Pataka - a Maori storehouse

This posting is in response to a photo posted by teepe of a larder on a pole used as a form of food storage by the Sami people of Sweden. There is a similarity to a building used by the Maori people here in days gone by.

In pre European times the Maori people used a building up on poles to store their food. The idea of course was to keep it clear of rodents, dogs etc. Sometimes there was just one pole, sometimes several.

Often the storehouses were elaborately carved.

A google search revealed this article written in 1933 about similarities of the pataka and Alaskan buildings.

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This description and observation is taken from 'The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 8, Issue 4 (August 1, 1933)'


The Pataka, Maori and Alaskan.

'There are some curious resemblances between two far-severed races, the Maori and the Indians of the coast of Alaska, in respect of certain branches of material culture. The dug-out canoe, carved from a single log, is common to both peoples; there is a close likeness between the two.

The Alaskan totem pole, with its carved figures, is much the same as the tall tiki post seen in olden Maori villages, though the style of carving is different. Most of these carved posts in both countries have been gathered into museums.

Another close likeness between the structures of these races separated by the whole breadth of the Pacific Ocean is seen in the pataka or food storehouse of the Maori and the high-legged food cache seen on the Alaskan coast and along the great Yukon River. Both are built on exactly the same principle, a stilt platform-house, high above the ground, for protection from marauding animals. There is just now before me an American geographical magazine with an article on the Yukon containing a photograph of a log food cache which but for the niched-log manner of construction might stand for the Maori pataka or whata. The illustration shows a structure raised above the ground about seven feet on round posts, on the upper parts of which tin is nailed to prevent wild animals from climbing up and gnawing through the floor to get at the dried fish and other supplies stored in the small house. Exactly the same precaution is taken by the Maori and the Pakeha bushman and surveyor against rats.

The backblocks settler in New Zealand found the pataka of the Maori an excellent means of keeping his food supplies dry and safe from the rats; and so do the white traders and settlers along the Yukon.

The Maori often expended a great deal of artistic decoration on his pataka.'