I n the 1870s and 80s, when British colonists arrived in South Taranaki to take up land for farms, they found that underneath the high-growing bracken fern were old, abandoned village sites ringed by ditches.
For the mainly country-raised families, these were not unfamiliar, because rural Britain had many strange mounds, ruins of stone buildings and even the remains of villages overgrown by grass.
The many old ring-ditched village sites in South Taranaki were to be found in the crooks of the streams; others were on spurs of land dominating old walking tracks. The new farmers respected the ancient field monuments in the corners of their farms and, in the case of one called Turuturu Mokai, honoured it as a reserve.
This was an ancient fortified village of the Ngati Tupaea, surrounded by ditches deeply carved into the soil with five small satellite villages, including Te Uma-a-Tongahake nestling alongside the greatest one, all obviously abandoned for many generations.
A fearsome story was associated with the 17th-century site describing a massacre of the inhabitants by way of clever ruse.
The pa was almost impregnable by normal means, the timber palisades and trenches too well made for the most determined enemy, and the supplies of water and stored food were enough to keep the inhabitants fed for many months.
A neighbouring hapu, Ngati Hine, offered to use their valued tattooists to give the Ngati Tupaea young men tattoos on their buttocks. Thus immobilised, and in great pain, they were not able to defend an attack on their pa.
The men of Ngati Hine overcame the defenders and in fires of victory smoked the slaughtered Ngati Tupaea chiefs' heads and placed them on the stakes that ringed the pa; hence the name Turuturu Mokai loosely translated as "smoked heads on stakes."
The great pa site was never re- occupied by Maori, who respected its blood-soaked past and its tapu. Even in 1911, when Hawera scoutmaster Brunt took his young troop to camp on the old pa site, Rod Syme, then about 11 years of age, and recalling the event 80 years later, said all the scouts were conscious of an eerie feeling when darkness fell and were pleased to march home at the end of their exercises.
The residents of Hawera in the 20th century were proud of this gruesome landmark and during the 1930s, enthused by their mayor James Campbell, tidied up the reserve, planted trees, built a concrete bridge and pavilion, as well as placing a weir where the Tawhiti Stream was crossed by the road.
The new lake was picturesquely planted, toilets erected and large lawns formed. It was now a charming spot for weekend picnickers.
The tapu of the great pa was lifted in 1938 by local Maori elders who afterwards consecrated a pole carved by master carver Henare Toka to signify that all who walked on the pa site were now given protection. This fine carving is in the manner of the ancient Taranaki style of nets and dog teeth.
To the north and east and above the great pa is a memorial to another event, that of the siege of the Turuturu Mokai redoubt on the early morning of July 12, 1868.
At this time British settlers were endeavouring to take up land in South Taranaki for farming, against the wishes of Ngati Ruanui and their neighbours. The settlers believed that Governor George Grey's proclamation of confiscation of land in a belt 20 miles in from the South Taranaki coastline was legal and bought land offered for sale by the Government. The people of the Whanganui, Nga Rauru, Ngati Ruanui, Ngati Maru and Taranaki ignored the proclamation and objected to the creeping settlement of their land. They would stop surveyors dividing the land and drive off trespassing cattle and sheep.
Considerable negotiations went on between the government agents and the local leaders, the chief of whom was Titokowaru, an able negotiator and later a great military strategist.
When these failed Riwha Titokowaru withdrew to his village of Te Ngutu o te Manu with his family and supporters.
From here he conducted small attacks on settlers with the object of enticing the garrison of the Camp Waihi redoubt, near modern Normanby, to come to Te Ngutu o Te Manu to arrest him. The attack on the Camp Waihi outpost of Turuturu Mokai was to be the ultimate provocation for the senior officer Colonel McDonnell.
The little redoubt had been built by men of the 18th (Royal Irish) Regiment in 1866 of turf blocks and bracken fern. It was a small square with two round bastions at diagonal corners and a thatched house used as a storeroom and guardroom. Six tents were pitched in the yard, with two small buildings outside the walls, one for Captain Ross and one for the canteen keeper, Richard Lennon.
On the evening of the attack Titokowaru picked a group of 60 Nga Ruahine men led by Haowhenua who were dispatched from Te Ngutu o te Manu to surprise and annihilate those who slept in the redoubt that night.
This was a journey of about 19 kilometres across streams and swamps in chilling cold.
At about 5am Constable Lacey challenged a suspicious sound in the gully and fired his rifle, sparking a volley of shots, one of which took him in the shoulder.
The suddenly woken men in the redoubt held off the attackers and stopped them from achieving their objective - the total destruction of redoubt and its defenders.
The action continued until at 7am when a relief column arrived from Camp Waihi and the attackers dispersed. A plaque on the monument that stands on the site records 10 killed, six wounded and six unscathed.
An excellent account of the whole affair is to be found in Nigel Ogle and Ron Crosby's excellent book A Desperate Dawn. The Battle for Turuturu Mokai 1868.
