The history of the Māori people began with the arrival of Polynesian settlers in New Zealand in a series of ocean migrations in canoes, starting from the late 13th or early 14th centuries. In isolation, the Polynesian settlers developed a distinct Māori culture over time.
Early Māori history is often divided into two periods: the Archaic period () and the Classic period (). Archaeological sites such as Wairau Bar show evidence of early life in Polynesian settlements in New Zealand. Many crops the settlers brought from Polynesia did not grow well in the colder New Zealand climates. However, many native bird and marine species were hunted or collected for food, with some birds hunted to extinction. An increasing population, competition for resources, and changes to the new local climate led to social and cultural changes in the Classic period. A more elaborate art form developed, and a new warrior culture emerged, with fortified villages known as pā. One group of Māori settled in the Chatham Islands in around the 15th century; they created a separate, pacifist culture and became known as the Moriori.
The arrival of Europeans to New Zealand, starting in 1642 with Abel Tasman, brought enormous changes to Māori, who were introduced to Western food, technology, weapons and culture by European settlers, predominantly from Britain. In 1840, the British Crown and many Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, allowing New Zealand to become part of the British Empire and granting Māori the status of British subjects. Initial relations between Māori and Europeans (whom the Māori called "Pākehā") were largely amicable. However, rising tensions over disputed land sales led to conflict in the 1860s and large-scale land confiscations. Social upheaval and virgin-soil epidemics also took a devastating toll on the Māori people, causing their population to decline and their standing in New Zealand to diminish.
By the start of the 20th century, the Māori population had begun to recover, and efforts had been made to increase their social, political, cultural, and economic standing in wider New Zealand society. A protest movement gained support in the 1960s, seeking redress for historical grievances. In the 2013 census, approximately 600,000 people in New Zealand identified as Māori, making up roughly 15 percent of the national population.
Origins from Polynesia
Evidence from genetics, archaeology, linguistics, and physical anthropology indicates that the ancestry of Polynesian people stretches back to indigenous peoples of Taiwan. Language-evolution studies and mtDNA evidence suggest that most Pacific populations originated from Taiwanese indigenous peoples around 5,200 years ago. These Austronesian ancestors moved south to the Philippines, where they settled for some time. From there, some eventually sailed southeast, skirting the northern and eastern fringes of Melanesia along the coasts of Papua New Guinea and the Bismarck Islands to the Solomon Islands, where they again settled, leaving shards of their Lapita pottery behind and picking up a small amount of Melanesian DNA. From there, some migrated down to the western Polynesian islands of Samoa and Tonga. Others island-hopped eastward, all the way from Otong Java in the Solomons to the Society Islands of Tahiti and Raʻiātea (once called Havai'i, or Hawaiki). From there, a succession of migrant waves colonised the rest of eastern Polynesia as far as Hawaiʻi in the north, the Marquesas Islands and Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in the east, and lastly New Zealand in the far south.
Analysis by Kayser et al. (2008) discovered that only 21 per cent of the Māori-Polynesian autosomal gene pool is of Melanesian origin, with the rest (79 per cent) being of East Asian origin. A study by Friedlaender et al. (2008) confirmed that Polynesians are closer genetically to Micronesians, Taiwanese indigenous peoples, and East Asians, than to Melanesians. The study concluded that Polynesians moved through Melanesia relatively rapidly, allowing only limited admixture between Austronesians and Melanesians. The Polynesian population experienced a founder effect and genetic drift. Evidence of an ancestral phase in the southern Philippines comes from the discovery that Polynesians share about 40 percent of their DNA with Filipinos from this area.
Settlement of New Zealand
Māori oral history describes the arrival of their ancestors from Hawaiki in large ocean-going waka (canoes). Hawaiki is the spiritual homeland of many eastern Polynesian societies. It was considered mythical, but researchers think it is a real place – the traditionally important island of Raʻiātea in the Leeward Society Islands (in French Polynesia), which, in the local dialect, was called Havai'i.Buck (1960) Migration accounts vary between iwi, whose members may identify with several of the waka in their genealogies (). The settlers brought with them several species that thrived: the kūmara, taro, yams, gourd, tī, aute (paper mulberry), Polynesian rats () – and Polynesian dogs. It is likely that other species were brought, but did not survive in the cooler climate.
Radiocarbon dating of rat bones and rat-gnawed seeds and woody seed cases in 2008 indicated that rats, and therefore humans, arrived circa 1280. A 2022 study using radiocarbon technology from over 500 archaeological sites found that settlement probably occurred in the North Island between 1250 and 1275, and in the South Island between 1280 and 1295. Confirmed archaeological evidence lags this though, as no human remains, artefacts or structures are confidently dated to earlier than the Kaharoa Tephra, a layer of volcanic debris deposited by the Mount Tarawera eruption around 1314 AD.
