Sidestep: Polynesian Voyagers

This is part of an old and long article by the well known Elsdon Best so I thought I'd copy parts of it that related to reaching NZ..

POLYNESIAN VOYAGERS: The Maori As A Deep-Sea Navigator, Explorer, And Colonizer.

By ELSDON BEST.

The Far-Spread Polynesian Race:

Unroll the world's map and look upon the vast area of the Pacific Ocean - the Mare Pacificum and Mar del Sur of old-time writers, the Great Ocean of Kiwa of the Maori, the realm of romance and home of the Lotus-eaters. Examine the island groups, note their names, and mark this: that from the southern point of New Zealand (about 45° south latitude) to the Sandwich Isles, far north of the Line; from lone Easter Isle, under the rising sun, even to a point near the Ellice Group, in the west, the whole of the isles contained in this great area are peopled by the Maori folk - the light-coloured Polynesian race, speaking various dialects of a common tongue. Moreover, outside of this area you may locate Polynesian colonies at Tikopia, the Loyalty Group, the New Hebrides, as also at many other places, even to the far-flung Caroline Islands.

How is it that we find the Maori inhabiting these far-separated isles athwart the Great Pacific? How comes it that legends and old-time genealogies are held in common by many scattered folk? How can we explain the fact that the Maori of New Zealand has preserved island and place names of central and eastern Polynesia, and that the brown-skinned men of the Society and Cook Groups can tell of the peopling of New Zealand in times long passed away? The Polynesian was probably the most fearless neolithic navigator the world has seen; and that he has visited nearly every isle that flecks the heaving breast of Hine-moana, the Ocean Maid.

Intrepid Polynesian Voyagers:

It is clear that two great causes have led to the settlement of the Polynesians over such a vast area of the Pacific Ocean - viz., voyages of exploration and colonization, and drift voyages. According to tradition the first settlers in the isles of New Zealand were castaways who drifted to these shores many centuries ago. In regard to voyages of exploration, it is absolutely necessary for the reader to grasp the Polynesian point of view, and to erase from his mind that of our European progenitors, who, for many centuries, feared to lose sight of the land. The Polynesian was the champion explorer of unknown seas of neolithic times. For, look you, for long centuries the Asiatic tethered his ships to his continent ere he gained courage to take advantage of the six months' steady wind across the Indian Ocean; the Carthaginian crept cautiously down the West African coast, tying his vessel to a tree each night lest he should go to sleep and lose her; your European got nervous when the coast-line became dim, and Columbus felt his way over the Western Ocean while his half-crazed crew whined to their gods to keep them from falling over the edge of the world: but the Polynesian voyager, the naked savage, shipless and metalless, hewed him out a log dugout with a sharpened stone, tied some planks to the sides thereof with a string, put his wife, children, some coconuts, and a pet pig on board, and sailed forth upon the great ocean to settle a lone isle two thousand miles away - and did it. " When we come to consider," says S. Percy Smith, in his "Geographical Knowledge of the Polynesians," " that the whole of this vast space of ocean, an area of four thousand by four thousand five hundred miles, was in former times traversed by various branches of the Polynesian race, and that they had no leading coast-lines to follow, but must have steered boldly out into the ocean with but a small extent of land as an objective, after weeks of sail, we cannot but acknowledge that, as bold navigators, the Polynesians were far before any nation of antiquity in this art." The late William Churchill has written most interestingly of the eastward voyages of the dauntless sea-rovers of long-past centuries. He speaks of secondary bands of sea migrants pushing through the earlier settlements: " In these voyages the canoe fleets pushed out to the eastward, to Rarotonga, the Cook, the Gambier, the Hervey Groups, to Tahiti, to the archipelago of the Paumotu, to remote Easter Island, ever eastward until land upon the trackless sea failed their daring keels, not courage their stout hearts." (See Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol. 15, p. 96.)

In addition to the above we know that these old voyagers ventured outside the Polynesian area, certainly as far as New Caledonia and the Solomons. Again, Captain Cook expressed his surprise at finding a people speaking various dialects of a common tongue occupying so vast an area of the Pacific Ocean - an area stated by him to be twelve hundred leagues in extent from north to south, and sixteen hundred leagues east and west. This latter extent would be from Easter Island westward to the Gilbert Group; though one group of the Melanesian area, the Fiji Isles, intrudes upon this domain. It is quite possible that drift objects, flotsam of the ocean, have had some influence on the adventurous seafarers of Polynesia, and may have led to voyages being made in search of other lands. Thus we know that, in former times, logs of Oregon pine were cast ashore at the Hawaiian Isles; that logs of Australian timber have reached the shores of New Zealand; that a foreign canoe-paddle was picked up on the Rangitikei beach. Many other drift objects must have caused speculation in past times among the denizens of the island system. The flights of migratory birds, such as the cuckoo and godwit of New Zealand, may have had a similar effect.

