Īhenga and the Patupaiarehe

Long ago, the summit of Ngongotahā, called Te Tūāhu a te Atua (The Altar of the God), was the home of a mysterious people called the Patupaiarehe. They were thought to be an iwi atua: people with supernatural powers. To some they were known as the ‘fairy people’.

They lived close to the very highest part of the mountain, so not many people had seen them in real life. Those who had gave lots of different descriptions about what they looked like. Some said they were light-skinned like Pākehā people, and others that they had kiri pūwhero (reddish skin) and their hair had the red or golden tinge, called urukehu. Some had black eyes, and some blue.

They were a peaceful people and not war-loving or angry.

Although they lived high on the maunga (mountain), the Patupaiarehe sometimes came down to Lake Rotorua to catch inanga (whitebait) and to collect water because there was no fresh spring near their pā. The Patupaiarehe women would gather the water they needed from a spring under the northern cliffs of the maunga, near the side of the Kauae spur, an ancient sacred burial place for Ngāti Whakaue. This is where Īhenga first came across a Patupaiarehe woman who had been filling her tahā (calabash) with water to take back to her home.

When Īhenga came to the bank of the stream, he saw a curl of smoke rising near the summit of the great maunga far above him. Some people say the smoke he saw was fairy mist. This made Īhenga very curious about who was living so high on the mountain, so he climbed his way through the thick fern of the lower slopes and into the forest. The tough climb made him very thirsty and so he looked for a spring to drink from but could not find one. He kept climbing until he stumbled onto an amazing sight; the home of the Patupaiarehe.

He asked for some water and a beautiful young woman gave him a drink out of a tahā. These people were very interested in Īhenga and pressed around him, touching his skin and asking questions. Īhenga became worried by their interest, and thought they may want to kill and eat him, so he broke away from them and fled down the maunga as quickly as he could.

The people chased him, but he was faster than all of them except for the beautiful young woman who had given him the drink of water. She wished to catch him and make him her husband. She threw off her clothes so that she could run faster and Īhenga began to think she may indeed catch him, and, if she did, he may never see his wife again!

Just at that moment, he came up with a clever trick. He took some of the kōkōwai (red ochre mixed with shark oil) he kept in the small pūtea (bag) he carried and smeared it quickly all over his body. The hāunga (bad smell) of the shark oil was so awful that the young woman stopped chasing Īhenga and he was able to run all the way back to the shores of the lake where his wife was patiently waiting for him.

This story has been endorsed by Norma Sturley, a Ngāti Whakaue koeke (elder).

This story comes from the original Great Te Arawa Stories website created by Ngā Pūmanawa e Waru (NPeW) Education Trust in 2018. To ensure consistency, minimal updates were made to the text before it was transferred to this new site.