Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Rumours of late survivals of the giant moa bird abound, but none have been authentic-
ated. So if you see a moa in your travels, photograph it - you have just made the
greatest zoological discovery of the last 100 years.
By about 1400, however, with the big-game supply dwindling, Maori economics
turned from big game to small game - forest birds and rats - and from hunting to garden-
ing and fishing. A good living could still be made, but it required detailed local know-
ledge, steady effort and complex communal organisation, hence the rise of the Maori
tribes. Competition for resources increased, conflict did likewise, and this led to the
building of increasingly sophisticated fortifications, known as
pa
. Vestiges of
pa
earth-
works can still be seen around the country (on the hilltops of Auckland, for example).
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. Between Rangi-nui (sky fath-
er) and Papa-tu-a-nuku (earth mother) were various gods of land, forest and sea, joined
by deified ancestors over time. The mischievous demigod Maui was particularly import-
ant. 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 hu-
man mortality embodied in her. Maori traditional performance art, the group singing and
dancing known as
kapa haka,
has real power, even for modern audiences. Visual art, not-
ably 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 oc-
cupied by a more peaceful and racially distinct Melanesian people, known as the
Moriori, whom they exterminated. This myth has been regularly 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 re-
main a myth.
