Moriori are Polynesians who came from the New Zealand mainland around 1500 CE, [4][5] which was close to the time of the shift from the archaic to the classic period of Polynesian Māori culture on the mainland. [6][7] Oral tradition records migration to the Chathams in the 16th century. [8][9] The settlers' culture diverged from mainland ...

Isolated from mainland New Zealand, Moriori developed a unique culture based on a law of peace. This was called Nunuku’s Law, after the ancestor Nunuku- whenua. After seeing bloody conflict between the Hamata people and later arrivals, he …

Mar 6, 2018 · For hundreds of years, they lived a pacifist, hunter-gatherer existence—until, in 1835, members of two Māori tribes from mainland New Zealand arrived on the island, killed between a sixth and a...

As historian Michael King wrote in his 1989 book Moriori: A People Rediscovered: Nobody in New Zealand — and few elsewhere in the world — has been subjected to group slander as intense and as damaging as that heaped upon the Moriori.

The Moriori are the indigenous people of Rēkohu (Chatham Island) and Rangihaute (Pitt Island), the two largest islands in the Chatham group, 767 km south-east of mainland New Zealand. It was once believed that Moriori were a Melanesian people, but it …

The Moriori genocide was the mass murder, enslavement, and cannibalism [1] of the Moriori people, the indigenous ethnic group of the Chatham Islands, by members of the mainland Māori New Zealand iwi Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama from 1835 to 1863.

Moriori, native inhabitants of the Chatham Islands of New Zealand. They are a Polynesian people whose language and culture are related to those of the Maori. Scholars place their migration to the Chatham Islands from New Zealand in the early 16th century.

Aug 3, 2018 · There were a pre-Māori people in New Zealand, called the Moriori. When Māori arrived in the country they set about obliterating these peaceful Moriori inhabitants until not a single Moriori...

Mar 6, 2025 · The Moriori people were the first settlers of the Chatham Islands, which they reached after sailing east from mainland New Zealand around 1500. Solomon notes that the waka’s design aligns with...

Although the Moriori are close relatives of the Māori, they have distinct features which indicate an independent colonisation from tropical Polynesia. These first settlers were said to be descended from Te Aomarama and Rongomaiwhenua (which is Moriori for Sky Father and Earth Mother).