Arawa (canoe)

Arawa was one of the great ocean-going, voyaging canoes in Māori traditions that was used in the migrations that settled New Zealand. The Te Arawa confederation of Māori iwi and hapū based around the Rotorua Lakes and Bay of Plenty, as well as Ngāti Tūwharetoa, which is based around Lake Taupō, trace their ancestry from the people of this canoe.

Te Arawa's ancestors on board the Arawa were of the Ngāti Ohomairangi of Ra'iātea Island. Following a battle that broke out between them and Uenuku, in which their own Whakatūria fell in battle, Tama-te-kapua promised to captain the voyage to the islands of New Zealand, which had been discovered by Ngāhue of the Tāwhirirangi canoe.

A large tree was cut down by four men called Rata, Wahieroa, Ngāhue and Parata, to make the waka which came to be known as Arawa. "Hauhau-te-rangi" and "Tūtauru" (made from New Zealand greenstone brought back by Ngāhue) were the adzes used for the time-consuming and intensive work. D. M. Stafford records the karakia (invocation) sung when the tree was chopped down, which opens Kakariki powhaitere. Another canoe, Tainui, was made at the same place and time. Upon completion, the waka was given the name Ngā rākau kotahi puu a Atua Matua (also known as Ngā rākau maatahi puu a Atua Matua, or more simply Ngā rākau rua a Atuamatua - the two trunks of Atuamatua) in memory of Tama-te-kapua's grandfather Atua-matua. The song sung as it was hauled into the sea, toia Te Arawa tapotu ki te moana is recorded by several sources.

The traditional accounts do not provide much clear information about the design and size of the Arawa. Most scholars have argued that it was a catamaran with two hulls, but some sources make it a single-hulled canoe. A drawing by Wi Maihi te Rangikaheke shows it with a single hull and a figurehead consisting of a horizontal plank with three vertical planks projecting out of it, decorated with feathers. Some accounts indicate that it had a large house on the deck. Another claims that it had three masts.

The crew consisted of both men and women, with estimates of their number ranging from around thirty to over a hundred. D. M. Stafford compiles a list of forty-nine men, who appear on the Arawa in different traditions, noting that some of them are otherwise attested on other canoes or seem implausible on genealogical grounds:

The following women are attested on the Arawa in different traditions:

Items brought to New Zealand on the Arawa included a tapu kōhatu (sacred stone). There was also a magic whetstone for sharpening axes called Hine-tua-hōanga, which Īhenga, later installed at a sacred spring called Waiorotoki ("waters of the echoing axes") on the Waitetī stream near Ngongotahā. The stone was shown to James Cowan still in situ in 1930 and was said to have made the stream so tapu that it was fatal to drink from it. In addition, the canoe brought over two gods, one called Itupaoa, which was represented by a roll of tapa, and another stone carving buried at Mokoia Island on Lake Rotorua, which is perhaps to be identified with Matuatonga.

It had two stone anchors, called Toka-parore and Tu-te-rangi-haruru, now the name of two rocks in the Maketu estuary. A stone anchor in the churchyard at Ohinemutu is said to have come from the Arawa, but this is probably a 19th century waka of the same name.