The Spirit of Te Makawe

Ngāti Whakaue

Makawe is a sacred place to Ngāti Whakaue that is today marked by a rock within a special enclosure on Pukeroa Hill. It is this general area that is known as Makawe, which in ancient times was a tapu (sacred) place that only tohunga (sacred experts) could visit.

The area was once home to a kuia (elderly woman) who lived hidden away from everyone. Her name was Ngāhuahua and her whare, that once stood in this area, was called Te Pono. Ngāhuahua was favoured by the atua (gods), who caused her to become pregnant, and she gave birth to a girl with flaming red hair who was a part-god and part-mortal child, known as Te Makawe.

Te Makawe died long before her mother, but she was still able to communicate with her as a spirit after her death. She came to be thought of as the guardian spirit of the Ngāti Whakaue people.

It was at this sacred rock that tohunga would go seek advice from their atua, Makawe. There are many accounts, even in more recent times, that a good response from the atua would be seen as a rainbow-like beam of light that would spring up from Te Pono and arch up into the sky and then fall toward the ground at another sacred place named Okomāpihi, close to the mouth of the Utuhina stream.

Te Makawe is said to have appeared to the famous soldier, Lance Sergeant Haane Manahi, when was in the thick of battle at Takrouna in Tunisia, as part of the 28th Māori Battalion during World War II. Lance Sergeant Manahi saw the spirit in the form of a rainbow, and he believed she led him and his men through a minefield to safety. When he returned safely back to New Zealand, he visited this place to give thanks to Te Makawe.

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.