Throughout this Polynesian area most of the islands are occupied by members of that race, and on most of the small ones not so inhabited signs of former occupation have been found. Thus, on Norfolk Island, north-west of New Zealand, which was uninhabited when discovered, stone implements of the Polynesian type have been found; and the same may be said of Sunday Island, of the Kermadec Group, in the same latitude north-east of New Zealand. Searle's Island was found uninhabited in I797, but the tokens of former occupancy were seen, and thirty years later Beechey found it inhabited. A couple of years ago the remains of a stone building, or foundation, 200 ft. long, were found on Fanning Island (about 4° north of the Equator), and similar remains on lone Suwarrow (about 13° S. latitude) are described by Sterndale. Lord Hood's Island, north of the Gambier Isles, was once inhabited, according to Krusenstern, and Beechey found a stone walled hut upon it. Beechey found Whitsunday Island uninhabited, but found huts thereon, and small reservoirs for the collection and preservation of fresh water cut in the coral rock. Wallis found Queen Charlotte's Island inhabited and well stocked with coconut-trees; Beechey in later years found it with no population and minus the trees. Pitcairn Island, south-east of the Gambier Isles, was uninhabited when the mutineers of the " Bounty " reached it, but stone erections of a former population were found thereon. This list might be lengthened considerably. When we find these signs of former occupation of small lone islets and atolls now without people, and study the very numerous traditions of former voyagings preserved by the natives of various groups, and note the Polynesian isle names known to the Maori of New Zealand and the legends common to far-scattered groups, then we can only believe that the Polynesian people were bold, confident navigators, capable of traversing a great extent of open ocean in their somewhat primitive craft.

The number of long voyages recorded in the traditions of divers groups are of much interest, and a certain amount of confirmation is to hand: for example, the voyages made from the Society Group to New Zealand, twenty generations ago, are still known to the natives of Rarotonga and Tahiti; the names of some of the vessels have been preserved in those isles. This was a voyage of over two thousand miles, the course being from Tahiti to Rarotonga, thence to the North Island of New Zealand. On this latter stretch some of the vessels called at Sunday Island, Kermadec Group, known as Rangitahua to the natives of New Zealand and Rarotonga. At one time the tropical region of Polynesia must have been very frequently traversed by voyagers, who, as Mr. S. Percy Smith has written, " guided themselves by the regular roll of the waves driven before the trade-winds in the daytime, and by the stars at night."

We are aware that voyagers to New Zealand did in some cases use Sunday Island as a stopping-place, and Colonel Gudgeon states that another isle once existed between Rarotonga and New Zealand, possibly at the reef shown on some maps at about lat. 27°S., long. 170°W. This would have been a welcome place of call, for it is situated half-way between Rarotonga and Sunday Island. Another lost island was that known as Tuanaki, an inhabited islet south of Rarotonga. Colonel Gudgeon states that the Haymet Reef, situated south of Rarotonga, is supposed to represent, or be a part of, the lost isle of Tuanaki. On a map of Polynesia at the Dominion Museum an islet, reef, or shoal a little north-west of Haymet Reef is queried as Tuanaki, thus - " ? Tuanahe." The same authority also informs us that, according to native tradition at Rarotonga, the Beveridge Reef was once a fine isle, with many coconut-palms growing thereon, but that it was swept bare by a fierce hurricane, which carried away both trees and soil, leaving nothing but the bare rock.

The Rev. Mr. West, in his Ten Years in South Central Polynesia, gives a long account of the destructive volcanic disturbances that have taken place in the Tongan Group during the past century. On the 7th November, 1837, an immense earthquake-wave from the west coast of South America swept across the Pacific as far as the Bonin Isles. On the east coast of Hawaii the water rose 20 ft. above high-water mark, swept villages away, and destroyed many lives. It is quite possible that volcanic disturbances have been the cause of movements of peoples in the Pacific to some extent. The Takitimu folk of the east coast of our North Island have preserved a tradition that, about eight generations prior to the coming of the Takitimu canoe from eastern Polynesia, a volcano named Maunga-nui, at or near Rangiatea (Ra'iatea), was destroyed by a terrific explosion. At the same time an extensive tract of land called Whainga-roa was submerged by the sea, in which disaster whole tribes perished, one of which was named Ngati-Kaiperu. This would be about the year 1200. Possibly it is a myth; and, in any case, the native love of exaggeration must be borne in mind.

Some of the voyages made to New Zealand by Polynesian voyagers were those of adventurers who in some cases settled here, and in others returned to the northern isles. Some, like Tamatea of Takitimu, were attracted here as settlers by the fame of Aotea-roa as a fertile land, its humid climate, and its food-supplies; but the majority probably came here to find a peaceful home away from the intertribal quarrels of Polynesia. We are told in tradition that some tribal remnants fled hither to escape annihilation, and that some came here in order to attain a position of influence denied them in their former homes.

The Occupation Of Polynesia:

Very little has been preserved of these remote times and movements, as must be expected among a scriptless people; when we come to more modern times we have much more data to work upon. In his work Hawaiki Mr. S. Percy Smith states his belief that the Polynesians had reached the Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa Groups by about the fifth century A.D., and that the Samoans and Tongans are descendants of a first migration, a secondary one sojourning in Fiji for some time, whence it settled many of the isles farther east. He traces the ancestors of the Polynesians from India by way of Java, Celebes, Ceram, Gilolo, New Guinea, the Solomons, &c., and so on into Polynesia proper east of the Fiji Group. In a later publication (see Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol. 22) he seems to show that one migration, that of Ira-panga, crossed the North Pacific to the Sandwich Isles.

