Who are the Maori?
The Maori are the aboriginal tribe that inhabits New Zealand. They are thought to have emigrated from the Polynesian Islands to New Zealand in the 500-year period between 800-1300 CE. There is significant evidence that the Maori share many common words with Polynesian languages, as well as retain certain cultural values. The Maori are one of the more successful groups of aboriginal tribes in terms of surviving colonization. Their cultural traditions have withstood incursion by European nations, though many Maori have intermarried with Europeans. This does not mean that the Maori have not had troubles regarding European colonists. Some lands were confiscated by the British during the Maori Land Wars in the 1860s. This Maori population declined shortly after this period and many began to predict that the Maori people would soon become only a distant memory to New Zealand land. Fortunately, this prediction did not come to pass, and the Maori culture rose again. The 20th century brought gr
The indigenous people of New Zealand are the Maori, belonging to the Polynesian group. Between 800 and 1,350 AD, a wave of Polynesians coming from Tonga and Samoa on their canoes settled in New Zealand. The Maori tradition says that a Polynesian chief of the island of Hawaiki, called Ngahua, knowing the abundance of jade in New Zealand, a shiny tough green stone used for making carvings, collars and adornments, headed an expedition made of 8 canoes. Each canoe was 30 m (100 ft) long, harboring over 100 persons. This contingent settled in Te-Ika-a Maui, the Maori name of the northern island of New Zealand, where they made a population nucleus to which new colonizers were soon added. Maori simply means “human” in the Maori language. Maori had large villages comprising wooden houses and formed numerous tribes headed by an old chief. Houses were made of large tree trunks, used as posts and beams.
