36 



The Ancient Haivaiian House. 



carved, and adorned with bunches of pigeon feathers ; the facings of the door-posts and window are 

 similarly ornamented ; the building is covered externally with raupo ( Typlia angustifolia) or sedge, 

 and roofed with the same, then with grass or a similar substance, to a considerable thickness ; earth 

 is generally heaped up against the sides, so as almost to reach the eaves. 



At sunset, a fire is made in the house, which is allowed to burn clear for some time, and fill 

 the little pit with embers, when it ceases to smoke the occupants enter ; the door and window being 

 closed, the heat soon becomes almost as great as that 

 of an oven, and of such a stifling nature, from the 

 fumes of the charcoal, that few Europeans can bear it, 

 yet frequently twenty, thirty, or more natives will 

 sleep in this place huddled together, and almost in a 



state of nudity ; sometimes even they suffer, from the \ \- i 



charcoal being too powerful; this was formerly at- ■'^— =.i^ 



tributed to the visits of the pati4paiarehe (fairies). 



f^'-i 



'M-f 



To the description of Maori dwellings 

 must be added some account of their pataka 

 or storehouse, a small struAure on which the 

 carver used all his art and industrj'. Being 

 comparativel}' portable these pataka of the 

 old Maori have mostly been gathered, either 

 as a whole or in part, into museums and no 

 longer add to the picturesque value of a native 

 village. This small house, for it was merel}' 

 a reduced model of the whare puni, was raised 

 from the ground on one or more posts, and its 

 general appearance may be understood by 

 reference to Fig. 29, from a photograph of the 

 beautiful specimen preserved in the Auckland 

 Museum. When very small and raised high 

 on a single post, the pataka resembled a bird- 

 house and served as the depositary of a chief's 

 bones which were in due time exhtimed, 

 cleaned and thus stored. 



The gable end of a pataka which was 

 perforated by the very small entrance'* was composed of five or seven thick planks 

 usually of totara wood, on which were carved gods or deified ancestors of the owner, 

 the figtire over the door in the centre (Fig. 33) representing the chief ancestor, and 

 the pantheon served to protect (under the tapu system) all treasures stored within, 



°' Two of these pataka fronts in the Bishop Museum have doors averaging 22X 17 inches. As they were reached 

 by a ladder, it must have been very awkward to take bulky articles out. In some cases these pataka were built in 

 shallow lakes and reached by boats. 



[220J 



KIG. 28. 



GROUP OF GABLE IMAGES IN THE 

 BISHOP MUSEUM. 



