Hatupatu

The rock still stands beside the highway at Ātiamuri, grey and pitted, with a hollow in its side about the size of a crouching man. Drivers on State Highway 1 pass it at speed. For Te Arawa it is the place where a hunted young man spoke a charm, the stone opened, and the thing chasing him ran straight past.

Hatupatu was the youngest of a family of brothers who settled on Mokoia Island in Lake Rotorua after the Arawa canoe reached Aotearoa from Hawaiki. Being the youngest meant being last. The fullest written telling comes from the Arawa scholar Wiremu Maihi Te Rangikāheke, whose manuscripts George Grey published in Polynesian Mythology in 1854, and it opens on a long bird-snaring season in the forested country between Lake Taupō and Lake Rotorua. The elder brothers, Hānui and Hāroa among them, ate the fat birds. Hatupatu got the lean, stringy ones.

He was hungry. That is where the whole thing starts.

Left to mind the camp, he broke into the store of birds preserved in their own fat and ate until he could eat no more, with fern root on the side. Then he trampled tracks around the camp as if a war party had come through, gave himself a few light cuts and lay down groaning. The brothers came back, rubbed him with warm oil and believed him. He did it again, and again, until they caught him with his hands in the store. They killed him and hid his body under a heap of plucked feathers.

When the brothers paddled home without him, their parents knew at once what had happened. They sent a spirit named Tamumu-ki-te-rangi to search. It found the feathers, found the body beneath, and chanted Hatupatu back to life. Some genealogies disagree over the names of the parents, but every version agrees that the family’s first instinct was to doubt the elder sons.

Alive again and alone in the forest, Hatupatu met Kurangaituku. She was a hunter too, though not of his kind. She took birds by darting her lips at them like a spear, and her arms carried wings. When he threw his own spear at a bird she was stalking, the point struck her mouth instead. She ran him down without effort, for she was faster than any man, and carried him home to her cave in the rocks. It was a rich house. There were fine cloaks hanging there, weapons, and a household of tame lizards and pet birds.

She fed him raw birds, which was all she ate. He pretended to swallow them and let them drop. One morning he sent her off on an errand that would take her as far away as possible, then used her own weapon on her pets, gathered up her cloaks and ran. One small bird escaped the slaughter. It flew after its mistress crying what had been done, and Kurangaituku turned for home with the speed that had caught him once already.

The chase ran across the whole country toward Rotorua. Each time she closed on him, Hatupatu called on the rock, and the rock opened and shut him in. At Whakarewarewa the ground smoked and bubbled. Hatupatu jumped the hot springs. Kurangaituku, who did not know that the steaming crust was hot, ran across it, broke through into a boiling pool and died there. The pool is remembered by name as Whangapipiro.

Not everyone tells her ending as a victory. Ngāti Raukawa tradition, set down by the elder Huirama Te Hiko, has Hatupatu hunting illegally on Raukawa land and Kurangaituku finding him hurt and nursing him back to health, which makes the killing of her birds a theft from a guardian of the forest rather than an escape from a monster. Elsdon Best recorded a version in which she is a supernatural woman who embraces him even after his betrayal, and Best remarked drily that the young man repaid her poorly. In 2021 the novelist Whiti Hereaka retold the whole story from her side, and the book won New Zealand’s top fiction prize in 2022.

Hatupatu crossed to Mokoia, bathed in a warm spring on the island, and learned from a slave fetching water that his brothers were bullying their mother and the household. Instead of walking in, he hid in the pit where the kūmara were stored and listened. His father found him there and visited him at night. When the brothers discovered he was back, they came armed. Hatupatu climbed out of the pit in a feathered cloak, carrying a wooden weapon, looking every inch a chief, and beat all three of them. Their father’s verdict was short: they were brave enough against their youngest brother, and not at all against the man who had burned their canoe.

That man was Raumati, who had set fire to the Arawa canoe where it lay at Maketū. A war party went out to avenge it. The father secretly showed Hatupatu the pattern of Raumati’s facial tattoo so that he would know him on the field. Hatupatu did not ride in the canoes. He dived into the lake and swam beneath it, stopping on the bottom for a meal of freshwater mussels, and was waiting on the far shore when his brothers landed. They refused him any command and told him to stick to eating.

So he built an army. He bound bundles of plants and roots, dressed them in cloaks and stood them in ranks. Then he moved among them, changing his hair and his garments again and again, so that the enemy saw one chief after another taking command of a large and well-led division. Raumati’s people feared that part of the line and avoided it. The brothers’ divisions broke. Hatupatu killed an enemy chief named Karika, then went looking for Raumati, killed him, cut off his head and hid it.

The brothers came home boasting, each claiming the head. Hatupatu waited until they reached Mokoia and then produced it. Their father raised his youngest son above the elder ones. One account says the head was kept on the island as a treasure for generations. Another, recorded by George Graham in 1943, has Raumati taken alive and handing over his own greenstone weapon, Te Kaoreore, to be killed with.

Hatupatu’s strengths are those of the youngest son who has nothing else: appetite, nerve, a quick tongue and a gift for being taken for someone else. He has knowledge too, the charm that opens stone and the breath to cross a lake underwater. His weaknesses are the same qualities seen from the other side. His hunger got him killed once. His trick on Kurangaituku cost a house full of living things, and in some tellings it cost her life after she had saved his.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Hatupatu in Māori legend?

Hatupatu is a Te Arawa ancestor from Mokoia Island in Lake Rotorua, the youngest of a family of brothers said to have arrived on the Arawa canoe. His brothers killed him for stealing preserved birds, a spirit sent by his parents brought him back to life, and he later avenged the burning of the Arawa canoe by killing Raumati.

How did Hatupatu escape Kurangaituku?

Hatupatu escaped Kurangaituku, a winged bird-woman who had captured him, by sending her far away on an errand, killing her pet birds and lizards, and running off with her cloaks. When she chased him he hid inside a rock that opened at his charm, and at Whakarewarewa he leapt across the hot springs while she fell into a boiling pool and died.

Where is Hatupatu’s rock?

Hatupatu’s rock, Te Kōhatu o Hatupatu, stands beside State Highway 1 at Ātiamuri, between Taupō and Rotorua. Te Arawa tradition says it is the rock that opened to hide Hatupatu from Kurangaituku.

Who did Hatupatu kill to avenge the Arawa canoe?

Hatupatu killed Raumati, the chief who burned the Arawa canoe at Maketū, and also an enemy chief named Karika. His brothers each claimed Raumati’s head, but Hatupatu had hidden it and revealed it on Mokoia, and his father honoured him above his elder brothers.

Is Kurangaituku always the villain in the Hatupatu story?

No. Ngāti Raukawa tellings say Hatupatu was hunting illegally on Raukawa land and that Kurangaituku nursed him back to health, which makes his killing of her birds a betrayal. Whiti Hereaka’s 2021 novel Kurangaituku retells the story from her point of view.

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