The sisters lived on the coast of the north side of a tidal river that came down from far back in the ranges and mouthed out into a wide bay. Far beyond the bay was where the morning sun tipped up out of the sea and flipped back across the sky like a slow, many-coloured fish, travelling the high arc until it dropped and splashed down again beyond the mountains. This northern curve of the bay was bordered by rock and steep white cliffs. In the clearings, here and there between the inlet and the cliffs, people had built their ancestral house, their sleeping houses and cooking shelters, and had made their gardens.
On the other side of the inlet, bordering the south end of the bay, were low cliffs of yellow rock centred by a blowhole which at low tide stood dry, enabling a way through to a sheltered cove which was a favoured fishing place. At this time no one lived on the south side.
The canoe that the sisters quarrelled over was small and old and suitable only to take a single paddler from one side of the inlet to the other. Once across, the paddler would have to take the canoe to high ground and turn it upside down to get the water out of it and allow it to dry.
There were other canoes and other ways of crossing the inlet. On most days at low tide there were places where the inlet could be easily forded on foot, and even at half tide it was possible to cross on horseback. In good weather it wasn't too far to swim. Also there wasn't much necessity for crossing the inlet unless it was to hunt pigs on the scrub-covered hills beyond the rocks or to go overland to the cove or perhaps make a journey south, but for such crossings bigger craft with room for goods or equipment were needed.
But the canoe had belonged to Ngarua and Maraenohonoho's brother who had been 15 years old when the elder of his two sisters was born. He'd looked after them ever since they learned to walk, been patient with their games, listened to their complaints, allowed them to sleep one each side of him at night, and had always tried to show even-handedness when they competed for his attention and affection.
By the time the two women were in their thirties both their parents had died and it was their brother who was their champion when elders wanted to marry them off to two old men seeking wives. He'd stood firm in refusal on his sisters' behalf and had sent them north to relatives, out of the way until the fuss died down.
While they were away the sisters, who up until then had shown little interest in marriage, found prospective husbands without help from anyone, and eventually returned to their brother's place to seek family approval.
So not long after their return they were married - though it was said that what love they had for their new husbands never ever matched the love they held for their brother. Even after some years of marriage, and with children who could have distracted them from it, they still became jealous if they felt their brother had shown favour to one of them above the other.
When their brother died they were distraught. They had to be pulled off the casket when the pallbearers were ready to head the procession to the urupa, then once there, had to be dragged away from the graveside when they attempted to throw themselves into the hole and onto the box along with their brother's gun and his clothing.
After the burial, and after the burning of his death shelter and his palliasse, there was only one thing remaining that was personal to their brother. That was the canoe that he'd made when he was a boy. He had sat them in it and pushed them about in shallow water when they were babies. They had waited in it while he fished. Now both claimed the canoe, and though it was of no real use to either of them they pretended that it was and made up excuses for needing to cross the inlet in that canoe, that and no other.
They began removing the canoe from its usual place by the water and hiding it from each other. Ngarua would hide it, and Maraenohonoho wouldn't rest until she'd found it, waiting until Ngarua had her back turned so she could hide it somewhere else.
The sisters would go to extremes in order to distract each other while they searched for the canoe. Once Ngarua led Maraenohonoho's children into heavy bush and left them there, and while her sister and the people were searching for the children she dragged the canoe to a new hiding place. On another occasion Maraenohonoho reported seeing someone fall from the cliff tops onto the rocks below. She set out along the shore with the searchers but turned back in order to get the canoe and hide it in the trees.
The people soon became tired of all this. There had to be an end to it and they were awaiting an opportunity to break up the canoe, perhaps set fire to it, or hole it and push it out to sea, but in the end they never got the chance.
The sisters guessed what was in the people's minds and realised the canoe would never be safe in any hiding place now. It had to be where they could see it and they had to watch each other and everyone else as well, after all the canoe was not just a canoe, never had been just a canoe to them. It was the memory of their brother. It was their brother. It was all that he'd meant to them in the past, and it was all that he meant to them now. It was his heart, his love for them, and each wanted that heart and that love for herself. Neither of the sisters held any love for each other and one would have died rather than let the other have this, their brother's heart, their brother's love.
