentions, they invited eight of his cohorts into Kaiapoi Pa, whereupon they promptly killed and ate them.

The pa was undoubtedly impenetrable, and Te Rauparaha felt the gods did not favour a Ngati Toa victory, so made a hasty retreat. He returned in the fighting season of 1831-1832 to lay siege. A series of skirmishes served to keep tensions simmering for three months, during which the attackers excavated a system of saps, some up to 2.5m deep and roofed for protection, that zig-zagged to the outer palisades against which they and their women piled dry manuka.

It was the defenders who set fire to the wood, taking the
opportunity nor-west winds offered to blow the flames away from the pa. But, as is usual in Canterbury, a southerly quickly followed, and the fire reversed. The palisades burned through, and Te Rauparaha’s impatient forces invaded Kaiapoi Pa, making savage slaughter. A cannibal feast followed on the sandy mounds overlooking the Rangiora Swamp. When, less than 20 years later, Pakeha settled in the
area, very few Ngai Tahu remained. At that time, Reverend Canon James West Stack, a local Anglican missionary, removed “several dray loads” of bones from the site for burial.

To the uninformed the only evidence of the pa’s existence today is an elevated observation tower and a wheku-topped, stark white column bearing the simple words “Ngai Tahu”, whose foundation stone was laid by Stack on 20 October 1898.

Ngai Tahu were careful in the wording of the inscription on the stone at the foot of the column not to focus upon the massacre that took place in 1831. Rather, it was agreed that the significance of the area should reflect the settlement history associated with the site.

The site of the pa is on Preeces Road, off State Highway 1, just south of Waikuku.