Moriori tree carving, or
dendroglyph, in the Chatham Islands The first human inhabitants of the Chatham Islands are the Moriori. They are descended from the East
Polynesians who settled New Zealand and from whom the
Māori also descended. A group of New Zealand Polynesians migrated from mainland New Zealand to the Chatham Islands, probably in the 15th century. Traditions of Moriori genealogy and some features of artefacts suggest that some arrivals may have come directly to the Chathams Islands from tropical East Polynesia. The Chathams are no further from
Rarotonga than the
Coromandel coast is, and it is possible that they were settled separately during the Polynesian exploration of the South Pacific, with most of the immigrants coming from New Zealand later. It is clear from artefacts and linguistic evidence that the final migration was from New Zealand. The plants cultivated on mainland New Zealand were ill-suited for the colder Chathams, so the Moriori lived as
hunter-gatherers and fishermen. While the islands lacked suitable trees for building ocean-going craft for long voyages, the Moriori invented the
waka kōrari, a semi-submerged craft constructed of flax and lined with air bladders from kelp. This craft was used to travel to the outer islands on 'birding' missions. After generations of warfare, bloodshed was outlawed by the chief
Nunuku-whenua and Moriori society became peaceful. Disputes were resolved by consensus or by duels in which, at the first sign of bloodshed, the fight was deemed over. The population before European contact was about 2,000. Maui Solomon, chair of the Moriori Imi Settlement Trust, has no doubt that it is a "Moriori ancestral waka" that brought some of his ancestors to the islands hundreds of years ago. The question of ownership of the waka is before the
Māori Land Court, with the
Ministry for Culture and Heritage working with all stakeholders on "their future aspirations for the waka". The report
He Waka Tipua, issued by an expert panel after visiting the site in April 2025, concluded that the waka was of pre-European construction and likely to originate in a period before there came to be significant cultural separation between New Zealand and inhabitants of the wider Pacific. However, more detailed conclusions about the exact age and size of the waka depend on the recovery of the 90–95 per cent that remains buried.
Early European arrival The name "Chatham Islands" comes from the name for the main island, which itself gets its name from
John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham, who was the
First Lord of the Admiralty in 1791, when reached the island. The ship, whose captain was
William R. Broughton, was part of the
Vancouver Expedition. The crew landed on the island on 29 November 1791 and claimed possession for Great Britain. Following a misunderstanding, Broughton's men shot and killed a Moriori resident of Kaingaroa, named
Torotoro (or Tamakororo). Chatham Islands date their anniversary on 29 November, and observe it on the nearest Monday to 30 November.
Sealers and
whalers soon started hunting in the surrounding ocean with the islands as their base. It is estimated that 10 to 20 per cent of the indigenous Moriori soon died from diseases introduced by foreigners. The sealing and whaling industries ceased activities about 1861, while fishing remained as a major economic activity. The local
Moriori received and initially cared for the incoming Māori. A Māori chief, Te Rakatau Katihe, said in the
Native Land Court in 1870: "We took possession ... in accordance with our custom, and we caught all the people. Not one escaped. Some ran away from us, these we killed; and others also we killed – but what of that? It was in accordance with our custom. I am not aware of any of our people being killed by them." After the killings, Moriori were forbidden to marry Moriori, or to have children with each other. Māori kept Moriori
slaves until 1863, when slavery was abolished by proclamation of the
resident magistrate.) the French whaling vessel
Jean Bart anchored off Waitangi to trade with the Māori. The number of Māori boarding frightened the French, escalating into a confrontation in which the French crew were killed and the
Jean Bart was run aground at Ocean Bay, to be ransacked and burned by Ngāti Mutunga. When word of the incident reached the French naval corvette
Heroine in the Bay of Islands in September 1838, it set sail for the Chathams, accompanied by the whalers
Adele and
Rebecca Sims. The French arrived on 13 October and, after unsuccessfully attempting to entice some Ngāti Tama aboard, proceeded to bombard Waitangi. The next morning about a hundred armed Frenchmen went ashore, burning buildings, destroying
waka, and seizing pigs and potatoes. The attacks mostly affected Ngāti Tama, weakening their position relative to Ngāti Mutunga. In 1840, Ngāti Mutunga decided to
attack Ngāti Tama at their pā. They built a high staging next to the
