Aniu-waru
Aniwa-niwa
Niwa-reka
Niwa-ru
Niwham
Pakawai
Puniu
Punui
Punui-o-Rata
Riwaru
Riwham
Tuirangi
These waka are all named as belonging to the well-known Rata. According to one version, Rata built his waka because his grand father Tawhaki had been killed by Matuku-tangotango and Pou-a-hao-kai, and he was desperate to voyage to their land and avenge Tawhaki’s death. Rata, determined to build a voyaging waka, entered the sacred domain of Tane-Mahuta to cut down a massive tree. He was so impatient that he neglected the appropriate incantations and sacred rites before felling one of Tane’s trees. That night, as Rata slept, Tane was so furious at this unimaginable insult that he ordered the creatures of the forest to stand the tree once again in its former magnificence among the other trees.
In the morning, when Rata returned to the site of the tree he had laboured over for so long the previous day, he found to his astonishment that it was standing as if no adze had ever touched it. Enraged that all his work had been undone, he immediately began to cut at the tree with his adze. After a second long day of toil, the great tree again lay on the forest floor and once again Rata returned to his whare to rest and sleep. The next morning he returned to his work site yet again only to see the massive tree standing proud as if it had not been touched in a thousand years.
Once again he laboured throughout the day to prepare the tree he was so desperate to have, and as he laboured at his work, he devised a plan to discover who had been interfering with the tree each night. As night fell he left the site as usual, but instead of returning to his whare to sleep, he hid himself in the nearby bush, waiting eagerly. Soon after his departure the insects and birds returned to piece together the many woodchips that littered the surrounding forest floor. Rata confronted the workers of Tane and demanded an explanation as to why they were repeatedly disrupting his efforts to build a waka. The birds and insects advised him of his gross insult to Tane-Mahuta and of the order to re-erect the tree each day. Rata, totally shamed by his actions, returned to his village to learn the appropriate incantations and rituals. In due course he returned to the great tree and after completing the correct ceremony cut down the giant tree easily. That night, as Rata lay sleeping, Tane’s creatures constructed a great voyaging waka for him, which he named Aniu-waru.
A further note in Maori Art says that Rata’s waka had three names, marking three stages in the waka’s contruction: Riwharu, Tuirangi and Pakawai, respectively.
The Ancient History of the Maori, Vol. 1, p. 77.
The Ancient History of the Maori, Vol. 3, p. 3.
JPS, Vol. 7, p. 39.
Maori Art, p. 29.
Nga Moteatea, Vol. 3, p. 441.
Treasury of Maori Folklore, p. 180.