Origin The Moriori 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. Traditions of Moriori genealogy and some features of artefacts suggest that some arrivals may have come directly to the Chathams Islands from 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. Artefacts include
obsidian from
Mayor Island and
argillite from Nelson-
Marlborough. The Moriori language is closer to the Maori language than to any other Polynesian language, and the two languages share innovations absent from other Polynesian languages. The time of human arrival in the Chathams is uncertain. It was by at least about 1500 AD, which is the earliest that cultural remains have been
radiocarbon dated to, but artefacts similar to ones that were found in mainland New Zealand and are a century or more older suggest that it was probably earlier. Richards (2019) assumed that it was between 1400 and 1500, and proposed that it was around 1450. The combination of linguistic and skeletal similarities with Māori of the South Island, and prevailing winds and currents, suggest the settlers likely came from south of
Cook Strait. Writer
Michael King suggested that Moriori likely lack genetic diversity, which points to there being only one arrival, possibly with just one canoe. Further guesswork points to that arrival being a trading (not war) canoe or canoes (women must have been on board) from the far south that was blown off course while travelling northwards: it could have been taken eastward along the existing ocean current to the Chathams. Archaeological discoveries imply they settled first on
Pitt Island before moving to
Chatham Island. The Chathams seem to be the last Polynesian islands to have been settled. The
remnants of an oceangoing waka were discovered in August 2024 on the northern coast of Chatham Island and has been dated to around 1440 to 1470. Most of what else is known about the pre-contact Moriori, their culture and language is a matter of conjecture, because so much evidence has been lost. After the 1835 Māori invasion, all Moriori were either killed, died of newly introduced diseases, or were enslaved, and the language and culture of the survivors became intermingled with the
Māori language and society before records were made by Europeans.
Adapting to local conditions The Chathams are colder and less hospitable than the land the original settlers left behind, and although abundant in resources, these were different from those available where they had come from. The Chathams proved unsuitable for the cultivation of most crops known to Polynesians, and the Moriori adopted a
hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Food was almost entirely marine-sourced – protein and fat from fish,
fur seals, and the fatty young of sea birds. The islands supported about 2,000 people. This lifestyle is confirmed by early European accounts, with one recording that: ''|alt= Lacking resources of cultural significance such as
greenstone and plentiful timber, they found outlets for their ritual needs in the carving of
dendroglyphs (incisions into tree trunks, called
rakau momori). Typically, most Moriori dendroglyphs depict a human form, but there are also other patterns depicting fish and birds. Some of these carvings are protected by the
Hāpūpū / J M Barker Historic Reserve.
European contact (1791–1835) The Moriori lived in isolation from the outside world until 1791, when the first Europeans arrived. They were the crew of , which arrived by chance on 29 November 1791 while on its voyage to the northern Pacific from England, via
Dusky Sound. The ''Chatham's
captain, William R. Broughton, named the island after John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham and claimed it for Great Britain. The landing party came to shore in Kaingaroa Harbour on the far Northeast coast of Chatham Island. The Moriori retreated into the forest when the Europeans landed. Seventy years later the Europeans would be recalled in Moriori oral tradition as containing the god of fire, given the pipes they were smoking, and likely female from the clothes they were wearing. It was this interpretation that led to the men returning from the forest to meet the landing party. A brief period of hostility was quickly calmed by the crew putting gifts on the end of Moriori spears, though attempts at trade were unsuccessful. After exploring the area for water the crew again became fearful of Moriori aggression. Some misunderstanding led to an escalation of violence and one Moriori was shot and killed. HMS Chatham'' then left the island with all its crew. Both the diary of Broughton and local oral tradition record that both sides regretted the incident and to some extent blamed themselves for overreacting. It was this regret in part that led to good relations when the next ships arrived in the islands sometime between 1804 and 1807. They were
sealers from Sydney and word of their welcome soon gave the Moriori a reputation of being friendly. During this time at least one Moriori visited the New Zealand mainland and returned home with knowledge of the
Māori. As more ships came, sealing gangs were also left behind on the islands for months at a time. Sealers and
whalers soon made the islands a centre of their activities, competing for resources with the native population. Pigs and potatoes were introduced to the islands. However, the seals that had religious significance and provided food and clothing to the Moriori were all but wiped out. European men intermarried with Moriori. Māori arrivals created their own village at Wharekauri which became the Māori name for the Chatham Islands. The local population was estimated at 1,600 in the mid-1830s with about 10% and 20% of the population having died from infectious diseases such as influenza.