pā so they could fire down on their former allies. Fighting was still in progress when the New Zealand Company ship
Cuba arrived as part of a scheme to buy land for settlement. The
Treaty of Waitangi, at that stage, did not apply to the islands. The company negotiated a truce between the two warring tribes. In 1841, the New Zealand Company had proposed to establish a German colony on the Chathams. The proposal was discussed by the directors, and the secretary of the company John Ward signed an agreement with
Karl Sieveking of
Hamburg on 12 September 1841. The price was set at £10,000. However, when the British
Colonial Office stated that the islands were to be part of the
Colony of New Zealand and any Germans settling there would be treated as
aliens,
Joseph Somes claimed that Ward had been acting on his own initiative. The proposed leader John Beit and the expedition went to
Nelson instead. The company was then able to acquire large areas of land at Port Hutt (which the Māori called
Whangaroa) and
Waitangi from Ngāti Mutunga and also large areas of land from Ngāti Tama. This did not stop Ngāti Mutunga from trying to get revenge upon Ngāti Tama for the earlier death of one of their chiefs. They were satisfied after they killed the brother of a Ngāti Tama chief. The tribes agreed to an uneasy peace, which was formally confirmed in 1842. Reluctant to give up slavery, Matioro and his people chartered a brig in late 1842 and sailed to
Auckland Island. While Matioro was surveying the island, two of the chiefs who had accompanied him decided the island was too inhospitable for settlement, and set sail before he had returned, stranding him and his 50 followers.
Pākehā settlers arrived in 1849 and Matioro and most of his people moved to
Stewart Island in 1854. An all-male group of German
Moravian missionaries arrived in 1843. When a group of women were sent out to join them three years later, several marriages ensued; a few members of the present-day population can trace their ancestry back to those missionary families. In 1865, the Māori leader
Te Kooti was exiled on the Chatham Islands along with a large group of Māori rebels called the Hauhau, followers of
Pai Mārire who had murdered missionaries and fought against government forces mainly on the East Coast of the North Island of New Zealand. The rebel prisoners were paid one shilling a day to work on sheep farms owned by the few European settlers. Sometimes they worked on road and track improvements. They were initially guarded by 26 guards, half of whom were Māori. They lived in
whare along with their families. The prisoners helped build a redoubt of stone surrounded by a ditch and wall. Later, they built three stone prison cells. In 1868 Te Kooti and the other prisoners commandeered a schooner and escaped back to the North Island. Almost all the Māori returned to Taranaki in the 1860s, some after a
tsunami in 1868.
1880s to today The economy of the Chatham Islands, then dominated by the export of wool, suffered under the
international depression of the 1880s, only rebounding with the building of fish freezing plants at the island villages of
Ōwenga and
Kaingaroa in 1910. Construction of the first wharf at Waitangi began in 1931 with completion in 1934. On 25 November 1940, during the Second World War, the German auxiliary cruisers
Komet and
Orion captured and then sank the Chatham Islands supply ship the
Holmwood, so the wharf saw little use by ships. A flying-boat facility was built at
Te Whanga Lagoon soon after; a flying boat service to and from the Chathams continued till 1966 when it was replaced with conventional aircraft. After the Second World War, the island economy suffered again from its isolation and government subsidies became necessary. This led to many young Chatham Islanders leaving for the mainland. There was a brief crayfish boom, which helped stabilise the economy in the late 1960s and early 1970s. From the early 2000s cattle became a major component of the local economy.
Moriori community The Moriori community is organised as the
Hokotehi Moriori Trust. The Moriori have received recognition from the
Crown and the New Zealand government and some of their claims against those institutions for the generations of neglect and oppression have been accepted and acted on. Moriori are recognised as the original people of
Rekohu. The Crown also recognised the
Ngāti Mutunga Māori as having indigenous status in the Chathams by right of around 160 years of occupation. The total population of the islands is around 600, including members of both ethnic groups. In January 2005, the Moriori celebrated the opening of the new
Kopinga Marae (meeting house). Modern descendants of the 1835 Māori conquerors claimed a share in ancestral Māori fishing rights. This claim was granted. Now that the primordial population, the Moriori, have been recognised to be former Māori—over the objections of some of the Ngāti Mutunga—they too share in the ancestral Māori fishing rights. Both groups have been granted fishing quotas. ==Geography==