Māori

Māori tribes today commemorate in song and dance how their ancestors came to the North Island of New Zealand in seven canoes (waka). Believed to have arrived from the Society Islands in central Polynesia during the middle of the 14th century, they escaped warfare and excessive demands for tribute. The migrants assimilated indigenous inhabitants—hunters, fishers, and gatherers of the same Polynesian stock who had arrived earlier in 950 and 1150 and named the land Aotearoa (“The Land of the Long White Cloud”) for mists visible on the mountains.

In 1947, the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl drifted across the Pacific from the coast of South America on the Kon Tikiin an attempt to show that the first people to arrive might have come that way. In spite of Heyerdahl's successful voyage, scholars believe that the original Polynesians came from the mainland of Southeast Asia. With navigation skills equaling those of the Vikings, they ventured north to Hawaii, west to Easter Island, and south to New Zealand, where they were called Moa Hunters due to the large flightless birds they found there and hunted to extinction. The Moa Hunter harpoon is similar to a prototype found in the Marquesas, whereas the minnow shank lure is a stone copy of the Polynesian pearl shell bonito lure found in other parts of Polynesia.

The Polynesian migrants of 1350 introduced an agricultural economy and competition for open fertile land suitable for cultivation to supplement the hunting with spears and snares; fishing with lines, nets, and traps; and gathering of shellfish, berries, roots, shoots, plant stem piths, and fern roots already practiced. Available protein included fish, shellfish, seals, rats, and birds. The migrants brought plants to grow for food, and several of these plants did not survive the transition from a tropical climate to a temperate one. Taro, yam, gourd, and sweet potato (kumara) did. The paper mulberry plants the migrants brought thrived only in the warmest part of North Island.

Cultivation of plants led to a more settled way of life, cooperative work, and a denser population. Men felled trees; cleared ground; planted; trapped rats; dug roots; fished; hollowed trees for canoes; performed rites; carved bones for fishhooks, ornaments, and spearheads; tattooed faces and bodies of men as well as ankles, arms, lips, and chins of women. They also made adzes of greenstone jade and flake knives of obsidian along with wedges, skids, lifting tackles, fire ploughs, and cord drills for tools. Women gathered; weeded; wove; collected firewood; carried water; cooked; and plaited flax for clothes, cords, baskets, and rain capes. Slaves taken captive did undesirable jobs. Sea and agricultural products were exchanged for forest products, and greenstone from the South Island was traded for finished goods from the North Island.

As life became more comfortable, carving and other decorative arts began to include elaborately decorated cloaks for persons of rank, prows of canoes, gateposts of villages (pas), and fertility symbols (tikis). A beautifully carved war canoe could add greatly to a tribe's spiritual force and status (mana), an attribute that could be inherited or acquired.

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