The Aotearoa History Show S2 | Episode 2: Māori: The First 500 Years | RNZ
Summary
TLDRThe video script traces the history of Māori in Aotearoa from the arrival of the first waka circa 1270 AD through phases of early exploration, adaptation to the new landscape and extinction of the moa, societal changes and migrations with the shift to agriculture, increasing conflict and fortifications in the 'transitional phase', further cultural evolution in the 'traditional phase' up to first contact with Europeans in 1769, examining key concepts like utu and developments in social structure, art, trade relationships between hapū over this 500-year period.
Takeaways
- 😀 Early Māori lived in small, temporary camps near coasts and rivers, hunting birds, fishing, and gathering shellfish
- 😮 Archaeologists uncovered evidence of New Zealand's 'first capital' at Wairoa Bay where early Māori made tools and shared knowledge
- 😯 The extinction of the moa bird around 1450 AD forced a reliance on kumara and migration into the 'kumara zone'
- 😠 Increasing competition and climate change led to more conflict and defensive fortifications in the 'transitional phase'
- 🎨 New art forms emerged as Māori worked with local materials like pounamu and bone
- 👪 The oral tradition became more detailed as hapū asserted land rights through whakapapa recitals
- 🌱 South Island Māori relied on seasonal food sources and an exchange system called kaihokai
- ⛺ In the 'traditional phase' Māori culture continued evolving with largers alliances between hapū and iwi
- ✊ The biggest battle may have involved up to 16,000 warriors in the late 1700s/early 1800s
- 🤝 The arrival of Europeans in 1769 marked the end of the 'traditional phase' of Māori history
Q & A
What was the name of the Tahitian navigator who first stepped ashore in New Zealand in 1769?
-Tupaya
Why did the early phase of Māori arrival, exploration and occupation seem relatively peaceful?
-Experts think this early phase was peaceful because there were so few people and an abundance of food, so there was little need to fight and good reasons to cooperate.
How did Māori track rights to land and assert identity?
-By reciting whakapapa, which asserts both rights to land and identity. Whakapapa serves as a family tree, legal record, and oral history.
What was the Little Ice Age and how did it impact Māori culture?
-The Little Ice Age was a period of global cooling from around 1300-1850 AD. In New Zealand, it led to smaller harvests and increased competition for resources, likely contributing to more conflict and changes in culture.
What was the importance of pounamu (greenstone) to Māori?
-Pounamu was highly prized and traded widely as a symbol of status and mana. Control of pounamu sources conferred power and the stone was fashioned into tools, weapons and ornaments.
How were early Māori settlements different from later, more permanent villages?
-Early settlements were temporary camps that relied on plentiful wild foods and moved location when local resources were depleted. Later permanent villages focused on tending crops and defending productive land.
What is utu and how was it used?
-Utu refers to the concept of balance, cost and reparation in Māori customary law. It demanded a response that was appropriately balanced. Tawamuru raids were a form of utu.
How did Māori adapt to colder conditions in New Zealand?
-Adaptations included reliance on the tropical kumara plant in northern regions, seasonal migrations to gather wild foods in the south, and widespread trade of preserved foods between regions.
What were the main phases in pre-European Māori history?
- Archaeologists divide early Māori history into the colonisation phase (~1280-1400 AD), transitional phase (~1300-1600) which saw major upheaval, and traditional phase (~1500-1800) when classic Māori structures developed.
What is an iwi and how were they increasingly important over time?
-Iwi refers to a large tribal grouping descended from early Polynesian ancestors. They became important for trade, warfare, celebrations, building projects and exerting political influence.
Outlines
😊 First encounters between Māori and Europeans
This paragraph describes the first meeting between Māori and Europeans when Tūpaia, a Tahitian navigator, arrived in New Zealand with Captain Cook in 1769. It talks about the initial violent encounter when Cook's men opened fire and killed a Māori leader, but then on their second meeting, Tūpaia was able to communicate with Māori despite hundreds of years of separation. Tūpaia saw similarities but also many unfamiliar things in Māori culture after exploring their world.
