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Moriori are the indigenous people of the Chatham Islands (Rekohu in the Moriori language), east of the New Zealand archipelago in the Pacific Ocean.
Origin The Moriori are culturally Polynesian. 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 who came to the Chatham Islands from New Zealand about 1500 (Clark 1994, Davis and Solomon 2006, Howe 2006, King 2000). As Kerry Howe puts it, 'Scholarship over the past 40 years has radically revised the model offered a century earlier by Smith: the Moriori as a pre-Polynesian people have gone (the term Moriori is now a technical term referring to those ancestral Maori who settled the Chatham Islands)' (Howe 2003:182). Evidence supporting this theory comes from the innovations that the Moriori language has in common with the Māori dialect spoken by the Ngāi Tahu tribe of the South Island, comparisons of the genealogies of Moriori ("hokopapa") and Māori ("whakapapa"), and prevailing wind patterns in the southern Pacific. The Chatham Islands thus became the last outpost in the Pacific to be settled during the period of Polynesian discovery and colonization . The origin of the name Moriori is uncertain; it may have developed as a linguistic reduplication of the old Polynesian word Māori; if so, it would have the meaning "(ordinary) people". Adapting to local conditions The Chatham Islands are colder and less hospitable than the land the original settlers had left behind, and are also poor in resources. These factors make the islands barely capable of supporting a population. The Chathams proved unsuitable for the cultivation of most crops known to Polynesians, and the Moriori adopted a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Lacking resources of cultural significance such as greenstone and plentiful timber, they found outlets for their ritual needs in the carving of dendroglyphs (incisions into tree trunks). As a small and precarious population, Moriori embraced a pacifist culture which rigidly avoided warfare, substituting it with dispute resolution in the form of ritual fighting and conciliation. The islands supported a population numbering about 2000. 1835 invasion from Taranaki William R. Broughton landed on November 29, 1791, and claimed possession of the islands for Great Britain, naming them after his ship, the HMS ''Chatham''. Sealers and whalers soon made the islands a centre of their activities, competing for resources with the native population. 10 to 20 percent of the 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 settled in the Chathams. On November 19, 1835, a chartered European ship, the Rodney, carrying 500 Maori armed with guns, clubs and axes arrived, followed by another ship with 400 more Maori arriving on December 5, 1835. They proceeded to enslave and kill (and cannibalise) the Moriori. 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....." . The invading Māori from New Zealand – as well as European whalers and German missionaries– inter-married with the local indigenous population. Only 101 Morioris out of a population of about 2,000 were left alive by 1862 (Kopel et al., 2003). Although it is commonly believed that the Māori invaders completely wiped out the Moriori, several thousand mixed ancestry Moriori descendants remain alive today. Tommy Solomon, the last Moriori of unmixed ancestry, died in 1933. Revival of culture Recent years have seen a revival of interest in Moriori culture and identity, and some Moriori descendants have made claims against the New Zealand government through the Waitangi Tribunal, a permanent commission of inquiry charged with making recommendations on claims brought by Maori relating to actions or omissions of the Crown in the period since 1840 that breach the promises made in the Treaty of Waitangi. The debunked myth of Moriori in New Zealand New Zealand popular culture of the early twentieth century long held an unsubstantiated myth that the 'Moriori', a small-statured dark-skinned race of possible Melanesian origin, originally inhabited New Zealand before the fairer-skinned Māori arrived and drove the Moriori out to the Chathams. This story conveniently promoted racist stereotyping and justified the idea of colonisation by cultural 'superiors', but has no historical or anthropological merit. Michael King's Moriori: A People Rediscovered (2000) provides the only comprehensive and systematic account of Moriori. Its publication helped finally dispel longstanding misrepresentations and untruths about Moriori which formerly circulated among the New Zealand population. Notes | ||||||||
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