One night the sisters were sitting on the banks of the inlet, separate from each other but both keeping the canoe in sight, waiting for the other to be distracted in some way. There was a horn-shaped moon giving ragged light to the water through the branches and foliage of trees that lined the inlet, and it was when a cloud passed over the moon that Ngarua and Maraenohonoho both saw an opportunity and raced to snatch the canoe with the intention of taking it across the water and remaining with it on the other side. Ngarua, who was smaller and quicker than Maraenohonoho, reached the canoe first, pushed it down and into the water, stepped in and pitched away from the shore.
Seeing that Ngarua had beaten her to it, Maraenohonoho took up a heavy piece of driftwood, rushed out and launched the branch through the water, cursing as best she knew how. The wood struck the already frail canoe and made a large hole in it.
Ngarua continued to paddle as the canoe began to sink, then as it went from beneath her she swam, finally walking out on the other side of the inlet from where she never returned.
The canoe was never retrieved from the water.
The next morning Ngarua's husband rolled blankets and clothing into a bundle and tied it on to the back of his horse along with a billycan and his gun. At low tide he tied their youngest child to his back, then leading his horse bearing the three older children, crossed the inlet to join his wife, followed by several dogs who thought there was a pig hunt on.
During the next few days Ngarua and her husband were joined by others who found themselves in sympathy with Ngarua, or who may have had their own dissatisfactions with life on that northern side, or who maybe followed because their dog had gone. Over the years, disagreement or whim caused further defections from the north side, and gradually the populations of Northside and Southside evened out.
Though the division had come about because of jealousy and quarrelling, people on the north side held no severe animosity against those who had crossed over. However, they did hold disdain. They, the Northsiders, were the stayers, the originals, those resident in the place where their ancestors' bones were buried. They had established gardens on the fertile areas of flat land at the base of the hills and were the caretakers of lands, sacred sites and of the ancestral meeting house - all of which made them superior, at least in their own eyes.
Neither did the Southsiders have outstanding bad feeling for those they'd left behind. They were all family after all and they'd lived together well enough for many generations. But the inlet-crossers now saw themselves as the ones who'd stood no nonsense, those who'd acted on principle, and this is what they believed gave them the edge. Adventurers they were. Movers, changers, seekers.
As quickly as they could, after making their houses and setting up fireplaces, the Southsiders made gardens of their own, increasing them in size each year until they were more extensive than those on the north side. In response to the situation of ancestral remains they established a new burial ground. This was at the time of the death of an old woman who had crossed the inlet not far behind Ngarua's husband and children. They couldn't pretend that this was quite the same however, after all there were many chiefly people and many loved people buried in the old place, including the brother. There was nothing they could do about that.
But once they were established, Ngarua spoke about a new meeting house as a way of stamping authority on the new settlement, and people began to plan. The new wharenui (meeting house) was larger and more strongly built than the old one of Northside, and according to those who had made it, more finely decorated.
Modernity and size didn't impress the Northsiders, or if they were impressed they didn't admit to it, after all theirs would always be the first house, the senior house, which gave it greater importance. Anyway, they thought the small amount of carving on the exterior of the Southside house to be unstylish and rough, and weren't surprised that there were no interior carvings if that was the best their cross-over relatives could do. The rafters - that important place of ancestral backbone and ribs, the place where stories hang and where talk is recorded - they considered to be meanly decorated and wondered why they'd bothered at all.
The new meeting house must have struck a note on a hollow bone somewhere, however. Not long after it opened Maraenohonoho announced that they, of Northside, would build a church. It was the first but not the last of many churches that were eventually built on Northside.
Before the sisters died they saw roads go through the area, saw bridges, shops and banks built. Coaches and eventually motor vehicles arrived, and so did farmers. They witnessed the softening of the land.
Northside and Southside children now went to school together, their parents and grandparents met in the stores, the clubs, the pubs and the churches. They came together for tangihanga and when there was a Northside wedding or other event the relatives from Southside always attended, and vice versa.
But there was competitiveness about what one side or the other could provide for such occasions, whether it was fish or pork or produce. One side was always looking for reason to feel high-souled about the other.
According to the Northside story, the reason that it was Ngarua and not Maraenohonoho who reached the canoe first on its final night on water was that Maraenohonoho was preoccupied with God when she was taken advantage of by Ngarua. Maraenohonoho, they said - to whom legend had given exceptional beauty, grace, dignity and goodness - was deep in prayer so her distractions were for high and holy reasons and were therefore understandable. Maraenohonoho began to be seen as the saviour of her people who was second only to the Great Saviour. She was the one who had chosen to remain with her lands, her people, their bones, their ancestral house. The other side of the inlet was another country.