👪 Māori social hierarchy and early settlements
This paragraph discusses the social hierarchy in early Māori society, with chiefs (rangatira) often being senior descendants of ancestors considered divine. It also covers archaeological evidence about some of the first settlements, describing temporary coastal camps used for fishing and hunting which were moved when food sources were depleted. A possible early capital, Waitabar, is also mentioned as a gathering place for early arrivals.
🥕 How climate and food sources changed Māori culture
This paragraph explains how Māori culture changed significantly around 1500 AD due to extinction of the moa bird and declining food sources. This forced a reliance on kumara and migration of most Māori into warmer North Island regions where kumara could grow. Oral histories become more detailed during this transitional phase to assert land rights. There is also evidence of increasing conflict during this turbulent time.
🤝 Utu, taua muru, par - tools for justice and defense
This section looks at utu (rebalancing/atonement), tawamuru (plundering raids to right wrongs) and par (fortified villages) as ways Māori aimed to resolve disputes without all-out war. It notes the increasing threat of warfare seen through more weapons and hilltop forts (par) built to protect people and resources as competition grew with the climate changes and food pressures.
😌 Trade, migration and adaptation over time
The last paragraph explains how Māori culture kept evolving into the early 1800s, through changes in climate, trade relationships between hapū (subtribes), increasing alliances and collaborations between groups on important projects and ceremonies. It emphasizes Māori society was still transforming significantly when Europeans first arrived.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡colonisation
💡transitional phase
💡traditional phase
💡hapū
💡pā
💡kai
💡kumara
💡ponamu
💡utu
💡ariki
Highlights
When Tūpāia visited these islands in 1769, nobody in Aotearoa called themselves Māori
Archaeologists think of Wairoa as basically New Zealand's first capital city
After the extinction of large animals like moa and seals most Māori had to fall back on a food they had bought with them from the tropical islands - the kumara
During the early phase of Māori occupation settlements were evenly distributed across Te Ika-a-Māui and Te Wai Pounamu (the North and South Islands)
The only exception was the Moriori people on Rēkohu/Wharekauri (the Chatham Islands)
If you were at Ōtāngarei and you caught someone trespassing on your land, how did you prove it was yours? You used your whakapapa
Launching a war for a minor insult or trespass wouldn't be appropriate utu
Pā often contained carvings of atua and important ancestors
Pōnaumu was so important to Māori (still is) that it was traded all over New Zealand
Your whānau might harvest birds in summer months. You would preserve some to eat in the winter but also to give some to other people within or beyond your hapū
In the late 1700s or early 1800s, the paramount leader of Ngāti Pikoia-te-Rangi got into a major dispute with other hapū of Waikato and Maniapoto
In response the hapū of Waikato, Ngāti Maniaporto and Ngāti Apakura made an alliance
Decisions were made collectively, the wishes of ariki could be overruled if their people disagreed with them
As more and more Māori began speaking, working and living with visiting explorers, whalers and missionaries and Aotearoa was pulled into the expanding British Empire, Māori society would change once again
Who knows where it might have led but as more and more Māori began speaking, working and living with visiting explorers, whalers and missionaries and Aotearoa was pulled into the expanding British Empire
Transcripts
on october 9 1769 the tahitian navigator
tupaya stepped on the shore of aotearoa
new zealand for the first time a few
months earlier british navy lieutenant
james cook had brought to bayer on board
the hm east endeavour as an expert
navigator and translator as the ship
explored the south pacific now they were
at the mouth of the tsuranganui river
these days home to gisborne's port but a
day earlier when cook first arrived in
aotearoa he didn't bring to pyre with
him and the endeavour's first meeting
with maori ended in disaster
when maori first encountered cook's men
cook's men opened fire and killed ngati
onion leader
a day later one hundred warriors of
are gathered on shore but cook had
realized his mistake this time he
brought dupaya onshore with him
and even though maori had been separated
from tahiti and eastern polynesia for
500 years dupaya understood them
tsupaya stepped forward and introduced
himself it turned out they had more in
common than language they shared values
like manakitanga roughly translated to
hospitality and for nonongatanga
connection but later as tupaya explored
the maori world he saw things which were
totally unfamiliar he saw kumara planted
in rows of mounded earth and stored in
deep pits he saw the huge wooden earth
defenses of par fortified villages he
saw elaborate curved patterns on wooden
carvings and in tamuka tattoos none of
it was anything like what dupai knew
from home in tahiti during their 500
year separation from the rest of the
pacific the people of aotearoa had
transformed
how what changed well that's what this
episode's all about the 500 year
evolution of maori
[Music]
and this is the aotearoa history show
people often talk about maori culture
before tupaya arrived as if it was just
a single thing and that's totally wrong
mahdi were a network of tribes and
confederations each with their own
history and way of doing things when
tupaya visited these islands in 1769
nobody in aotearoa called themselves
maori the word literally just means
ordinary and only became common later in
the 19th century when people needed a
word to distinguish indigenous new
zealanders from european colonists
there's also a tendency to imagine maori
as a people frozen in time but of course
over 500 years any society is going to
change a lot when people study maori
history before european contact they
usually divide it into three phases
first the earliest phase of arrival and
occupation currently estimated to run
from sometime in the late 1200s to
around 1400 a.d
this is when the first waka arrived and
people spread out around the motu or
islands
archaeologists and historians call this
the colonisation phase which is a bit
confusing because we usually talk about
pakhya colonisation and that didn't
happen until 500 years later next the
transitional phase roughly 1300 to 1600.
