Moriori
Encyclopedia
Moriori are the indigenous people of the Chatham Islands
(Rekohu in Moriori
, Wharekauri in Māori
), east of the New Zealand
archipelago
in the Pacific Ocean
. These people lived by a code of non-violence and passive resistance (see Nunuku-whenua
), which led to their near-extinction at the hands of Taranaki Māori invaders in the 1830s.
During the early 20th century it was commonly believed that the Moriori were pre-Māori settlers of New Zealand
, linguistically and genetically different from the Māori, and possibly Melanesian. This story, incorporated into Stephenson Percy Smith
's "Great Fleet" hypothesis, was widely believed during the early 20th century. However the hypothesis was not always accepted, see 1904 paper by A. Shand on The Early History of the Morioris.
By the late 20th century the hypothesis that the Moriori were different from the Māori had fallen out of favour amongst archeologists, who believed that the Moriori were Maori who settled on the Chatham Islands in the 16th century. The earlier hypothesis was discredited in the 1960s and 1970s.
. They developed a distinct Moriori culture in the Chatham Islands as they adapted to local conditions. Although speculation once suggested that they settled the Chatham Islands directly from the tropical Polynesian islands, or even that they were Melanesian in origin, current research indicates that ancestral Moriori were Māori Polynesians who emigrated to the Chatham Islands from New Zealand before 1500.
Evidence supporting this theory comes from the characteristics that the Moriori language
has in common with the dialect of Māori spoken by the Ngāi Tahu
tribe of the South Island
, and comparisons of the genealogies of Moriori ("hokopapa") and Māori ("whakapapa
"). Prevailing wind patterns in the southern Pacific add to the speculation that the Chatham Islands were the last part of the Pacific to be settled during the period of Polynesian discovery and colonisation. The word Moriori derives from Proto-Polynesian *ma(a)qoli, which has the reconstructed meaning "true, real, genuine". It is cognate
with the Maori language
word Māori and likely also had the meaning "(ordinary) people".
The earliest indication of human occupation of the Chathams, inferred from midden
s exposed due to erosion of sand dunes, has been established as 450 years BP.
lifestyle. Food was almost entirely marine-sourced - protein and fat from fish, fur seals and the fatty young of sea birds. The islands supported about 2000 people.
Lacking resources of cultural significance such as greenstone and plentiful timber, they found outlets for their ritual needs in the carving of dendroglyph
s (incisions into tree trunks, called rakau momori). Some of these carvings are protected by the J M Barker (Hapupu) National Historic Reserve
.
As a small and precarious population, Moriori embraced a pacifist
culture
that rigidly avoided warfare, substituting it with dispute resolution in the form of ritual
fighting and conciliation
. The ban on warfare and cannibalism is attributed to their ancestor Nunuku-whenua
.
This enabled the Moriori to preserve what limited resources they had in their harsh climate, avoiding waste through warfare, such as may have led to catastrophic habitat destruction and population decline on Easter Island
. However, when considered as a moral imperative rather than a pragmatic response to circumstances, it also led to their later near-destruction at the hands of invading North Island Māori.
, naming them after his ship, HMS Chatham
. Sealers
and whalers
soon made the islands a centre of their activities, competing for resources with the native population. Between 10% and 20% of Moriori soon died from imported diseases.
In 1835 some Ngāti Mutunga
and Ngāti Tama people, Māori from the Taranaki region of the North Island
of New Zealand invaded the Chathams. On 19 November 1835, the Rodney, a chartered European ship, arrived carrying 500 Maori armed with guns, clubs and axes, followed by another ship with 400 more Maori on 5 December 1835. They proceeded to enslave some Moriori and kill and cannibalise
others. "Parties of warriors armed with muskets, clubs and tomahawks, led by their chiefs, walked through Moriori tribal territories and settlements without warning, permission or greeting. If the districts were wanted by the invaders, they curtly informed the inhabitants that their land had been taken and the Moriori living there were now vassals."
A council of Moriori elders was convened at the settlement called Te Awapatiki. Despite knowing of the Māori predilection for killing and eating the conquered, and despite the admonition by some of the elder chiefs that the principle of Nunuku was not appropriate now, two chiefs — Tapata and Torea — declared that "the law of Nunuku was not a strategy for survival, to be varied as conditions changed; it was a moral imperative." A Moriori survivor recalled : "[The Maori] commenced to kill us like sheep.... [We] were terrified, fled to the bush, concealed ourselves in holes underground, and in any place to escape our enemies. It was of no avail; we were discovered and killed - men, women and children indiscriminately." A Maori conqueror explained, "We took possession... in accordance with our customs and we caught all the people. Not one escaped....."
