Nz’S Earliest Inhabitants
p. 67 · Read in the full issue
FROM a document sent us recently by Mr. P. S. Allen (editor of Stewarts Handbook of the Pacific, which ceased publication in 1921) it appears that there is quite a literature in exist ence on the subject of the Moriori people —a strange and little-known race which inhabited New Zealand prior to the coming of the Maori, and a remnant of which exists still in the Chatham Islands —that bleak and unattractive group which lies some 300 miles south-east of New Zealand. Mr. Allen has supplied a list of books and papers, dealing more or less directly with the Moriori race, and apparently complete up to about 1920.
There are over 50 such references, and they extend from “The Log Book of the Tender Chatham” (1791-1795) up to 1919.
There was a lot of scientific interest in the Monoris, at one time; but now, like the Tasmanian aborigines, they have almost passed into the limbo of forgotten things. There were 1,200 of them in the Chathams m 1791. but they practically disappeared in the 19th century as the result of subsequent Maori immigration.