moira became extinct the climate changed
and there was huge social upheaval as
people had to rely more on agriculture
for food finally the traditional phase
approximately 1500 to 1800 a.d
this is when the cultural structures we
see as distinctly maori were embedded
but society was still changing there
were huge migrations and increasing
collaborations within and between tribes
and these three phases happened at
different times and in different ways in
different parts of aotearoa like down
south the tribes of ngatahu relied
entirely on hunting fishing and other
wild sources of kai all the way up until
the 1800s whereas in the far north
teheku people were likely growing crops
early on taking advantage of the warmer
climate okay so let's start at the
beginning
what do we know about the people who
first settled altera
well we know they came from eastern
polynesia probably in or near tahiti
maybe rarotonga the latest evidence
suggests several hundred people made the
voyage here aboard multiple waka they
lived in groups of roughly 50 to 100
made up of a handful of whanau extended
families well the whanauna tribe could
trace their heritage back to shiite
ancestors tribes were often named after
a female tipuna which helps to explain
why the maori word for subtribe is hapu
which also means pregnant yeah
emphasizes shared ancestry but that
doesn't mean everyone was equal this
hierarchy started long before
polynesians arrived in aotearoa it was
largely determined by whakapapa or
ancestry the chiefs rangatira were often
the eldest sons and daughters of their
elder sons and daughters going way back
to ancestors described as descended from
gods this meant they were particularly
tapu and therefore held a lot of mana
spiritual power and authority these
first people all came within a hundred
years of each other on deliberate
voyages starting around 1270 a.d well at
least that's the current best estimate
the descendants rapidly spread out
around aotearoa and outlying islands
some hapu traveled hundreds of
kilometers from mainland new zealand to
places like rangitahua makahuka and
norfolk island experts believe stone
tools found on australia's east coast
might belong to voyages from these
outlying islands the locations of tools
and wild bones sometimes mark the sites
of clanger villages or camps looking at
what's left at these camps tell
archaeologists quite a bit about the
people who lived there for one thing
early kainga were only occupied for a
couple of decades at most they weren't
permanent villages second they're often
found near river mouths and sit next to
huge piles of bone and shell it looks
like early maori would sail along the
coast of the waka stopping at a river
mouth and set up cap then they would
travel inland hunting moi and other
large birds and along the coast
harvesting fish shellfish and seals when
these food sources ran out they simply
moved on these camps are also
interesting because of the stuff we
don't find for one thing there are very
few weapons those only turn up later
so maybe this phase when maori first
occupied altera was more peaceful than
later phases or maybe weapons in this
era were made of wood rather than stone
so they rotted before archaeologists
could find them or maybe they were so
valuable their owners carried them away
so many question marks there are
different ways of interpreting the
evidence but most experts think this
early phase of maori arrival exploration
and occupation was relatively peaceful
for the first one or two hundred years
there were so few people and so much
quiet food that there wasn't much need
to fight and lots of reasons to
cooperate instead of weapons
archaeologists find tools particularly
toki types of ads
we find toki all over alteroa and some
of the outlying islands
most of these tools are made from a
stone called argolite and they're mostly
made in the same place wait obar
archaeologist daginet wairoba have found
nearly 40 tonnes of argolite chips
leftovers from making dukkhi that means
hundreds must have been made at this
site every year it was a little tookie
factory archaeologists have also
uncovered giant umu cooking pits filled
with the bones of thousands of more and
seals plus sixteen hundred tons of
shells wairoba also has something we
don't find in other early maori
settlements a cemetery urupa the bones
of roughly 60 people have been
discovered there when archaeologists
analyzed those bones closely they
discovered some of those people had
diets which were high in sugar and low
in protein now that suggests they grew
up in tropical polynesia eating sugary
fruit not in cold new zealand eating
meat so these might be the bones of the
very first people to come to aotearoa
so what does this all mean what was
widow bar four
well aotearoa was a weird landscape it
was different from the tropical islands
the first migrants came from bigger