To subsequent Northside generations this all translated into them seeing themselves as cultured, devout, principled, steadfast people who deserved and enjoyed the love of God. They cared for their churches, their families, their houses, and later their vehicles and their lawns. They kept order. They dressed their children properly, cleaned their hair and made sure they attended school. They paid attention to teeth.
They had opinions about their relations on Southside based on what they knew of Ngarua and on what they saw with their own eyes. These Southsiders were rough and ungodly, loudmouthed and without morals. Their houses were falling down, their clothes were shabby, they drove round in clapped out cars and were always accompanied by their mongrel dogs. They were alkies and nohopers, useless hua who sent their kids to school barefoot and let them run wild. They were dog thieves too.
But the Southsiders knew their ancestor Ngarua had just been too smart for Maraenohonoho, who they said was a foolish, lazy woman who had not been engrossed in prayer at all but had gone to sleep at a vital moment. Ngarua, of great patience, intelligence and beauty, had skilfully judged the moment to get up and lead them all off into adventure. That was why they, the Southsiders of today, in their own opinion, were so outgoing, so fun-seeking and resourceful. They were generous, intelligent and unafraid, and their kids didn't need shoes and flash clothes in order to outdo their crybaby, stay-at-home cousins at school. They saw the Northsiders as people who had no idea of how to enjoy life. They were sore losers who lived beyond their means, and even though they were bike-riding, bible-bashing teetotallers, they were known to be light-fingered as well. The number of churches on Northside led to it becoming known as Godside, while the number of dogs on Southside led to it becoming known as Dogside.
From now on the story becomes one-sided. It favours Dogside.
In the story of ancestress Ngarua and the crossing of the inlet, there's mention of a wharenui built by the people as a statement of their authority in this new place. This house, it was believed by its planners and builders, was better in every way than the one left behind in that country on the other side.
It is true at least that this house was larger and stronger.
It was a modest house really, a house of its time. The walls were made of sawn planks lined on the inside with kakaho. Bundles of manuka brush, wired against the outside walls, kept some of the cold out. It had a thatched roof and a packed dirt floor. The few feet of overhang at the front kept most rain from the doorway, though not the rain coming in from the east.
Decoration was minimal. The front overhang had at its apex the carved head of the ancestor, while ancestral arms outstretched at either side, though mostly of plain, painted wood were carved on the ends, that is, on palms and fingers.
From behind the carved head, going through to the back inside wall, the backbone of the ancestor had been painted in thin white lines of kowhaiwhai decoration, as had the ancestral ribs. But apart from this small amount of carving on the exterior and the scroll-work on the beams, the house was unadorned.
Retelling would have it that defections were numerous at the time of The Crossing. In fact those that crossed from north to south numbered about twenty, with as many dogs. Though life was never easy the land and sea were good cupboards.
Thirty years later numbers had grown to about a hundred but lands had dwindled because of government legislation, men had gone to a world war and most had not returned, the country was in severe depression and there was no work. Nor was there finance available for land development and this situation continued until people's remaining land shares began to be consolidated into blocks and partitioned into farm-sized units. All the shareholders were to receive dividends from these blocks, but the land did not provide work for many of them.
The situation worsened over the years and it became impossible for everyone to survive on the land that remained.
People left home to find employment, to go to the next war, or to go into tuberculosis wards and sanatoriums. Those who were left behind scratched for a living, took in the orphans, brought home the sick, disabled and traumatised. People were thin and dazed and their dogs were even worse.
When the situation in the country became a little better some were able to find work scrub cutting or shearing. Some were able to take out mortgages and replace the old Crossing time homes and shelters with timber houses that had corrugated iron roofs, glass in the windows and outdoor washhouses in which home brew rigs were likely to be found.
Those without work made do with patching up the Crossing-day shelters, or they slept with rats and birds in cow sheds and outbuildings - but also in the meeting house which by then had gone beyond people's means and energy to repair.
Numbers decreased even further over the years. Even though there was now a road only a short distance away, and small-time development inland, most of this development passed them by. More and more people left to find work or to join gangs, or because they had been able to do some comparisons and now thought their turangawaewae was a hole, the pits, the backwater of the universe, and should be left to the manuka and the dogs.
