THE MORIORIS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19451, 28 March 1933, Page 8

THE MORIORIS

BRANCH OF MAORI RACE. EVIDENCES OF KINSHIP. “Perhaps it was the supposed analogy between the fate of the Tasmanian natives and the fate of the Morioris that made people prone to the error that the Morioris were different in race from the Maoris. Such was not the case; they were in fact a little branch of the Maori race that had been isolated on the Chatham Islands for a considerable period,” said I a Dunedin authority on the race, two of whose memoirs on these people have been recently published by the Bishop Museum, of Honolulu, when referring to Tommy Solomon’s death. The date of the Morioris’ arrival on the Chatham Islands, he said, was a matter of conjecture. If the Moriori genealogies were to be trusted as 'historical documents, their ancestors reached the Chathams about 1200 A.D., or a century and a-half before the arrival in New Zealand of the final wave of Maoris from Tahiti. It was by no means certain that their genealogies were historical documents, but a close study of their features and their culture strongly suggested that they had been isolated at the Chathams for a period of five or six centuries. That error as to the Moriori race had been very widely accepted, said the authority. Even the text books sponsored by the Department of Education repeated the wholly erroneous statement that the Morioris were a little section of non-Maori people who occupied New Zealand before the Maoris came. A careful survey of Moriori material in the Otago University Museum and other material in the Dominion, and a comparison of forms of implements with those found in New Zealand or in Tahiti, would demonstrate the close alliance, in fact, the identity—of all three groups. If any further proof were required, people would be well advised to study carefully the portrait of Thomas Solomon. Equally well might he have been Pomare, the King of Tahiti, or some overlord of Samoa or Tongatabu. “I do not think that anyone who knew Solomon or the Morioris well ever doubted that he was a pure Moriori,” said the authority. “When I visited the Chathams in 1920 there was a near relative of Solomon living. She was a pure-blooded Moriori woman residing on a farm near his. She was also in all respects a typical Maori, except that she seemed to be somewhat shrewder in business matters than is the case with the mainland Maoris. “Even when the woman was living Thomas Solomon was called “the last of the Morioris.” Presumably the woman, who was known as his aunt, had since died. He recalled also the existence of another Moriori boy who was discovered by Dr. Peter Buck living among the Ngapuhi tribe in the north. Probably 1200 Morioris were living on the Chathams when the group was invaded by Pomare. the grandfather of Sir Maui Pomare, in the Rodney in 1836. The vessel was seized in Wellington Harbour, and experienced a rough trip, and the Maoris were very sick. After they had recovered they killed two hundred Morioris, giving the islanders their last knock.

The Morioris suffered heavily from diseases, a disease known as “rewarewa,” thought to be influenza, killing off large numbers in the late thirties. The extinction of the Morioris was long drawn out, occupying nearly a hundred years. The Tasmanian blacks were blotted out within a decade, being killed off by muskets and dogs.