wetter colder and these early arrivals
needed a place where different hapu
could gather together tell each other
what they discovered which foods were
poisonous which were good to eat and to
trade with each other they needed a
place to reinforce connections share
gossip and memories of the old days
and for expert tool makers to practice
their craft and teach it to the next
generation so archaeologists think of
wairoba as basically new zealand's first
capital city but within a hundred years
wait obar was abandoned probably because
local food sources ran out to tell the
story of white oba we rely almost
entirely on archaeological evidence
that's because oral histories of these
early days of maori occupation focus on
stories of rangatira traveling around
aotearoa claiming land for their poo but
they don't talk much about the details
of day-to-day life writing about the old
traditions of the thai nui people famous
ngati maniapoto historian dr bruce biggs
wrote this
for the first seven or eight generations
little bat personal names are recorded
in pedigree stemming from just a few of
the immigrants then beginning with tafal
in 1475 the tradition suddenly becomes
more detailed it is an astonishingly
detailed record matched in the pacific
only by other maori tribal histories all
of which seem to follow a pattern of
sparsely recorded remote past followed
by a sudden efflorescence of detail
beginning three to four centuries ago
that explosion in the oral tradition
marks a turning point in this new maori
culture the start of the transitional
phase
and historians think this pretty much
comes down to kai
more and seals reproduced slowly and
their populations couldn't cope with the
amount of hunting going on by 1450 a.d
the last moore had vanished and the seal
population had been decimated
so why did maori hunt these animals so
heavily well in the tropical islands
maori came from they hunted animals that
had evolved to reproduce quickly it
helped them cope with disasters like
typhoons and tsunamis aotearoa's animals
evolved in a more stable environment so
they became slow breeders to avoid
overpopulation it seems likely that
after the extinction of the war maori
learnt and managed natural resources
they probably used rahui temporary bans
on gathering those resources in certain
areas and we still use that now but with
the extinction of large animals like moi
and seals most maori had to fall back on
a food they had bought with them from
the tropical islands the kumara to grow
a decent crop kumara needs the average
temperature to stay above 15 degrees for
five months in tropical polynesia that
means two harvests a year but if you
hadn't already noticed aotearoa is not a
tropical island
so it was only possible to get one crop
a year and only in what we'll call the
kumara zone northerly coastal parts of
the country where it's a little bit
warmer so this was a time of massive
migration during the early phase of
maori occupation settlements were evenly
distributed across the kaamawi and tewai
ponamu the north and south islands but
by the end of the transitional phase
about 98 of maori lived inside the
kumara zone the remaining two percent
lived in the southern north island and
parts of the south island where they
migrated between seasonal sources of
craig
the more remote islands were completely
abandoned probably because they were too
small to sustain a permanent population
the only exception was the moriori
people on reikuhu farikauri the chatham
islands and motel their remarkable story
in another episode as you'd imagine the
switch from more to kumara as the
primary source of food led to huge
societal changes you had to stay near
your kumara pretty much all year to tend
them and make sure that someone didn't
come along and steal them so maori had
to set up permanent settlements and it
became really important to know which
land belonged to your hapu and which
belonged to your neighbour this is why
we see that explosion and detail of the
oral tradition around 1500 a.d
like if you were at angate and you
caught someone trespassing on your land
how did you prove it was yours you used
your whakapapa you said hey my tip and i
claimed this land hundreds of years ago
and have held it ever since i can tell
you their name i can tell you how they
did it i can tell you the names of all
of the descendants up until today
reciting whakapapa asserts both your
rights to land and your identity the two
are connected any transfer of land or
resources through marriage or warfare or
gifting is also recorded in these
stories
so the oral histories get more detailed
as land becomes more valuable they are a
library a legal record and a family tree
all in one on top of the extinction of
the moor and the decline of other large
animals maori faced another big change
in the transitional phase from 1300 to
