The Throne of Patuki

Te Ao Hou, September 1965, Page 50

The Throne of Patuki Benmore itself, the great mountain some miles away from the dam, is known to the Maori as Te Taumata o Patuki. The word ‘taumata’ usually means ‘summit’; in this case the expression can be translated as ‘the Throne of Patuki’. I have been told by the elders that Patuki was a chief whose stronghold was Raupuke Island in Foveaux Strait. He was the grandfather of the important chief Tuhawaiki, known to the Pakeha whalers as Bloody Jack. Behind Lake Ohou are the mountains now known as the Ben Ohau Range. Their old name was Maukatua, or ‘the foremost range of mountains’ (the word mauka is the South Island equivalent of maunga). Alongside them, at the headwaters of Lake Ohou and between the Dobson and Hopkins valleys, is a smaller range of mountains formerly known as Te Taremauka a te Atua, though a more recent Maori word for them is Maumau. Te Taremauka a te Atua means ‘the raised-up mountains of the god’.