Ancestors of the Moriori

From Moriori: A People Rediscovered, by Michael King (Penguin, 2017), Kindle Loc. 192ff., 249ff.: THE CHATHAMS — FOUR MAIN ISLANDS AND AN OUTLYING GROUP OF rocks and reefs — constitute the ridge of a submarine mountain known to geologists as the East Chatham Rise. They break the surface of the Pacific Ocean 870 kilometres east of New Zealand, bisected by the latitude 44° South. This location and the convergence there of warm currents from the north and cold water from the south produces the islands’ climate and weather: almost incessant wind (the ‘Roaring Forties’), near-constant cloud cover, low sunshine hours, wet winters and humid summers. The Moriori had a variety of myths to account for their presence on these islands, the largest of which they referred to as Rekohu — ‘misty sky’ or ‘misty sun’. The most common recalled an ancestor named Kahu, who sailed the first canoe there from a homeland some remembered as Aotea. Kahu found the islands in an unsettled state. He joined up…

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