1600 the beginning of the little ice age
several hundred years of global cooling
and rapidly changing weather patterns
historians think the little ice age
reduced harvests and increased
competition for farmland and other
sources of kai this didn't just affect
altera it's linked to disruption and
cultural change all over the pacific
pretty much everywhere from fiji to
timor to new zealand we start seeing
more signs of warfare in the
archaeological record more weapons and
more defensive fortifications we also
get more mentions of violence and
battles and maori oral histories but
just because warfare was increasing
doesn't necessarily mean it was common
maori had ways of trying to resolve
disputes without bloodshed one of the
most important was toa muru
say a rangatira and your neighbor
insults you or hunts in your hapu's
patch of forest or takes fish from your
stream
you could launch an all-out war against
them but that would be an overreaction
like life in prison for stealing a
packet of chips the punishment needed to
fit the crime you needed uttu utsu is a
key concept of tsikanga maori customary
law it's commonly mistranslated as
revenge but it actually means something
more like rebalancing cost or reparation
we can understand otsu a bit better by
looking at it as one of three
interlocking concepts
or issue demands utsu an appropriate
response resulting in air balance coming
back to our example launching a war for
a minor insult or trespass wouldn't be
inappropriate or two it'd be an
overreaction and costly for everyone and
it might prevent both sides from
achieving a state of air so instead
people on both sides agreed to a tawa
muru which was sort of like a relatively
non-violent plundering raid a way of
publicly righting a wrong that fell
short of actual combat of course
tawamuru couldn't resolve every dispute
when violent conflict did happen it was
usually uttu for a more serious take
like for the murder of arangatera or for
a dispute over resources the growing
threat of warfare and the transitional
phase led to the building of par
defensive fortifications thousands of
power pop up around aotearoa almost all
inside the kumara zone some were just
small forts to protect kumara pits
others were much larger the biggest was
maungakiakia pa one tree hill in
auckland in the 1700s it covered 17
hectares and could protect 5 000 people
in times of crisis power also had
religious significance in fact when
topia saw his first power he didn't
think of them as fortifications at all
but more like giant temples and in a way
he was right par often contained
carvings of atswa and important
ancestors singarangatira lived at
elevated positions within par which were
tapu spaces particularly large and
elaborate part enhanced the mana of the
rangatira who lived there and of their
wadahapu and par weren't the only status
symbols through the transitional phase
archaeologists start finding elaborately
carved ornaments tools weapons and waka
some archaeologists say this suggests an
increasing hierarchy a growing gulf
between higher ranking rangatira and
lower ranking common people
several european explorers and
missionaries commented that maori were
more conscious of social status than
other pacific people although we have to
be careful about these kinds of european
observations for one thing they
interpreted what they saw through a
european worldview often failing quite a
lot actually to fully understand nuances
in bao maori these europeans were also
observing maori at a time when dead
turned up out of nowhere imagine if
aliens landed in new zealand today and
wrote down what they saw i doubt we'd be
acting normally maybe not you these new
power waka and weapons we find in the
transitional phase are also often
decorated with new kinds of art
alongside the traditional rectilinear
art styles of eastern polynesia we start
seeing the curved flowing designs which
we think of today as distinctly mildy
this might partly reflect that during
the transitional phase from 1300 to 1600
maori were learning to work with new
materials they found in aotearoa there
was fine-grained
timber the bones of seals and whales
and most of all po
ponamu was super useful for maori a
beautiful mineral soft enough to be
shaped into jewellery and hard enough to
make an effective tool or weapon so it's
not surprising ponamu was especially
prized as a symbol of mana some hapu
migrated across cook strait especially
to access the land they called te
waipounamu the waters of greenstone
ponemon was so important to maori still
is that it was traded all over new
zealand but they weren't using cash
instead maori used a system of gift
exchange kind of like a mental iou a
good example of this is kaihokue the
ceremonial exchange of cry of food your
whanau might harvest birds in summer
months you would preserve some to eat in
the winter but also to give some to
