Volume 14 Australasia - dana ward's homepage

IXIIABITAXTS 0¥ NEW ZEALAND. 441The Maori, that is, the " Line," or " Descendance," in the sense of "Indigenous,"are unquestionably a branch of the eastern Polynesian race.Their legends,full of precise details, are unanimous in recording their migration to the archipelago,and even give some approximate idea of the epoch when this event tookplace. The children were carefully instructed in all these oral traditions, andtaught the history and genealogy of the national heroes, as well as the successionof events and ages by means of inscribed tablets. These sources of information,collected by Grey and other ethnologists, relate how some four or five centuriesago the chief Te Kiipe first landed on Aotea-roa, the North Island, and that,astonished at his discovery, he returned to his native land of Havaiki for hisfellow-countrj'men. He then returned \vith a flotilla of seven war-canoes, eachcontaining about a hundi'ed warriors, priests, stone idols, and sacred weapons, aswell as native plants and animals. To this tradition of the first immigration thedescendants of the Maori add legends of marvellous deeds, the severance of Aotearoainto two islands, the emergence of islets, rocks, and reefs, the appearance ofsprings and of flames bursting from the ground. But, according to Huxley,Quatrefages, and other authorities, skulls presenting all the characteristics of thePapuan type would seem to indicate the preA'ious existence of an aboriginalrace apparently exterminated or partly absorbed by the Maori intruders.This island of Havaiki, whence came Te Kujje and his followers, cannot nowbe clearly determined.The resemblance of names suggests the island of Savaii inthe Samoan Archipelago, and the same island of Savaii is also supposed to havesent out other kindred tribes to colonise Havaii in the Sandwich Group. Themarked analogy between the peoples, languages, customs, and legends of NewZealand and Polynesia certainly leaves no doubt that migrations have taken placefrom some region of equatorial Polynesia towards the more remote archipelagoes.Nevertheless, there is nothing beyond a vague resemblance of names to identifythe Samoan Savaii with the legendary cradle of the Maori people. It even seemsmore probable that they came from Tonga, that is, the group of islands lyingnearest to New Zealand.The distance between the two archipelagoes is not morethan 1,200 miles, and here the marine current sets in the direction of New Zealand.So great is the afiinity of the Tonga and Maori languages that the nativesof both regions soon understand each other, and the very word foiiga is of frequentoccurrence in the Maori dialect, as well as in the geographical nomenclature of thearchipelago.The Mori-ori inhabitants of the Chatham Islands, now reduced to a few familygroups and Maori half-castes, are certainly Polynesians of the same origin, who,according to their traditions, arrived from the north about the fifteenth century.They are of smaller stature, but more robust and stronger than the Maori, withvery marked features and the aquiline Jewish nose. This Uttle song- and mythlovingcommunity lived happily in their island home of Warekauri when a Maorisailor of Taranaki, serving on board an English vessel, happened to \nsit one oftheir villages either in 1832 or 1835. On his return he spoke to his friends aboutthese islanders, "peaceful and good to eat," and his report was soon followed by a