New Zealand: The Long White Cloud - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 301

HOW DID THEY BUILD SHIPS AND NAVIGATE?
The people of Polynesia had no metallurgy, no nails to fasten planks or metal saws to cut
them. Bone and stone were used for cutting, and planks were held together with fiber cord
and caulked with bark and resin. Long before the compass, Europeans navigated the ocean
using time (the sun at noon), with a fixed stellar marker, the North Star (Stella Polaris),
being the most used and most reliable. Polynesians took direction from birds flying out at
daybreak and returning to their island home at dusk. Trained eyes could spot changing cor-
al colors, and trained ears could identify currents lapping the sides of their canoes. Those
emanating from islands make a different sound from those of ocean waves. [265] Polynesian
navigators looked for clouds on the horizon, a sign that the sun's heat on land had caused
cloud buildup. And they also constructed sky charts out of twigs and bark, using them to
follow constellations moving through the night sky. In 1965 Dr. David Lewis sailed with
his family from Tahiti to New Zealand, using Polynesian navigation. And in 1976 another
catamaran sailor, using Polynesian navigation, made the 2,500-mile passage from Hawaii
to Tahiti, thirty-five days at sea.
WHEN WAS NEW ZEALAND REDISCOVERED?
The first European to sight New Zealand was Abel Tasman, scouting for trade opportunities
on behalf of the Dutch East Indies Company. Tasman made two important voyages of dis-
covery in 1642 and 1644. His most important discovery was an island that bears his name,
Tasmania. Also named for him was a small fierce animal, the Tasmanian Devil, and an ex-
tinct animal called the Tasmanian Tiger. In 1642 he anchored at the northern tip of South
Island and sent out a boat to reconnoiter, whereupon the natives paddled over and killed
four sailors with clubs. [266] Tasman named the bay Murders Bay and fled. [267]
James Cook arrived in The Endeavor in 1769. He had sailed from Tahiti on instruction
from the British Admiralty to find the supposed great southern continent. Failing that, his
orders read, “you will upon falling in with New Zealand observe the latitude and longit-
ude…” Tasman had been dead for 110 years, but his experience at Murders Bay was known
to Cook. Cook used muskets to put Maori-English dealings into a pattern of mutual caution
and, on that basis, charted both islands and claimed them for England.
WHAT WAS MAORI CULTURE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY?
Notwithstanding they are cannibals, they are naturally of
a good disposition and have not a little share of humanity.
— Journal of Captain Cook