Various Māori traditions recount how their ancestors set out from a mythical homeland in great ocean-going canoes. Some of these traditions name the homeland as Hawaiki.
Among these is the story of Kupe, who had eloped with Kuramarotini, the wife of Hoturapa, the owner of the great canoe Matahourua, whom Kupe had murdered. To escape punishment for the murder, Kupe and Kura fled in Matahourua and discovered a land he called Aotearoa ('long-white-cloud'). He explored its coast and killed the sea monster Te Wheke-a-Muturangi, finally returning to his home to spread news of his newly discovered land.
Other stories of various other tribes report migrations to escape famine, over-population, and warfare. These were made in legendary canoes, the best known of which are Aotea, Arawa, Kurahaupō, Mataatua, Tainui, Takitimu, and Tokomaru.
In 1892 the Polynesian Society was founded with two main aims: to preserve traditional Māori and Polynesian knowledge and to use that traditional knowledge to interpret Polynesian history. One of driving forces behind the establishment of the Society was S. Percy Smith. He believed that while the Polynesian traditions may have been flawed in detail, they preserved the threads of truth which could be recovered using a method already well established for Hawaiian traditions by Fornander (1878-1885). This method involved seeking out common elements of tradition from different sources, and aligning these to genealogies to give a time frame for the events. Fornander, Smith and others used this method to reconstruct the migrations of the Polynesians, tracing them back to a supposed ancient homeland in India.
S. Percy Smith used the Fornander method, combining disparate traditions from various parts of New Zealand and other parts of Polynesia, to derive a now discredited version of Māori migration to New Zealand -- the 'Great Fleet' hypothesis. Through an examination of the genealogies of various tribes, he came up with a set of precise dates for his 'Great Fleet' and the explorers that he and others posited as having paved the way for the fleet. According to Smith, in A.D. 950 Kupe was the first to discover New Zealand. Several centuries later, in 1350 A.D., Smith proposed, others left Hawaiki in a fleet made up of the famous canoes mentioned above. The great fleet scenario was accepted by some Māori, including Te Rangi Hiroa (Sir Peter Buck), and was taught in New Zealand schools, winning general acceptance until it was exposed as false during the 1970s by David Simmons, who showed that it derived from an incomplete and indiscriminate study of Māori tradition as recorded in the 19th Century. Simmons also suggests that some of these 'migrations' may actually have been journeys within New Zealand.
In fact nowhere in the authentic voyaging traditions is there an account of several canoes all arriving together at one place and time. In fact, the only canoes mentioned in the traditions as having arrived together are Tainui and Arawa. Various traditions name numerous other canoes. Some, including the Araiteuru, are well known; others including the Kiraua and the sacred Arahura and Mahangaatuamatua are little known. Rather than arriving in a single fleet as Smith proposed, the journeys may have occured over several centuries.
- Sources:
- R.D. Craig, Dictionary of Polynesian Mythology (Greenwood Press: New York) 1989, 24-26.
- A. Fornander, An Account of the Polynesian Race 3 volumes. (London: Kegan Paul), 1878-1885.
- T. R. Hiroa (Sir Peter Buck), The Coming of the Maori. Second Edition. First Published 1949. Wellington: Whitcombe and Tombs) 1974.
- G. Irwin, The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific. (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge) 1992.
- D.R. Simmons, The Great New Zealand Myth: a study of the discovery and origin traditions of the Maori (Reed:Wellington) 1976.
- S.P. Smith, History and Traditions of the Maoris of the W. Coast, North Island, New Zealand (New Plymouth: Polynesian Society) 1910.
- R. Walter, R. Moeka'a, History and Traditions of Rarotonga by Te Ariki Tara 'Are, (Auckland: The Polynesian Society) 2000, viii.