Hoe-o-Tainui _______________________________ Named after canoe paddle of 1350,
Settlement’s
romantic history. What’s in a name? The searcher for the origin of placenames finds that there is a great deal. The name of one’s hometown may conceal a powerful story of tragedy, romance, comedy or drama. Our town has a romantic name Hoe-o-Tainui and it is a romantic story. Hoe-o-Tainui means “The Paddle of the Tainui”. The Tainui was the great ocean-going canoe, which brought the Waikato Maoris from distant Hawaiki in about 1350. It now lies turned to stone on the foreshore at Kawhia. It is a long way from Kawhia to Hoe-o-Tainui on the Ohinewai Morrinsville Road. The name savours of the sea but few places are further from it. Hoe-o-Tainui is the last place where one would expect to find a paddle. Yet some people say the paddle of the Tainui canoe once rested here. There are even those living who claim to have seen it on the banks of the Mangawhara Stream, turned to stone like its parent craft. However, none seems to have been able to find again its secret resting-place. If the story is true, how did the paddle get to Hoe-o-Tainui? The legend says the crew of the Tainui brought it here when they explored the country inland from Maketu and hid it on the banks of the Mangawhara. Other Maoris contradict this story and say that the place got its name from its position on the flanks of the Tainui tribal territory. The Waikato Maoris refer to Orakei, on the Auckland Foreshore, as the prow of the Tainui canoe and Kawhia as the stern post in defining the extremities of their tribal domain. Geographically, Hoe-o-Tainui could conceivably be “the paddle of the Tainui”. I accepted this version as being feasible until I stumbled over some old Land Court minute books in the offices of the Maori Affairs Department. There I found this story since corroborated by experts. When the Tainui canoe reached the mouth of the Piako River the paddles tested the depth of the water with a paddle. The paddle stuck fast in the mud. They tried to extract it but the canoe drifted away. They accepted this as a sign that they should claim the territory inland, which they did from the mouth of the Piako to Te Aroha, Morrinsville and Ngaruawahia. They named it after the famous paddle, Hoe-o-Tainui, and the name has been preserved in an obscure settlement on a lonely country road. E.C.
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