220: The Ngati Mamoe short-Patu

Before we get to this unusual item, lets check on the origins of the Kati Mamoe. The last of them existed in Murihiku where some odd patu types are found, not at all like the so called 'fleet Maori' patus'. They were regarded as a Melanesian sub-culture when first sighted because their looks are different to the Polynesian, with wide noses and frizzy hair. Old photos prove this. Most of that is now bred out with time and mixes of races. It was strong in Tuhoe and was often also notable in long headedness much like the Fijians. Most of this has now been explained away and now written out of the textbooks. But things remain that do not fit the Polynesian position, evidenced in artifacts which remain unchanged from the time they were made. Down south they are regarded as that last remnant of those called the Hawea. These fled before Maori who hunted down and eliminated most of them. Not sure why but we have our suspicions. The below item was found near Wellington where the Mamoe lived before they were chased across the straight 100 years or so before the same happened to Kai Tahu.

There was already found, a Patu of unusual form. But around 1932 a 2nd unclassified type of patu occurring within the Wellington region was found. It was not, as the first specimen may have been regarded, merely a poorly executed artefact of no particular aesthetic or suggestive cultural origin (see illustration at the bottom of this post). This one was entirely different. There is also a similar one fou din Murihiku... where the last of the Ngati Mamoe existed, this proves it's not a local but a tribal design.

It was a mile or two from Opiki where this second patu was ploughed up. This second “patu of thick squat form” was ploughed up on the left-bank alluvial flats of the lower course of the Manawatu River at a spot on or near the former north-east border of the great Makurerua Swamp, about half-way between Opiki and Linton, and half a mile south of Roto-ngarara Lagoon. A large chip, weighing perhaps two ounces, was knocked off one side of the blade of the weapon by being struck by the steel share of the plough, and this fragment was not recovered; without it the patu weighs 2 lb. 8¼ oz.

The peculiar form and style of the Makurerua-Linton patu seemed similar in its thick clumsy character of the the previous one found in 1944 at the so-called “Mangaroa pa-mound”, a pre-Muaupoko swamp-girt built-up site on the northern shore of Lake Horowhenua. At that time this squat heavy rather clumsy form with its extraordinarily thick and short grip, from “Mangaroa” site was deemed a poorly fashioned inexpert version of a Fleet-Maori thrusting club of the flat-bladed type. This appraisal can now be shown to be a poor appreciation of its true quality and provenance.

The advent of a second example, found earlier but not revealed until after 1944, of an identical weapon of closely similar form, size, and type—in fact of such self-same character as to establish a definite type of some variant sub-culture origin—puts an entirely different evidential value and ethnological appraisal on this previous unrecognized and unidentified form. A process of elimination of possible sources of culture origin for this form of patu (based on the evidence it furnishes of style and typology generally) appears to be in our present state of knowledge, the best means of reaching some definite and useful conclusion.

On the evidence of the few known Waitaha patu-type artefacts—two from Horowhenua and one from Southland, the sum total as yet available—the two thick squat patu under discussion cannot be attributed to the ancient Waitaha Culture of the New Zealand area. The Waitaha patu-like types (as shown below in the illustration - Fig. 1, a, b, c), are noted for their very elongated form, slender and light, being fashioned in bone (whalebone). Functioning as batons of authority, not as weapons, they are in all respects the antithesis of the “Mangaroa” and the Makurerua-Linton patu (Fig. 4, 5). This fundamental dissimilarity rules out a Waitaha origin for these two patu.

The 'fleet-Maori' hand clubs (mere type-form) have a certain slight similarity to the squat type under consideration, but are fashioned (whether in nephrite (mere), stone (onewa), or bone (patu paraoa)) on much more graceful and slender lines—longer and much slimmer handgrips, thinner blades, and of relatively greatly extended proportions. Consequently they were used as thrusting weapons only, whereas the short, heavy, and massive proportions of the patu now recorded make it entirely suitable and effective for a lateral slashing blow, and it was probably so used.

There remains the Ngati Mamoe culture, known in New Zealand from adze-forms of non-Eastern Polynesian types, and a few (but emphatic and unequivocal) other Western Polynesian and Melanesoid objects—artifacts, pou, menhir type markers, spirals etc - and matching practises and customs, many of which have long created considerable controversy as to their precise origin. These Melanesoid Polynesian artefact types, customs, practices, and much similar evidence continue to come to hand or be revealed by finds and archaeological research.