Moriori Hospitality

From Moriori: A People Rediscovered, by Michael King (Penguin, 2017), Kindle Loc. 867ff.: Whatever provocations the Moriori might have endured, there is no record of their ever again breaking the law of Nunuku (or, at least, not by killing Europeans. There is a story of one Chatham Islander who killed a relative in the early 1800s after a disagreement over a woman. He was subsequently ostracised by his people — social and spiritual death for a tribal person — and committed suicide by jumping down the blowhole at Mairangi. All of which serves to illustrate how highly the law of non-violence was valued). The Chathams preserved its reputation as a safe place to visit and provision. Danger from other than natural causes was more likely to come from renegade Europeans than from Moriori. … New Zealand Maori, too, had visited the islands during the sealing period, having joined vessels as crew in the Bay of Islands, Cook Strait, Port Nicholson, and from the South Island. Some of these became…

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