The music

I used to sing Gregorian chant in our Catholic church in the 1950s, and the above tune seems to be similar to the lamentations we sang in the last week of Lent. Perhaps that is where this was borrowed from. There is the score of different music, presumably the original chant, HERE.

Background story

The author of this lament is thought to be Rangiamoa of Ngati Apakura, one of the principal tribes of Waikato, although she may have borrowed the last ten lines from an earlier chant.

The Ngati Apakura people used to live at Rangiaowhia, near present-day Te Awamutu, and in the district extending to the Waipa River in the direction of Pirongia.

In the 'golden age' of the 1850s, before the British invasion, this thriving agricultural town was the "food bowl" of the Waikato. producing wheat, maize and potatoes for the Auckland market. It also had an Anglican church, a Catholic Church, flour mills, stores, schools, racecourse, and great groves of fruit trees.

Rangiaowhia was attacked in February 1854 during the Waikato War (Cowan), although it was designated as a safe area for non-combatants, and undefended. After a brief battle, large amounts of food supplies were captured.

Then after the nearby Battle of Orakau two months later, Ngati Apakura were thrust out of their homes, and their lands were confiscated.

A section of Ngati Apakura then travelled south toward Taupo.

In what is now Pureora Forest Park, Te Wano asked his people to climb with him to the top of Titi-rau-penga mountain (an eroded volcanic plug) so that he could gaze once more upon his former home. But he died at the summit, and was laid to rest in a cave there.

The others travelled on south to Lake Taupo, settling at Waihi and Tokaanu on the southern shores of the lake. There they were struck down by an epidemic, and most of them died.

In lamenting the death of her cousin, Rangiamoa was mourning the fate of all her people.

James Cowan writes....

Rangiaowhia was a garden of fruit and root crops. On its slopes were groves of peaches, almonds, apples, quinces, and cherries; grape-vines climbed the trees and the thatched raupo houses. Potatoes, kumara, maize, melons, pumpkins, and vegetable-marrows were grown plentifully. Good crops of wheat were grown on the northward sloping ground between the crest of Karaponia Hill (California Hill) and the groves of Orakau and Te Kawakawa.

"Ah," said old Tu Takerei, who was born in nearby Orakau, "it was indeed a beautiful and fruitful place before the war. The food we grew was good and abundant, and the people were strong and healthy - there was no disease among them; those were the days of peace, when men and women died only of extreme old age." ...MORE

In 1855 the Waikato tribes produced 5,500 tons of wheat and 600 tons of potatoes. This was valued at £105,472.

Fully-laden canoes shipped the produce down the Waipa river and then down the Waikato river to its Awaroa tributary and then up this to a portage near Waiuku. The canoes were dragged across this portage to the Manukau Harbour, re-loaded and then paddled across to Onehunga. The last stage of the journey was made on foot - long lines of men and women, burdened with the kits, trekked their produce along the Manukau road to Auckland.

Maori vendors, quickly adopting European practices, auctioned their produce there. Some Auckland merchants who bought this produce pioneered an export trade to the goldfields in California and Australia.

The relationship appeared to be mutually beneficial, but the racial conflict which led to the wars of the 1860s was mainly economic in origin, a direct result of the expansion of the European economy centred on Auckland.

Auckland farmers resented Maori competition because Maori were undercutting them in the market. The Maori tribes, while growing European crops and using European equipment, retained their traditional communal methods of organised work. This was the secret of their success, enabling them to produce crops at lower costs than the European farm system with profit-taking landowners and non-labouring supervisors taking 80% of the returns.

So European farmers changed over to sheep and cattle farming, while Maori farmers stuck to growing crops. The growth of two different styles of farming led to numerous petty squabbles. Maori pigs rooted in European pastures and European cattle destroyed Maori crops. European merchants went in for trading arms and alcohol, and Maori people got into debt. The merchants wanted land to pay the debts.