Episode – 2083 : Maori Settlement of New Zealand: How Polynesians Reached Aotearoa
Podcast Transcript
For millions of years, the islands of New Zealand remained a pristine wilderness, untouched by human footsteps. That changed in the 13th century when the world’s greatest mariners executed one of history’s most incredible feats of navigation.
Guided by the stars and ocean swells, the M?ori arrived with a “Great Fleet” of double-hulled canoes, completing the final chapter of Polynesian migration.
From the extinction of the giant Moa to resistance to the British, the M?ori established a legacy that endures to this day.
Learn more about the M?ori settlement of New Zealand on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
The arrival of the M?ori people in New Zealand was the last stage in the Polynesian migration across the South Pacific.
Using double-hulled waka hourua vessels, Polynesian mariners sailed by reading the stars, employing a mental star compass to stay on course and interpreting ocean swells to sense land hundreds of miles away. I covered Polynesian navigators in a previous episode.
Braving enormous distances and challenging conditions, the M?ori reached a land they called Aotearoa, meaning “Land of the Long White Cloud,” in the 13th century.
Traveling in up to nine of the large double-hulled canoes, the first settlers landed on the North Island.
M?ori tradition credits a single navigator, Kupe, with setting out from the mythical land of Hawaiki. Kupe pursued a giant octopus across the Pacific and eventually sighted the ‘Long White Cloud.’
Kupe’s most significant achievement was not just discovery; he also was said to have accurately mapped coastlines. Upon returning to Hawaiki, he provided precise sailing directions, including details on specific stars and ocean swells, which paved the way for the Great Fleet.
While New Zealand was the last of the islands settled by the Polynesians, it was also, arguably, the best. The land area of New Zealand is over 10 times that of all other Polynesian islands combined.
New Zealand’s first settlers faced daunting challenges. They came from the Society Islands, which lie 4,100 kilometers (2,550 miles) to the northeast. The Society Islands are part of what is today French Polynesia and include modern Bora Bora and Tahiti.
This planned colonization set the M?ori journey apart from accidental discovery. The waka were loaded with supplies, including crops from Hawaiki, to establish new settlements. This preparation shaped both their approach and their navigation of the challenges ahead.
They introduced sweet potato as one of their crops. This crop originated in South America and was likely brought to them through earlier Polynesian voyages, probably from Easter Island.
The first problem the pioneer population in New Zealand faced was adapting their agricultural methods to a drastically different climate. The majority of the Society Islands’ staple crops, such as coconut and breadfruit, could not survive in New Zealand’s cooler climate, resulting in their failure.
With many of the crops they brought with them failing, the M?ori shifted to a high-protein diet. This dietary change, in turn, had major consequences for the island’s ecosystem.
New Zealand certainly provided the capacity for the M?ori to maintain their expertise as fishermen, as the archipelago hosts some of the world’s most prolific fisheries.
The island was also home to an enormous flightless bird known as the Moa. Moa varied widely in size, with some reaching 12 feet or 4 meters tall and more than 500 lbs or 230 kg. The Moa on the South Island were much larger than those of the North Island. Because of their size and slow pace, moa were easy prey for M?ori hunters and provided abundant meat.
The fossil record suggests that the moa survived for roughly 150 years after the arrival of the M?ori in the 13th century. It remains one of the fastest human-induced extinctions in world history. The extinction of the moa not only affected food resources but also caused ripple effects throughout the island’s food chain.
The islands were home to an apex predator, the Haast’s eagle. This eagle was shockingly large, nearly twice the size of a modern eagle. It weighed up to 40 lbs (18 kg). The primary source of food for the eagle was the moa.
The extinction of the moa led to the extinction of the Haast’s eagle. The islands offered no mammalian life to support it, and as it was unable to fly to other islands due to the distance, the Haast eagle went extinct within 50 years of the moa’s extinction.
In response to these environmental changes, the M?ori adapted their traditional cooking methods to suit the New Zealand climate.
The M?ori perfected the h?ng?, a large pit, filled with white-hot river stones, and layered food directly on them. By dousing the rocks with water and burying the pit under wet earth, they created an underground pressure cooker of intense steam.
In some areas, a hangi was unnecessary. The M?ori took advantage of geothermal pockets from the island’s volcanic activity and used the intense heat and natural steam to cook their food.
Beyond changes in food and climate, New Zealand’s ecosystem provided the M?ori with a diversity of timber, something the Society Islands lacked. This access to abundant hardwoods transformed M?ori craftsmanship and daily life.
New Zealand’s forests offered some of the most valuable hardwoods on Earth. The M?ori used these hardwoods to hone their abilities as master woodworkers.
M?ori homes, called wharepuni, were large wooden structures that housed extended families.
Because they had an abundance of wood, the M?ori utilized it extensively for storytelling. Lacking a written language, the M?ori communicated their histories and narratives through Poupou. These large, intricately carved wooden poles served as pillars in M?ori meeting houses, displaying visual stories.
The poles’ primary function was to record M?ori lineage. Remembering genealogy, or whakapapa, is crucial to M?ori culture and identity. M?ori values are also present in the expansive storytelling of the poupou. The ethos of the M?ori warrior is a common theme among the narrative poles.
M?ori society centered its leadership and culture on the skill of its warriors. M?ori children were taught the martial skills and values of the warrior from an early age.
M?ori leaders were the most skilled warriors. The M?ori valued a person’s strength and strategic thinking as the requirements for leadership.
