Six Hundred Years Ago

Maori Canoe Fleet Reached NZ

IjiROM September 22 to 24 celebrations 1 were held at Whakatane, New Zealand, to mark the 600th anni versary of the arrival of the canoe, Mataa tua. About 4,000 Maoris attended, and competitions were held amongst tribes all over New Zealand in poi dancing, hakas. action songs, and similar events.

The celebrations were held at Wairaka Pa. where the main ceremonies were com bined with the unveiling of a memorial gate at the Pa to commemorate Maori soldiers who died in the Boer War and the two World Wars.

The tribes involved in these celebrations were those from the Urewera, Whakatane and Oootiki districts.

Although there were Polynesian immi grants in New Zealand before 1350, in cluding the famous and legendary Toi-kai-rakau (about 1150) they are con sidered to have been in all probability drift voyagers. But the big migration of 1350 was a planned migration from Tahiti, using Rarotonga as a port of call.

Sir Peter Buck <Te Rangi Hiroa) in his Coming of the Maori—that indispensable book —considers these famous canoes to have been capable of sailing seven miles an hour, so that they could have done the full 2,000 miles in a fortnight, and if the canoes called at Rarotonga, the final stretch would have been further reduced, so that “the unconcern with which the Maori traditions brought the Fleet to New Zealand offers a contrast with the con cern expressed by European writers,” Sir Peter also considers the canoes quite capable of carrying ample provisions and water.

Cook, of course, noted the excellent sea going canoes of Tahiti when he was there in 1769. Anyway, the South-East trades would have brought them as far as the Kermadecs, after which their deep sea paddles would have come into strenuous use, plied by those muscular, disciplined arms.

Other canoes of the 1350 migration cele brated in Maori song and story include

the Nukutere, Tainui, Te Arawa, Toko maru, Aotea, and Kurahaupo.

Says the Encyclopaedia Britannica: “For general culture the most important, clement in the Maori population is pro vided by the Fleet of 1350, and on this the present social organisation largely de pends.”—H.E.L.P.

M. Henri Bonneaud, president of the New Caledonian General Council since 1947, has been recommended for the Legion d’Honneur. He is general manager of Maison Ballande and a vice-president of the Noumea Chamber of Commerce.