LAST OF MORIORIS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 67, 21 March 1933, Page 6

LAST OF MORIORIS

THEIR HISTORY RECALLED. OF POLYNESIAN ORIGIN? Tn view of the news regarding the passing of the last of the Morion race, it is interesting to note that the Moriori were the inhabitants of the Chathams, a small group of islands about 400 miles east of New Zealand. They are generally considered to have been of Polynesian origin, although differing somewhat in physique and general appearance. This may have been brought about by being separated from the main stock for so many generations, but anthropometric studies seem to give them a different origin. It is now thought by many students that after Kupe’s return to Rarotonga a migration (probably a drift canoe) came to New Zealand somewhere from Western Polynesia, possibly having a Melanesian strain of blood. When the great migration of 1350 came from East Polynesia these people had grown into numerous tribes. According to the late Percy Smith’s dates, some of these pf-ople discovered and migrated to the Chathams about the year 1175. A war of extermination took place as soon as the 1350 migration became strong enough to overcome the earlier migration. From their dialect they seemed to be a branch of the Maori of New Zealand although they differed in many of the Maori customs. They did not tattoo, they had a ceremony of marriage, and they sent their dead to sea on a raft, a Marquesan custom. Their huts were conical and bound together at the top, and carvings have been found on th? rocks of a primitive design. They were an unwarlike people in lived in unfortified villages.

The history of the Moriori was written by the *late Mr. A. Shand, who published a series of articles which ran through the Polynesian Society’s Journal. It was also published in a separate volume. Unfortunately Mr. Shand lost his life by a sad accident before the work was completed, but the late Mr. S. Percy Smith finished the undertaking. A chapter on the Moriori will also be found in Tregear’s “Maori Race,’’ together with an account of the terrible massacre of 1836, when they were ruthlessly slaughtered by the Maoris of New Zealand.