Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Maori had no metals and no written language (and no alcoholic drinks or drugs).
But their culture and spiritual life was rich and distinctive. Below Ranginui (sky father)
and Papatuanuku (earth mother) were various gods of land, forest and sea, joined by dei-
fied ancestors over time. The mischievous demigod Maui was particularly important. In
legend, he vanquished the sun and fished up the North Island before meeting his death
between the thighs of the goddess Hine-nui-te-po in an attempt to conquer the human
mortality embodied in her. Maori traditional performance art, the group singing and dan-
cing known as
kapa haka,
has real power, even for modern audiences. Visual art, notably
woodcarving, is something special - 'like nothing but itself', in the words of 18th-century
explorer-scientist Joseph Banks.
THE MORIORI & THEIR MYTH
One of NZ's most persistent legends is that Maori found mainland NZ already occupied by a more peaceful and
racially distinct Melanesian people, known as the Moriori, whom they exterminated. This myth has been regu-
larly debunked by scholars since the 1920s, but somehow hangs on.
To complicate matters, there were real 'Moriori', and Maori did treat them badly. The real Moriori were the
people of the Chatham Islands, a windswept group about 900km east of the mainland. They were, however, fully
Polynesian, and descended from Maori - 'Moriori' was their version of the same word. Mainland Maori arrived
in the Chathams in 1835, as a spin-off of the Musket Wars, killing some Moriori and enslaving the rest. But they
did not exterminate them. The mainland Moriori remain a myth.
