Taniwha

At certain bends of the Waikato the water goes quiet and deep, and the old instruction was to speak the karakia and drop a green twig in before going past. Not an apology. A courtesy, the kind you pay to something that was there first and is still down there in the cold, under the current, minding the bend.

Taniwha live in those places. They are not one creature but a whole order of them, and their shape depends on which iwi or hapū is doing the telling. Some are reptiles with wings, fiery-eyed, tails lashing, eating anyone careless enough to wander near the mouth of the den. Others wear the body of a shark, a whale, an octopus. Some are logs. Not logs with something hidden inside them: drifting tōtara, recognised for what they are because they travel against the current instead of with it. In the Māori world view these beings sat inside the natural environment rather than outside it, which is why a taniwha can be a supernatural terror and, at the same time, simply a feature of the river you happen to live beside.

Their lairs have their own name, rua taniwha. Deep pools, sea caves, the stretch of coast where the breakers come in wrong and the water folds back on itself. These are the places where people drown. The geography of taniwha belief maps almost exactly onto the geography of dangerous water, which is either a coincidence or the entire point.

Physically the best-documented ones are composites, and one of them was assembled in front of witnesses. Tūtaeporoporo of the Whanganui began as an ordinary shark, caught by a chief called Tuariki and kept as a pet in a river. He grew until he was as big as a whale, and then he stopped being a shark. His skin went hard and spiky. Wings came out of him like a bat’s, his tail turned lizard, his feet webbed, his claws curved over like a hawk’s, and his head reshaped into something close to a featherless bird. He kept the teeth.

Many taniwha did not grow here at all. They came with the canoes. Kupe stationed one of his guardians, Tūhirangi, in Cook Strait to shepherd crossings. Āraiteuru escorted the Māmari from Hawaiki and, once ashore, bore eleven sons who went out exploring and gouged the branches of the Hokianga Harbour as they went; one of them, Waihou, burrowed inland and thrashed out Lake Ōmāpere with his tail, while another, Ōhopa, grew so sick of the rocks in his way that he turned against every living thing and terrorised the country under the Panguru mountains. Four taniwha in whale form swam beside the Tākitimu. Another, Pane-iraira, ran with the Tainui the whole way from Hawaiki. Ngake and Whātaitai were sealed in the lake that is now Wellington Harbour until Ngake, restless, smashed an opening through to Cook Strait; Whātaitai tried a different exit and stranded himself on dry land, and his spirit went up Mt Victoria as a bird called Te Keo, and wept there, and the hill still carries the name.

A guardian at work looks like almost nothing. Humuhumu, who had escorted the Māhuhu canoe and then stayed on as protector of Ngāti Whātua at Kaipara, appeared as a tōtara log lying in a lagoon, going quietly the wrong way against the tide. At Waikaremoana a log called Tūtaua sang, and Elsdon Best, who heard it, said it sounded like wind whistling. People who lived there said that was Tūtaua singing as he went.

The hostile ones produced the slayers. When Tūtaeporoporo’s master was killed by Whanganui warriors, the taniwha went down to the river mouth to avenge him, took a cave beneath a cliff, and swallowed the first canoes whole, people and paddles together. He had never tasted human flesh before. He liked it, and after that he ate everyone who came downriver. The people sent for Ao-kehu, who had a reputation for this work. He had a log hollowed out until a man would fit inside it, a lid cut to seal it, and every gap packed with clay to keep the water out, then climbed in with two māripi, the shark-tooth blades. Tūtaeporoporo smelled him coming and swallowed the log. Inside the belly, in the dark and the wet, Ao-kehu cut his bindings and slashed his way out through the creature. When the body drifted ashore they opened it and found people, canoes, weapons, tools and greenstone pendants, and buried what could be buried.