After the invasion, Moriori were forbidden to marry Moriori, or to have children with each other. All became slaves of the Ngati Tama and Ngati Mutunga invaders. Many died from despair. Many Moriori women had children by their Maori masters. A small number of Moriori women eventually married either Maori or European men. Some were taken from the Chathams and never returned. Only 101 Moriori out of a population of about 2,000 were left alive by 1862 (Kopel et al., 2003). Although the last Moriori of unmixed ancestry, Tommy Solomon
, died in 1933 there are several thousand mixed ancestry Moriori alive today.
An all-male group of German Moravian missionaries arrived in 1843. When a group of women were sent out to join them three years later, several marriages ensued; a few members of the present-day population can trace their ancestry back to those missionary families.
on the Chathams.
Some Moriori descendants have made claims against the New Zealand government through the Waitangi Tribunal
, a commission of inquiry charged with making recommendations on claims brought by Māori relating to actions or omissions of the Crown
in the period since 1840, which breach the promises made in the Treaty of Waitangi
.
and Elsdon Best
, there grew theories that the Māori had displaced a more primitive pre-Māori population of Moriori (sometimes described as a small-statured, dark-skinned race of possible Melanesia
n origin), in mainland New Zealand - and that the Chatham Island Moriori were the last remnant of this earlier race. Being based on the work of two widely respected experts, these theories also had the advantage - from a European settler view - of presenting a neat progression of waves of migration and conquest by increasingly more civilised and technically able peoples, and therefore justifying racist
stereotyping
and colonisation
by cultural "superiors". These theories were widely published in the early twentieth century, and crucially, this story was promoted in a series of three articles in the School Journal of 1916, and the 1934 A. W. Reed's schoolbook The Coming of the Maori to Ao-tea-roa —and therefore became familiar to generations of schoolchildren. Notably, the concept also undermines notions of the Māori as the indigenous people of New Zealand, by portraying them as conquerors.
A number of historians, anthropologists and ethnologists, however, examined and rejected the hypothesis of a racially distinct pre-Maori Moriori people. Among them, anthropologist H.D. Skinner in 1923, ethnologist Roger Duff in the 1940s, and historian and ethnographer Arthur Thomson in 1959, as did Michael King
's Moriori: A People Rediscovered in 2000 and James Belich
and K.R. Howe in Te Ara.
Chatham Islands
The Chatham Islands are an archipelago and New Zealand territory in the Pacific Ocean consisting of about ten islands within a radius, the largest of which are Chatham Island and Pitt Island. Their name in the indigenous language, Moriori, means Misty Sun...
(Rekohu in Moriori
Moriori language
Moriori is an extinct Malayo-Polynesian language most closely related to New Zealand Māori. It is the native language of the Moriori, the indigenous people of the Chatham Islands , which are east of New Zealand and under its sovereignty....
, Wharekauri in Māori
Maori language
Māori or te reo Māori , commonly te reo , is the language of the indigenous population of New Zealand, the Māori. It has the status of an official language in New Zealand...
), east of the New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
archipelago
Archipelago
An archipelago , sometimes called an island group, is a chain or cluster of islands. The word archipelago is derived from the Greek ἄρχι- – arkhi- and πέλαγος – pélagos through the Italian arcipelago...
in the Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
. These people lived by a code of non-violence and passive resistance (see Nunuku-whenua
Nunuku-whenua
Nunuku-whenua was a Moriori chief and famous sixteenth century pacifist.The Moriori are a Polynesian people who settled in the then-uninhabited Chatham Islands around the year 1500...
), which led to their near-extinction at the hands of Taranaki Māori invaders in the 1830s.
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, linguistically and genetically different from the Māori, and possibly Melanesian. This story, incorporated into Stephenson Percy Smith
Stephenson Percy Smith
Stephenson Percy Smith was a New Zealand ethnologist and surveyor. He founded The Polynesian Society.-Early life and career as a surveyor :...
's "Great Fleet" hypothesis, was widely believed during the early 20th century. However the hypothesis was not always accepted, see 1904 paper by A. Shand on The Early History of the Morioris.