A 2017 consideration of archaeological and genetic evidence hypothesised that, regardless of whether or not some settlers arrived earlier, the main settlement period was in the first half of the 14th century, possibly involving a coordinated mass migration. Mitochondrial-DNA (mtDNA) research published in 1998 provided an estimate that the number of women in the founding population was between 50 and 100. A paper in 2005 estimated there must have been at least 190 females, and the 2017 paper postulates that there was a founding population of 500 people, and likely more than that. The scenario of settlement in the first half of the 14th century is consistent with the much debated third line of evidence – traditional genealogies that point to 1350 as a probable arrival date for many of the migratory canoes (waka) from which Māori trace their descent.
Archaic period (c. 1280 – c. 1500)
The earliest period of Māori settlement has been called the "Colonisation phase", "East Polynesian" phase, the "Archaic" period, and the "Moahunter" period. The eastern Polynesian ancestors of the Māori arrived in a forested land with abundant birdlife, including several now extinct moa species weighing between and each. Other species, also now extinct, included the New Zealand swan, the New Zealand goose and the giant Haast's eagle, which preyed upon the moa. Marine mammals – seals in particular – thronged the coasts, with evidence of coastal colonies much further north than those that remain .Irwin (2006), pp 10–18 Huge numbers of moa bones – estimated to be from between 29,000 and 90,000 birds – have been found at the mouth of the Waitaki River, between Timaru and Oamaru on the east coast of the South Island. Further south, at the mouth of the Waihemo / Shag River, evidence suggests that at least 6,000 moa were slaughtered by humans over a relatively short period of time.M King. Penguin History of NZ. Penguin, 2012
Archaeology has shown that the Otago region was the node of Māori cultural development during this time, and the majority of archaic settlements were on or within of the coast. It was common for people to establish small temporary camps far inland for seasonal hunting. Settlements ranged in size from 40 people (e.g., Palliser Bay in Wellington) to between 300 and 400 people, with forty buildings (such as at Shag River).
The best-known and most extensively studied Archaic site is at Wairau Bar in the South Island. The site is similar to eastern Polynesian nucleated villages and is the only New Zealand archaeological site containing the bones of people who were born elsewhere. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal, human bone, moa bone, estuarine shells and moa eggshell has produced a wide range of date estimates, from the early 13th to the early 15th centuries, many of which might be contaminated by "inbuilt age" from older carbon which was eaten or absorbed by the sampled organisms. Due to tectonic forces, including several earthquakes and tsunamis since human arrival, some of the Wairau Bar site is now underwater.McFadgen and Adds (2018) Work on the Wairau Bar skeletons in 2010 showed that life expectancy was very short, the oldest skeleton being 39 and most people dying in their 20s. Most of the adults showed signs of dietary or infection stress. Anaemia and arthritis were common. Infections such as tuberculosis may have been present, as several skeletons had symptoms. On average, the adults were taller than other South Pacific people, at for males and for females.
The Archaic period is remarkable for the lack of weapons and fortifications so typical of the later "Classic" Māori, and for its distinctive "reel necklaces"."Ngā Kākano", Te Papa From this period onward, some 32 species of birds became extinct, either through over-predation by humans and the kiore and (Polynesian Dog) they introduced; repeated burning of the vegetation that changed their habitat; or climate cooling, which appears to have occurred from about 1400–1450. For a short period – less than 200 years – the early Māori diet included an abundance of large birds and fur seals that had never been hunted before. These animals rapidly declined: many, such as the various moa species, the New Zealand swan and the kōhatu shag, becoming extinct, while others, such as kākāpō and seals, were reduced in range and number.
Work by Helen Leach shows that Māori were using about 36 different food plants, although many required detoxification and long periods (12–24 hours) of cooking. D. Sutton's research on early Māori fertility found that first pregnancy occurred at about 20 years and the mean number of births was low, compared with other neolithic societies. The low number of births may have been due to the very low average life expectancy of 31–32 years. Analysis of skeletons at Wairau Bar showed signs of a hard life, with many having had broken bones that had healed. This suggests that the people ate a balanced diet and enjoyed a supportive community that had the resources to support severely injured family members.
A group of Māori migrated east to Rēkohu, now known as the Chatham Islands, probably in the 15th century, possibly in the middle of the century. There they adapted to the local climate and the availability of resources and developed into a people known as the Moriori, related to but distinct from the Māori of mainland New Zealand. A notable feature of Moriori culture was an emphasis on pacifism. When a party of invading North Taranaki Māori arrived in 1835, few of the estimated Moriori population of 2,000 survived; they were killed outright and many were enslaved.
Classic period (c. 1500 – 1768)
The cooling of the climate, confirmed by a detailed tree-ring study near Hokitika, shows a significant, sudden and long-lasting cooler period from about 1500. This coincided with a series of massive earthquakes in the South Island Alpine fault, a major earthquake in about 1460 in the Wellington area, tsunamis that destroyed many coastal settlements, and the extinction of the moa and other food species. These were likely factors that led to sweeping changes in the culture, which developed into the "Classic" Māori culture that was in place at the time of European contact.