The other slayings run on the same principle. Tara of Heretaunga built a hīnaki, an eel pot, on a monstrous scale, baited it with two hundred dogs and sank it in Lake Roto-a-Tara; the taniwha Te Tau-a-Porirua went in after the noise and was dragged out and killed, and more than two hundred victims were found inside it. Hotupuku, out on the Kāingaroa Plains, was drawn into a noose plaited from cabbage tree leaves by runners fast enough to be bait. For Pekehaua, in a Rotorua spring, Pitaka’s men wove a basket of supplejack and bush lawyer, dressed it in pigeon feathers, and had themselves lowered into the water, reciting karakia to weaken the creature until a rope could be worked around it. Ngārara Huarau died under a stand of trees cut almost through, chased into them by a dog under a spell.

Not every taniwha is a killer, and the tradition is careful about the difference. Ureia of Hauraki was described in Māori-language testimony as no man-eater and no drowner but a tupua, a mauri, a token of the mana of the people of that sea. The same account divides taniwha into two kinds and adds a condition to the dangerous ones: they do not drown people at random. They take those who have given offence, who have walked on burial ground or on the tapu places where the taniwha itself lives. Hine-kōrako, who had married a man and left him after his relatives insulted her, went to live under the Te Rēinga waterfall, and when a canoe came down the flooded Wairoa River and an old man called out to her by name, she slowed it and pushed it back upstream.

Their powers follow from what they are. A taniwha commands the water it occupies, can hold a canoe against a flooded river or drive one across a strait, can change form and change it again, and can swallow a war party without stopping. Some can be called: the tohunga Te Tahi-o-te-rangi, marooned by his own people on Whakaari, chanted up the whale-taniwha Tūtarakauika and rode home. A guardian’s presence is also information, and the taniwha of Ngāti Tamaterā would come up the river in dolphin shape to play, which meant an invasion was coming.

The limits are just as consistent. Almost every taniwha that dies, dies of its appetite; the trap is always food, or something that behaves like food, and the creature always goes for it. Karakia works on them, weakening them in the water before the noose goes on. They are tied to their place, which makes them findable, and once found they can be killed by ordinary means: a falling tree, a spear, a plaited rope, a mere carried by a man named Tāmure. And the exchange runs both ways. Takere-piripiri, a guardian shaped like an enormous spiky-tailed tuatara, protected the Ngāti Raukawa pā at Ōtautahanga and was paid in baskets of the best food until the day a gift of eels arrived with only the heads left in it, whereupon he ate the people who had eaten his dinner and went off to the Maungakawa Range to eat travellers instead. Humuhumu simply left. His people had taken shellfish out of his lagoon, and after that the log was never seen there again.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a taniwha?

A taniwha is a supernatural water being from Māori tradition, usually living in a lake, river or the sea. Taniwha appear in many forms depending on the tribal tradition, including winged reptiles, sharks, whales, octopuses and enchanted drifting logs. Some are guardians of a tribe, while others eat people.

Are taniwha good or evil?

Both, depending on the taniwha. Many are kaitiaki, protectors of an iwi or hapū, who guided canoes, warned of invasion and rescued people from drowning. Others were man-eaters, though even these were often said to take only people who had given offence by trespassing on burial grounds or other tapu places.

Where do taniwha live?

Taniwha live in lairs called rua taniwha, which are deep pools, caves, or stretches of dangerous water that people avoided. Many arrived in New Zealand alongside the voyaging canoes from Hawaiki and settled in particular harbours and rivers. Āraiteuru guarded the Hokianga Harbour from a cave at its south head.

How were taniwha killed?

Taniwha were killed by traps built around their appetite. Tara sank a giant eel pot baited with two hundred dogs in Lake Roto-a-Tara; Hotupuku was lured into a noose woven from cabbage tree leaves; and Ao-kehu had himself sealed inside a hollow log, was swallowed by Tūtaeporoporo, and cut his way out of the creature with shark-tooth blades.

What does a taniwha look like?

There is no single appearance. Taniwha are often described as reptilian, with wings, scales, fiery eyes and lashing tails, and these reptile-shaped ones are called ngārara. Tūtaeporoporo of the Whanganui was described with hard spiky skin, bat-like wings, a lizard’s tail, webbed feet, hawk’s claws, a featherless bird’s head and a shark’s teeth.

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