Invasion by Taranaki Māori (1835–1868) mats around the waist and shoulders, feathers on the front of the head, and albatross tufts in their beards. In 1835 some
Ngāti Mutunga and
Ngāti Tama, originally from
Taranaki, but living in
Wellington for about a decade, invaded the Chathams. On 19 November 1835, the brig
Lord Rodney, a hijacked A Moriori survivor recalled: "[The Taranaki invaders] commenced to kill us like sheep.... [We] were terrified, fled to the bush, concealed ourselves in holes underground, and in any place to escape our enemies. It was of no avail; we were discovered and killed – men, women and children indiscriminately." A Taranaki Māori conqueror explained, "We took possession... in accordance with our customs and we caught all the people. Not one escaped....." The invaders ritually killed some 10% of the population. During the following enslavement the Taranaki Māori invaders forbade the speaking of the Moriori language. They forced Moriori to desecrate their sacred sites by urinating and defecating on them. Moriori were forbidden to marry Moriori or the Taranaki Māori, or to have children with each other. This was different from the customary form of
slavery practised on mainland New Zealand. However, many Moriori women had children by their Māori masters. A small number of Moriori women eventually married either Māori or European men. Some were taken from the Chathams and never returned. In 1842 a small party of Māori and their Moriori slaves migrated to the subantarctic
Auckland Islands, surviving for some 20 years on sealing and flax growing. Only 101 Moriori out of a population of about 2,000 were left alive by 1862, making the Moriori genocide one of the
deadliest in history by percentage of the victim group.
Dispersal and assimilation , acknowledged as the last Moriori of unmixed ancestry The Moriori were free from slavery by the end of the 1860s which gave them opportunities for self determination, but their small population led to a gradual dilution of their culture. Only a handful of men still understood the
Moriori language and culture from before the invasion. The younger generation spoke Māori, while still identifying themselves as Moriori. While attempts were made to record the Moriori culture for posterity, it was generally believed that it would never again be a living way of life. By 1900 there would only be twelve people in the Chatham Islands who identified themselves as Moriori. Although the last Moriori of unmixed ancestry,
Tommy Solomon, died in 1933, there are several thousand mixed ancestry Moriori alive today. In the
2001 New Zealand census, 585 people identified as Moriori. The population increased to 942 in the
2006 census and declined to 738 in the
2013 census. The
2018 census estimated the Moriori population as 996.
Waitangi Tribunal claim In the late 1980s some Moriori descendants made claims against the New Zealand government through the
Waitangi Tribunal. The Tribunal is charged with making recommendations on claims brought by Māori relating to actions or omissions of
the Crown in the period since 1840 that breach the promises made in the
Treaty of Waitangi. These claims were the first time the Tribunal had to choose between competing claims of two indigenous groups. The main focus of the claim was the British annexation of the islands in 1842, the inaction of the Government to reports of Moriori being kept in slavery and the awarding of 97% of the islands to
Ngāti Mutunga in 1870 by the
Native Land Court. In 1992, while the Moriori claim was active, the
Sealords fisheries deal ceded a third of New Zealand's fisheries to Māori, but prevented any further treaty fishery claims. This occurred against the backdrop of Māori, Moriori and
Pākehā Chatham Islanders all competing for fishing rights, while working together to exclude international and mainland interests. Therefore, it was believed that the result of the Tribunal's verdict on the ownership of the Chatham Islands may improve the Moriori ability to acquire some of the allotted fishing rights from the Sealords deal. The Moriori claims were heard between May 1994 and March 1996 and the verdict was strongly in favour of the Moriori case. This led to an NZ$18 million deal between the Crown and Moriori in 2017. The two parties signed a Deed of Settlement on 13 August 2019. In November 2021, the New Zealand Parliament passed the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill, which completed the Treaty of Waitangi process of the Moriori. Under the terms of the legislation, the settlement package includes a formal Crown apology, the transfer of culturally and spiritually significant lands to Moriori as cultural redress, financial compensation of NZ$18 million, and shared redress such as the vesting of 50 percent of
Te Whanga Lagoon. ==Culture and marae==