VALUABLE ASSENT PATAKA.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 94, 10 June 1911, Page 7

VALUABLE ASSENT PATAKA.

FOR W ELL i: N G TON A i USEUM. Tho Dominion Museum in Wellington Inis at last been foitunate onougn to obtain a spoeinion of a pataka,.or .-.torehouso, in the linest style of old .laori caiving. This is tno pataka Jill loti Rnkohiim, which formerly stood ■ a tno on at Maketu, Hay ol Plenty a district noted for line Maori carving. louts of it arc considetahly delayed from exposure, but after some .'i’gi.t ivK'ioraiiou it will lie an extremely line exhibit. It is about the •mt-carved pataka known to exist in i native settlement. 'I lk-. history of this valuable relic, according to tho old chief To Oiniii, Mihi Ki Ratanna, is as follows: —In IS2-.1 Hongi Hika, the redoubtable Ngapuiti warrior, overran the Hay of Plenty district, and in March of that "'itr ho captured Mokoiii Island, m Rotorua Lake, slaughtering and enslaving a great number of the Arawa liibe. Hongi took his war canoes into the Waini Estuary, near Maketu, and yip tho Rongakawa Stream to the nearest point on Rotoolru Lake, drawing them some miles to that lake, uul them through tho Tahuna forest, ,ry what is now known as Hongi’s ..’•ark, to Untoiti Lake, and so'to Jioorna and Mokoia. On Lie way inland, in endeavouring to turn a sharp jend in the Rongakawa Stream, one if the canoes was seriously damaged, md had to lie abandoned. It was afterwards partly destroyed by lire. In S3i),/ the Arawa tribe pennanently their ancestral home at Maketu, and one of their hapns, Ngaliwtiakahemo, under Te Metra and itlior duel's, went and fetched the dabs of tiio abandoned canoe, and built this pataka, which was named Pukehina, after their famous pa near Otamarakau. It was the only pataka erected in Maketu until Te Pokiha Taranui built the famous one now in the Auckland Museum.

When the Pukehina pataka was moved in 1902, to make room for the new meeting-house called To Awhe, the paapae, or long board, which crosses tue front, was abandoned, as it had become too rotten for rebuilding, and it will have to be replaced. Hanfilton) is of opinion that it can be rocarved from the photographs he lias a the pataka as it existed in its per* feet state many years ago. Unfortunately (says a Wellington paper), it is not likely that the pataka will bo visible to the public for some time, at any rate, as there is no space in the present museum building to erect it. The valuable national collections stored there have long outgrown the limited accommodation available* and Mr. Hamilton greatly "egrets that he is unable to put the Pukehina pataka on exhibition. It will remain stacked in parts, but a photograph of it hangs in the museum, and other photographs of details are being prepared. Mr. Hamilton has had ids eye upon this valuable and ancient specimen of Maori art for many years, and its final acquisition is the outcome of a good deal of forethought and effort.