In addition to building and artwork, access to new woods enabled the M?ori to develop unique weapons. The progression from architecture and art to armaments shows how the new natural resources discovered in New Zealand influenced all aspects of life.
Without metals, the M?ori constructed weapons with other materials. The most significant weapon was the club, or patu. A M?ori patu was carved from rock, hardwood, or whalebone and symbolized its owner as a warrior.
Weapons were carved individually by the warrior, representing their ancestry and skill in battle.
Just as important to a M?ori warrior was their facial tattoo, the Ta’Moko. The Ta’Moko was a permanent representation of a person’s lineage, ancestry, social standing, and history.
This powerful warrior ethos proved essential as a new era began, with Europeans arriving in New Zealand. The encounters that followed would change M?ori society in unprecedented ways.
The first Europeans reached New Zealand almost four centuries after the M?ori settlement. In 1642, the Dutch reached the “Land of the White Cloud.” A Dutch navigator for the Dutch East India Company, Abel Tasman, thought he had arrived in Argentina. The Dutch East India Company, always seeking wealth and treasure, stopped at the islands in search of gold or spices.
The M?ori met the Dutch arrival with immediate violence; Tasman recorded four of his men dead. The intensity of the battle and the lack of treasure on the island led the Dutch East India Company to conclude that the islands were not worth the trouble.
Europeans did not return to New Zealand for 130 years after Tasman. When James Cook arrived in 1769, he was searching for a route to the Southern Continent. Cook’s crew aboard the HMS Endeavor encountered the M?ori in Poverty Bay in the North Island.
The M?ori greeted the British with the haka. The haka is a ceremonial dance that consists of deep rhythmic chanting, stomping, and facial contortions.
While warriors perform it to unify their ranks and summon courage before battle, communities also stage the dance to celebrate major victories and milestones. The Haka holds deep historical and cultural significance for M?ori and has been adopted by New Zealand sports teams today.
A haka serves a wide variety of ceremonial purposes, but to James Cook and the British, it represented a call to war.
While the M?ori posed no actual threat to the Endeavour, Cook’s crew misinterpreted the haka as a prelude to an attack. In their confusion and fear, the British opened fire, immediately killing a high-ranking M?ori chief.
The stunned M?ori had to pivot to defend their lands. Fortunately, Tupaia, a translator from Tahiti, stepped in to minimize the violence. Despite 500 years of separation, Tupaia’s Polynesian tongue was close enough to Maori to serve as a translator between the two.
Despite Cook’s efforts to develop a deeper understanding of the islands, the immediate outcome was not settlement or colonization. The British expanded into New Zealand with caution, initially using the islands only as a station for whaling vessels.
The early 19th century saw the arrival of Christian missionaries in the region. This was a crucial turning point for the M?ori. In addition to faith, the missionaries brought enhanced language skills.
In their efforts to convert, they had to communicate in writing. Missionaries worked with the M?ori to create a written version of their language. This transition to written language allowed the M?ori to codify many of their stories and traditions.
In exchange for timber and flax, the British also brought muskets. As they did in Africa, the arrival of gunpowder weapons sparked an arms race among the M?ori, pitting tribes against one another. The musket wars of the early 19th century killed as many as 30,000 M?ori.
Muskets were not the only dangerous cargo carried to New Zealand; disease spread rapidly amongst the vulnerable M?ori. Europeans brought with them deadly diseases that devastated a M?ori population with no natural immunity.
The M?ori population plummeted from an estimated high of 140,000 to 80,000 as M?ori faced the same dangers as indigenous populations in the Americas after the Columbian Exchange.
The M?ori eventually reached a settlement with the British to maintain their sovereignty and to create some separation between the two communities. In 1840, the two sides signed the Treaty of Waitangi.
The two sides had competing interests, and translation issues undermined the document’s viability. The British hoped to use the document as a founding document for their sovereignty over the islands and to claim it before the French or Dutch.
The M?ori hoped to consolidate control over their territory and establish a framework to control the lawless contingents of whalers and incoming settlers. The British gathered more than 500 signatures, usually in the form of chiefs drawing their Ta’ Moko on the document.
The M?ori thought that they were inviting the queen to share responsibility for governing the unruly European arrivals; the chiefs who signed did not intend to forfeit their sovereignty.
The British perspective was that the signatories had done the exact opposite, that their Ta’ Moko on the document represented a forfeiture of control to the queen.
This sparked a series of conflicts known as the New Zealand Wars.
Despite the ingenuity and bravery of the M?ori response, the British emerged victorious and passed the Settlement Act of 1863. The act was a catastrophe for the M?ori as it gave the British control over vast M?ori lands, including the best agricultural areas.
The resistance to the Settlement Act culminated in one of the most significant moments in New Zealand’s history: the Battle of Orakau in 1864. Orakau saw 300 M?ori hold out without food and water for days against a heavily armed British force that was five times their size.
The M?ori were surrounded and attempted an escape, which resulted in the deaths of half the M?ori warriors.
Orakau became a rallying cry for the M?ori, a reminder never to accept the forfeiture of their lands.
The ongoing struggle of the M?ori people involves both the restoration of 1.2 million acres of lost land and the acceptance of their interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi.
M?ori culture isn’t a relic of the past; it is a vital piece of its present. From the thundering Haka before rugby matches to the names of places across the country, the M?ori remain a source of cultural pride for New Zealand.This episode can be found at: https://everything-everywhere.com/the-maori-settlement-of-new-zealand/