By the late 20th century the hypothesis that the Moriori were different from the Māori had fallen out of favour amongst archeologists, who believed that the Moriori were Maori who settled on the Chatham Islands in the 16th century. The earlier hypothesis was discredited in the 1960s and 1970s.
Origin
The Moriori are culturally PolynesianPolynesian culture
Polynesian culture refers to the indigenous peoples' culture of Polynesia who share common traits in language, customs and society. Chronologically, the development of Polynesian culture can be divided into four different historical eras:...
. They developed a distinct Moriori culture in the Chatham Islands as they adapted to local conditions. Although speculation once suggested that they settled the Chatham Islands directly from the tropical Polynesian islands, or even that they were Melanesian in origin, current research indicates that ancestral Moriori were Māori Polynesians who emigrated to the Chatham Islands from New Zealand before 1500.
Evidence supporting this theory comes from the characteristics that the Moriori language
Moriori language
Moriori is an extinct Malayo-Polynesian language most closely related to New Zealand Māori. It is the native language of the Moriori, the indigenous people of the Chatham Islands , which are east of New Zealand and under its sovereignty....
has in common with the dialect of Māori spoken by the Ngāi Tahu
Ngāi Tahu
Ngāi Tahu, or Kāi Tahu, is the principal Māori iwi of the southern region of New Zealand, with the tribal authority, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, being based in Christchurch and Invercargill. The iwi combines three groups, Kāi Tahu itself, and Waitaha and Kāti Mamoe who lived in the South Island prior...
tribe of the South Island
South Island
The South Island is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand, the other being the more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman Sea, to the south and east by the Pacific Ocean...
, and comparisons of the genealogies of Moriori ("hokopapa") and Māori ("whakapapa
Whakapapa
Whakapapa , or genealogy, is a fundamental principle that permeates the whole of Māori culture. However, it is more than just a genealogical 'device'...
"). Prevailing wind patterns in the southern Pacific add to the speculation that the Chatham Islands were the last part of the Pacific to be settled during the period of Polynesian discovery and colonisation. The word Moriori derives from Proto-Polynesian *ma(a)qoli, which has the reconstructed meaning "true, real, genuine". It is cognate
Cognate
In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
with the Maori language
Maori language
Māori or te reo Māori , commonly te reo , is the language of the indigenous population of New Zealand, the Māori. It has the status of an official language in New Zealand...
word Māori and likely also had the meaning "(ordinary) people".
The earliest indication of human occupation of the Chathams, inferred from midden
Midden
A midden, is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, vermin, shells, sherds, lithics , and other artifacts and ecofacts associated with past human occupation...
s exposed due to erosion of sand dunes, has been established as 450 years BP.
Adapting to local conditions
The Chathams are colder and less hospitable than the land the original settlers had left behind, and although abundant in resources, these were different from those available where they had come from. The Chathams proved unsuitable for the cultivation of most crops known to Polynesians, and the Moriori adopted a hunter-gathererHunter-gatherer
A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...
lifestyle. Food was almost entirely marine-sourced - protein and fat from fish, fur seals and the fatty young of sea birds. The islands supported about 2000 people.
Dendroglyph
In the Chatham Islands the indigenous Moriori people practiced the art of momori rakau as a ritual possibly associated with death or remembrance. Many scholars over the years have tried to penetrate the reasons behind these incisions into the trunks of the kopi trees and none have come up with a...
s (incisions into tree trunks, called rakau momori). Some of these carvings are protected by the J M Barker (Hapupu) National Historic Reserve
JM Barker (Hapupu) Historic Reserve
JM Barker National Historic Reserve is 33 hectares of kopi forest which was created to protect Moriori tree carvings called momori-rakau ....
.
As a small and precarious population, Moriori embraced a pacifist
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
that rigidly avoided warfare, substituting it with dispute resolution in the form of ritual
Ritual
A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value. It may be prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers....
fighting and conciliation
Conciliation
Conciliation is an alternative dispute resolution process whereby the parties to a dispute agree to utilize the services of a conciliator, who then meets with the parties separately in an attempt to resolve their differences...
. The ban on warfare and cannibalism is attributed to their ancestor Nunuku-whenua
Nunuku-whenua
Nunuku-whenua was a Moriori chief and famous sixteenth century pacifist.The Moriori are a Polynesian people who settled in the then-uninhabited Chatham Islands around the year 1500...
.