other people within or beyond your
harpoon so later that year when your
stock of preserved birds were running
low your neighbour might harvest inanga
white bait and share that with you mean
deal okay hokai was particularly
important in the south island where it
was too cold to grow kumara instead the
hapu of maitahu traded seasonal sources
of kai to keep everyone fed all year
round this kind of utsu based trade is
still important to mini maori today and
it has deep roots in maori history we
already mentioned how tuki made at
wairouba were distributed far and wide
in the earliest phase of maori history
at the same time we find knives made
from obsidian sourced from tsuha mia
island in the bay of plenty those
obsidian blades are spread everywhere
from rakhi ura stuart island to raoul
islands and the kumadeks evidence of
long distance trade is harder to find in
the transitional phase archaeological
evidence shows maori were mostly making
stuff using local resources it's another
sign hapu were becoming more closely
tied to their land when they did trade
it was almost always with closely
related hapu and that makes sense right
you'd only give an iou to someone you
trust and for maori that usually meant
relatives the transitional phase of
maori history never really ended it just
flowed into the traditional phase the
phase maori were in when supaya and cook
landed at tsuranga in 1769
but this wasn't the end of maori
cultural evolution not by a long shot
looking at the oral histories and
material culture plus written european
accounts of maori in the early 1800s
it's clear the culture was still
changing why well for one thing the
climate had changed again by 1650 the
little ice age was ending aotearoa
became warmer and drier
as the kumara zone expanded samhapu
migrated away from heavily populated
northern parts of altearoa we also start
to see more collaboration between
closely related tapu and the growing
importance of wider ewe groups the word
ewi also means bones symbolizing the
deeper connections of hapu they are
typically named after ancestors who
arrived on the first waka to aotearoa
ewe connections became increasingly
important to hapu in the traditional
phase there were also increasing
alliances between ewi as time went on
in the late 1700s or early 1800s the
paramount leader of ngati
pikotserangi got into a major dispute
with other hapu of waikato and maniapoto
in particular ngati apokura pikoterangi
reached out to his relatives and they
reached out to their rallies together
they formed a massive alliance of ewi
and hapu including ati
together they planned an attack on pico
terrangi's enemies in response the hapu
of waikato ngati maniaporto and nati
apakura made an alliance they got ngati
fatsua and hapu of the haudaki gulf
involved too it was a large diverse
alliance of different ewi but they
agreed that in battle they would all
follow the commands of an araki a
paramount leader derunganga
this all ended with the battle of
hinakaka near mutu
this may have been the biggest battle
ever fought in aotearoa it's said to
have involved thousands of warriors some
say as many as sixteen thousand
pikota and his allies had the advantage
of numbers but their leadership was
divided each hapu was commanded
individually by its own rangatira
meanwhile his opponents were unified
under the leadership of terror
so in the end piko tarangi and his
allies were defeated
in the traditional phase from 1500 to
1800 a.d oral histories make increasing
reference to rangatira and their hapu
banding together under the mana of ataki
paramount leaders like
it wasn't just about warfare often
multiple hapu worked together to
celebrate important occasions create new
gardens and build new power and while
these projects were often organized by
ariki decisions were made collectively
the wishes of ariki could be overruled
if their people disagreed with them the
arrival of dupay and james cook marked
the beginning of the end of the
traditional phase and many other things
but it's interesting to imagine what
might have happened if that contact
never happened this was a time of
significant cultural and societal change
for maori who knows where it might have
led but as more and more maori began
speaking working and living with
visiting explorers whalers and
missionaries and altera was pulled into
the expanding british empire maori
society would change once again but
that's a story for a different episode
but for now that's us
[Music]
thanks for watching our show if you want
to know more about the history of maori
and aotearoa before the arrival of
europeans we've put links to some of the
resources we used in the description one
we found particularly useful was tangata
fino an illustrated history by ethel
anderson judith bini and aroha harris
hey kona
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