Maungahaumi is a mountain in the Raukumara Range in the northeast of New Zealand's

North Island The North Island, also officially named Te Ika-a-Māui, is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, separated from the larger but much less populous South Island by the Cook Strait. The island's area is , making it the world's 14th-largest ...

. Part of the backbone of the range, which forms part of a line of mountains extending across much of the North Island, 1213 metre (3979 ft) Maungahaumi is the southernmost of the Raukumara Range's most prominent peaks. To the southwest of the peak is a saddle separating the Raukumara Range from the

Huiarau Range The Huiarau Range is a range of mountains in Te Urewera in the northeast of New Zealand's North Island. Part of the spine of mountains that run roughly parallel with the island's east coast, it is a southwestern extension of the Raukumara Range, l ...

– this saddle, with its highest point at the 725 metre Traffords Hill, is crossed by State Highway 2, the main road link between Gisborne and

Ōpōtiki Ōpōtiki (; from ''Ōpōtiki-Mai-Tawhiti'') is a small town in the eastern Bay of Plenty in the North Island of New Zealand. It houses the headquarters of the Ōpōtiki District Council and comes under the Bay of Plenty Regional Council. Ge ...

in the

Bay of Plenty The Bay of Plenty ( mi, Te Moana-a-Toi) is a region of New Zealand, situated around a bight of the same name in the northern coast of the North Island. The bight stretches 260 km from the Coromandel Peninsula in the west to Cape Runawa ...

. Several rivers have their sources on the slopes of Maungahaumi, including the Motu River and several tributaries of the

Waipaoa River The Waipaoa River is a river of the northeast of New Zealand's North Island. It rises on the eastern slopes of the Raukumara Range, flowing south for to reach Poverty Bay and the Pacific Ocean just south of Gisborne. For about half of this d ...

Cultural significance

Maungahaumi is the principal ancestral mountain of the Maori

tribe The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English language, English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in p ...

Ngaariki Kaiputahi, as well as other affiliated tribal groups and

hapū In Māori and New Zealand English, a ' ("subtribe", or "clan") functions as "the basic political unit within Māori society". A Māori person can belong to or have links to many hapū. Historically, each hapū had its own chief and normally opera ...

in the

Tūranga Tūranga is the main public library in Christchurch, New Zealand. It opened on 12 October 2018 and replaced the nearby Christchurch Central Library that was closed on the day of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. Location and prior buildings Tūr ...

region.

Name

The origins of the name date back to the story of the

Horouta In Māori tradition, the canoe ''Horouta'' was one of the great ocean-going canoes in which Polynesians migrated to New Zealand approximately 800 years ago. The story goes that Kahukura, a man from Hawaiki, introduced kūmara (sweet potato), t ...

waka Waka may refer to: Culture and language * Waka (canoe), a Polynesian word for canoe; especially, canoes of the Māori of New Zealand ** Waka ama, a Polynesian outrigger canoe ** Waka hourua, a Polynesian ocean-going canoe ** Waka taua, a Māori w ...

and its journey from

Hawaiki In Polynesian mythology, (also rendered as in Cook Islands Māori, in Samoan, in Tahitian, in Hawaiian) is the original home of the Polynesians, before dispersal across Polynesia. It also features as the underworld in many Māori stories. ...

. The Horouta waka (led by captain Paoa) became severely damaged by high winds and seas en route to New Zealand. The waka and the crew on board were subsequently washed ashore at Ohiwa near Opotiki with a broken hull and bow piece. Upon landing, Paoa and his crew ventured inland to the interior mountain ranges to find suitable materials to repair the vessel. It was on the mountain that we now know as Maungahaumi, where he found the

totara ''Podocarpus totara'' (; from the Maori-language ; the spelling "totara" is also common in English) is a species of podocarp tree endemic to New Zealand. It grows throughout the North Island and northeastern South Island in lowland, montane and ...

trees that were used to repair and bring together the hull and bow pieces of the waka. From this experience, Paoa named the mountain from the Maori words (mountain) and (to join together), as a testament to the resources the mountain provided towards repairing the waka. The tale is also told in the old (chant) "Haramai a Paoa".

References

Mau {{Gisborne-geo-stub