Polynesian navigators settle the Chatham Islands

1260

Polynesian voyagers from New Zealand, themselves recent arrivals, sailed east and discovered the remote Chatham Islands in the cold waters of the Pacific. The Moriori, as their descendants became known, adapted to a colder climate by developing a unique pacifist culture and marine-based diet distinct from their Maori cousins. Their renunciation of warfare, formalized in a covenant attributed to the chief Nunuku, would prove tragically insufficient when Maori raiders arrived in the nineteenth century.