This enabled the Moriori to preserve what limited resources they had in their harsh climate, avoiding waste through warfare, such as may have led to catastrophic habitat destruction and population decline on Easter Island
Easter Island
Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people...
. However, when considered as a moral imperative rather than a pragmatic response to circumstances, it also led to their later near-destruction at the hands of invading North Island Māori.
European contact and invasion by Taranaki Māori
William R. Broughton landed on 29 November 1791, and claimed possession of the islands for Great BritainGreat Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
, naming them after his ship, HMS Chatham
HMS Chatham (1788)
HMS Chatham was a Royal Navy survey brig that accompanied HMS Discovery on George Vancouver's exploration of the west coast of North America in his 1791–1795 expedition. Chatham was built by King, of Dover and launched in early 1788...
. Sealers
Seal hunting
Seal hunting, or sealing, is the personal or commercial hunting of seals. The hunt is currently practiced in five countries: Canada, where most of the world's seal hunting takes place, Namibia, the Danish region of Greenland, Norway and Russia...
and whalers
Whaling
Whaling is the hunting of whales mainly for meat and oil. Its earliest forms date to at least 3000 BC. Various coastal communities have long histories of sustenance whaling and harvesting beached whales...
soon made the islands a centre of their activities, competing for resources with the native population. Between 10% and 20% of Moriori soon died from imported diseases.
In 1835 some Ngāti Mutunga
Ngati Mutunga
Ngāti Mutunga is a Māori iwi of New Zealand. Their tribal lands are in north Taranaki, with the principal marae being at Urenui.Prominent leader and anthropologist Te Rangi Hīroa was of Ngāti Mutunga descent.-External links:*...
and Ngāti Tama people, Māori from the Taranaki region of the North Island
North Island
The North Island is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, separated from the much less populous South Island by Cook Strait. The island is in area, making it the world's 14th-largest island...
of New Zealand invaded the Chathams. On 19 November 1835, the Rodney, a chartered European ship, arrived carrying 500 Maori armed with guns, clubs and axes, followed by another ship with 400 more Maori on 5 December 1835. They proceeded to enslave some Moriori and kill and cannibalise
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
others. "Parties of warriors armed with muskets, clubs and tomahawks, led by their chiefs, walked through Moriori tribal territories and settlements without warning, permission or greeting. If the districts were wanted by the invaders, they curtly informed the inhabitants that their land had been taken and the Moriori living there were now vassals."
A council of Moriori elders was convened at the settlement called Te Awapatiki. Despite knowing of the Māori predilection for killing and eating the conquered, and despite the admonition by some of the elder chiefs that the principle of Nunuku was not appropriate now, two chiefs — Tapata and Torea — declared that "the law of Nunuku was not a strategy for survival, to be varied as conditions changed; it was a moral imperative." A Moriori survivor recalled : "[The Maori] commenced to kill us like sheep.... [We] were terrified, fled to the bush, concealed ourselves in holes underground, and in any place to escape our enemies. It was of no avail; we were discovered and killed - men, women and children indiscriminately." A Maori conqueror explained, "We took possession... in accordance with our customs and we caught all the people. Not one escaped....."
After the invasion, Moriori were forbidden to marry Moriori, or to have children with each other. All became slaves of the Ngati Tama and Ngati Mutunga invaders. Many died from despair. Many Moriori women had children by their Maori masters. A small number of Moriori women eventually married either Maori or European men. Some were taken from the Chathams and never returned. Only 101 Moriori out of a population of about 2,000 were left alive by 1862 (Kopel et al., 2003). Although the last Moriori of unmixed ancestry, Tommy Solomon
Tommy Solomon
Tame Horomona Rehe, also known by the anglicised name Tommy Solomon, is believed by most to have been the last full-blooded Moriori. Moriori were the indigenous people of the Chatham Islands ....
, died in 1933 there are several thousand mixed ancestry Moriori alive today.
An all-male group of German Moravian missionaries arrived in 1843. When a group of women were sent out to join them three years later, several marriages ensued; a few members of the present-day population can trace their ancestry back to those missionary families.
Revival of culture
Today, in spite of the difficulties and genocide that Moriori faced, with unrelenting stoicism and peaceful resignation, Moriori are enjoying a renaissance, both on Rekohu and in the mainland of New Zealand. Moriori culture and identity is being revived, symbolised in January 2005 with the renewal of the Covenant of Peace at the new Kopinga maraeMarae
A marae malae , malae , is a communal or sacred place which serves religious and social purposes in Polynesian societies...
on the Chathams.
