A MAORI RELIC.

Waikato Independent, Volume XII, Issue 1019, 1 June 1911, Page 5

A MAORI RELIC.

\n ancient pataka qr Maori storebouse has just been secured for ' the Wellington Museum. The history of this valuable relic is as follows--In 1823, Hongi Hika, the redoubtable Ngapuhi warrior, over-ran the Bay of Plenty district, and in March of that year he captured Mokoia Island, in Kotorua lake, slaughtering and enslaving a great number of the Arawa !f' H °ti ook his war canoes into the Waihi Estuary, near .Maketu, and up the Pongakawe Stream to the nearest point on Rotoehu Lake, drawing them some miles to that lake, and then through the Tahuna Forest, bv what is known as Hongi's track, to Rotoiti Lake, and so to RotoroUa and Mokoia. On the way inland, in endeavoring to turn a sharp bend in the Pongakawa Stream, one of the canoes was seriously damaged, and had to be abandoned It was afterwards partly destroyed by fire. In 1839, the tribe Arawa permanently leoccupied their ancestral home at Maketu, and one of their hapus, Ngatiwhakahemo under fl ?? 8 5l and othef chiefs went and fetched the slabs of the abandoned canoe, and built this pataka, which was named Pukehina. after their famous pa-near Otamarakka. It was the only pataka erected in Maketu until xe Pokiha Taranui built the famous one now in Auckland Museum.