THREE EXPLORERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23083, 7 July 1938, Page 18

THREE EXPLORERS

FORBEARS OF THE MAORI An address on "The Historicity of Maui, Kupe and Toi" was given by Mr. C. Graham last night to the anthropology and Maori race section of the Auckland Institute and Museum. Mr. Graham said a good deal of confusion existed concerning these threo figures, more especially Maui. Students of Maori and Polynesian lore believed that once there lived a personage named Maui, cither of mythological or demi-god nature. Ho was probably a very ancient ancestor of the Polynesian people before migration to the south, and to him were ascribed many feats that could ho accomplished only by a deity. There Would appear to have been another Maui, a mortal, and the one more generally known. He was famed as an explorer, journeying from Tahiti, his birth-place, to many parts of the Pacific. To him is credited the discovery of Samoa, Tonga and New Zealand, ho figuratively haying fished these lands up from the depths of Ibo sea. Four generations later fame Ibe Polynesian navigator Kupe Coming to New Zealand, he found the country peopled by the descendants of the second Maui and others who had visited these shores after him. Some 200 years later Toi, the third groat iigurti of Polynesian history, came to New Zealand from Tahiti, to be followed by a grandson and others. At this time navigation throughout the Pacific was at its height,, continuing until L')2s, when the final wave of migration came south, and the famous seven canoes. These three men, the second Maui, Kupe and Toi. marked epoch-making periods in'ancient Maori history. From the descendants of these explorers and those who migrated to this land later sprang the forbears of all the Maori tribes of New Zealand.