Some Moriori descendants have made claims against the New Zealand government through the Waitangi Tribunal
Waitangi Tribunal
The Waitangi Tribunal is a New Zealand permanent commission of inquiry established under the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975...
, a commission of inquiry charged with making recommendations on claims brought by Māori relating to actions or omissions of the Crown
The Crown
The Crown is a corporation sole that in the Commonwealth realms and any provincial or state sub-divisions thereof represents the legal embodiment of governance, whether executive, legislative, or judicial...
in the period since 1840, which breach the promises made in the Treaty of Waitangi
Treaty of Waitangi
The Treaty of Waitangi is a treaty first signed on 6 February 1840 by representatives of the British Crown and various Māori chiefs from the North Island of New Zealand....
.
The Moriori in New Zealand
Based on writing of Percy SmithStephenson Percy Smith
Stephenson Percy Smith was a New Zealand ethnologist and surveyor. He founded The Polynesian Society.-Early life and career as a surveyor :...
and Elsdon Best
Elsdon Best
Elsdon Best was an ethnographer who made important contributions to the study of the Māori of New Zealand.-Early life and career:...
, there grew theories that the Māori had displaced a more primitive pre-Māori population of Moriori (sometimes described as a small-statured, dark-skinned race of possible Melanesia
Melanesia
Melanesia is a subregion of Oceania extending from the western end of the Pacific Ocean to the Arafura Sea, and eastward to Fiji. The region comprises most of the islands immediately north and northeast of Australia...
n origin), in mainland New Zealand - and that the Chatham Island Moriori were the last remnant of this earlier race. Being based on the work of two widely respected experts, these theories also had the advantage - from a European settler view - of presenting a neat progression of waves of migration and conquest by increasingly more civilised and technically able peoples, and therefore justifying racist
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
stereotyping
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
and colonisation
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
by cultural "superiors". These theories were widely published in the early twentieth century, and crucially, this story was promoted in a series of three articles in the School Journal of 1916, and the 1934 A. W. Reed's schoolbook The Coming of the Maori to Ao-tea-roa —and therefore became familiar to generations of schoolchildren. Notably, the concept also undermines notions of the Māori as the indigenous people of New Zealand, by portraying them as conquerors.
A number of historians, anthropologists and ethnologists, however, examined and rejected the hypothesis of a racially distinct pre-Maori Moriori people. Among them, anthropologist H.D. Skinner in 1923, ethnologist Roger Duff in the 1940s, and historian and ethnographer Arthur Thomson in 1959, as did Michael King
Michael King
Michael King, OBE was a New Zealand popular historian, author and biographer. He wrote or edited over 30 books on New Zealand topics, including The Penguin History of New Zealand, which was the most popular New Zealand book of 2004.-Life:King was born in Wellington to Eleanor and Commander Lewis...
's Moriori: A People Rediscovered in 2000 and James Belich
James Belich (historian)
James Christopher Belich, ONZM is a New Zealand revisionist historian, known for his work on the New Zealand Wars.Of Croatian descent, he was born in Wellington in 1956, the son of Sir James Belich, who later became Mayor of Wellington. He attended Onslow College.He gained an M.A...
and K.R. Howe in Te Ara.
See also
- WaitahaWaitahaWaitaha is an early historical Māori iwi . Inhabitants of the South Island of New Zealand, they were largely absorbed via marriage and conquest first by the Kāti Mamoe and then Ngāi Tahu from the 16th century onward....
—A Māori iwiIwiIn New Zealand society, iwi form the largest everyday social units in Māori culture. The word iwi means "'peoples' or 'nations'. In "the work of European writers which treat iwi and hapū as parts of a hierarchical structure", it has been used to mean "tribe" , or confederation of tribes,...
who settled early in the South Island, and were subsequently absorbed by Kāti MamoeKati MamoeKāti Mamoe, or Ngāti Mamoe, is an historic Māori iwi. Originally from the Heretaunga area they moved in the 16th century to the South Island which at the time was occupied by Waitaha....
and Ngāi TahuNgāi TahuNgāi Tahu, or Kāi Tahu, is the principal Māori iwi of the southern region of New Zealand, with the tribal authority, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, being based in Christchurch and Invercargill. The iwi combines three groups, Kāi Tahu itself, and Waitaha and Kāti Mamoe who lived in the South Island prior...
.