Now in 1999 there were not too many more people living on Dogside than in The Crossing days. There were 50 or so people living in 15 of the houses, that is, counting the falling-down one where Rua lived. There were four houses that were unoccupied and though the area of available land had reduced considerably over the years, there were pieces of land either side of the wharenui that were also unoccupied. That was the land that Piiki Chiefy, the rogue husband of Mama, had his eye on.
However, though there were only 50 people now living there, there were those from elsewhere to whom Dogside was turangawaewae, and who had the same rights as those in residence. Dogside was their place to stand, their place to speak and give voice. Shares from land incorporation were owned and dividends due to them just as much as they were to their on-site relatives, and they claimed descendency from Ngarua in the same way as their home relatives did.
Some of these exiles had moved only as far as Turanganui, the near city, while others had gone to the far cities of Whangarei, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, Invercargill and everywhere in between. Others had crossed seas to Australia, Europe, America. Many of the children of these exiles had never seen home.
All of these demographics have been researched by one of the family doing hapu studies at university. There are figures available and all sorts of information, including the fact that dividends from shares in the amalgamated blocks now stood at: one free mutton per person over the age of 55, once a year at Christmas, as long as the person was registered and on hand to collect it.
But never mind that. The study was useful when Wai and her helpers needed to contact the whanau to get them to come to a meeting regarding the new dining room and Y2K activities.
The exiles were always moved by news from home. From a distance their turangawaewae sat warm inside them like carbohydrates and gravy and when the call came the employed of other places began scheming as to who they could get to cover for them at work, or what they could say to bosses that would enable them to lengthen their weekend by at least a day. The unemployed borrowed money or a vehicle, or got out on the road to hitch home. This didn't happen for those from the far south for whom travel to the North Island was too expensive, though they did contemplate it. They did wish.
Of course those who lived in Sydney, Melbourne and beyond couldn't even contemplate, but would've been offended if they hadn't been notified. They were able to send koha - usually one or two hundred dollars. Anything less would've seemed mingy, especially when everyone at home believed they were making it big in these far cities of the world. Along with koha the exiles sent messages that they were saving to come for Christmas, or that they wanted to send nephews and nieces across for a holiday, or that one day they would return for good.
"In a box."
"In a wooden overcoat," was the response to the latter from those at home who didn't believe a word of it, having once too often brought their relatives home from afar, for burial.
Not all this warm spuds and gravy stuff applied to everyone. There were those who had pulled their feet out of home ground and would never plant them there again.
The wharenui where this meeting was to be held is twice the size and more strongly built than that erected by Ngarua and her followers. The old one was eventually pulled down and burned, the only pieces kept for incorporation into the new one being the ancestral head and the arms from the outside, and a short section of the ancestral backbone from the interior.
It is not one of the grand houses of modern times. It has a veranda large enough, with enough depth from front to back to shelter a coffin, and enough space for widows and other mourners to keep the dead company for a few days and nights. There are hooks on high from which to hang the awnings that provide shelter for the mourners during their vigil and to keep the sun from playing havoc with the carefully made-up face of the dead.
Inside, the ancestral backbone and wall poles have been carved and the ancestral ribs painted in kowhaiwhai patterns.
In between the carved poles are plain plank walls, except that in recent years, on the back wall, young artists on a Maccess scheme have painted a mural depicting The Crossing, Te Whakawhititanga a Ngarua. In it you see Ngarua, in full daylight and bright sun, standing large in a great carved war canoe, prow feathers and all, striking downward with her ornamented paddle, the waves mountainous on either side of her. She's dressed in a kind of leather-look battle dress with a piupiu over the top. Her eyes are gold, her face shining and her black hair fills the sky.
Behind her on a far shore is Maraenohonoho on the back of a knock-kneed horse wielding, not a lump of driftwood but something resembling a jousting lance.
Some like the mural.
Others think it modern and hideous and say that ancestress Ngarua has been made to look like a gang member or a bikie. They're awaiting an opportunity to paint it over.
The reason for the piece of tahuhu, or ancestral backbone, being kept from the old house to be put into the new one is because the wharenui is the repository of talk, and rafters are its storage place: Ko nga kupu e iri nei i tara-a-whare mau tonu, mau tonu. It was a way of transferring the old stories into the new house for safe-keeping.