Who Preceded The Polynesians?:

The unsatisfactory part of all these traditions and the deductions drawn therefrom is that nothing is said as to what folk inhabited the isles of Polynesia at the time when the ancestors of the present inhabitants broke into the sunlit sea. If those voyagers did not reach this island system until the fifth century A.D., it is assuredly too much to expect us to believe that it was unoccupied at that period. Man has been a long time upon the face of the earth, and drift vessels, if nothing else, would have brought him into this area. Either the present Polynesians have been here much longer than we wot of, or there was a prior people in the isles.

What folk occupied Polynesia in 5000 B.C.? The question is one of much interest, but apparently unanswerable. Haply the unknown folk who left their mysterious written records and huge stone statues on lone Easter Isle dominated some part of it, until exterminated by the ancestors of the present inhabitants. Or perchance the Manahune, that elusive and unknown people of whom we hear dim traditions from the Sandwich Isles to Maoriland, may have been no mythical folk, but the pre-Maori population of Polynesia. The mystery of Easter Island, that outlying unit of the island system situated on the 110th parallel of west longitude, and looking eastward to South America across a lone ocean, is a fascinating one, for here alone of all the many isles of Polynesia do we meet with a system of written characters, unlike any other known script, and still undeciphered. These are said to have been the work of a " long-eared " folk found in possession of the island by the Polynesians many generations ago, and by them destroyed. Apparently these " Long Ears," as the invaders termed them, were a neolithic people of a different race from the Polynesians; one conjecture being that they originally came from South America. There is no evidence to show that they ever occupied any other island than Easter Island. Fornander notes several cases of the discovery of human relics at the Hawaiian (Sandwich) Isles beneath volcanic sands and coral rock, showing that man must have dwelt there in times long passed away; whereas local traditions of that group go back for only twenty-eight generations, much the same as in New Zealand.

Inter-Island Voyages:

The above writer came to the conclusion that the Polynesians entered the Pacific during the second century of the present era; that they settled the Hawaiian Group about the fifth century; and that, about the eleventh century, there was frequent intercourse between the Hawaiian and southern groups. Again, he writes, " The indications that the various Pacific groups were inhabited at the time that the Polynesians occupied them are very faint indeed, and yet the import of some of their traditions cannot be otherwise construed. That the majority of the groups were uninhabited at the time referred to seems to me quite clear, but I think it is equally clear also that the people which left their architectural remains on the Ladrone Islands, and their colossal statues on Easter Island, had swept the Pacific Ocean before that time, and possibly may have left some remnants of themselves to which the traditions refer, but which were absorbed or expelled by the newcomers." Hale and other early observers enlarge upon the spirit of bold adventure that animated the Polynesians in their time, stating how ready they were to ship on whaling-ships and other craft for long voyages, in which manner many visited America, Australia, and Europe, whereas the Melanesians showed no such spirit, and were loth to leave their island homes. Hale remarks: " The Polynesians are a race of navigators, and often undertake long voyages in vessels in which our own sailors would hesitate to cross a harbour." Cook, on his first voyage, brought a Tahitian to New Zealand, whose name is yet preserved by our Maori folk; and, on his third voyage, took several Maoris from here to Tahiti, and from that time the Maori of New Zealand was seen in many lands.

Mr. S. Percy Smith, who has translated and worked out many old traditions preserved by the natives of Rarotonga, shows that about the seventh century the Polynesians made long voyages of exploration, and, in the words of the tradition, visited every place in the world - that is to say, of the world as they knew it. Among the groups visited at that time were the Fiji, Navigator, Marquesas, Sandwich, Tonga, Paumotu, Society, Austral, and Cook Archipelagos, and possibly the New Hebrides, thus including an area of some four thousand miles across. One of these exploring-vessels went far south until it encountered the frozen sea of the Antarctic. Tangihia, another Polynesian voyager, made a much longer voyage about the thirteenth century. The traditions of the Samoans show that there was frequent intercourse between Samoa and Fiji, and it is known that Samoans settled the isle of Rarotonga in past centuries. The Tongans are shown to have raided the New Hebrides and New Caledonia, in the Melanesian area, and voyages took place between the far-northern Sandwich Isles and the Society Group.

The Ships That Never Returned:

Many of the islands of Polynesia were discovered by means of voyages of exploration, others by means of drift voyages, and yet others by folk who sailed forth upon the ocean in search of a new home wherever they might chance to find it. Thus, defeated clans, fleeing from the wrath to come, or the wrath that had come, would set forth to reach some isle known to them by tradition, or might simply sail on until by chance they found a new home or perished in lone seas. Many such parties have fared forth upon the heaving breast of Hine- moana (personified form of the ocean), trusting to fortune and the favour of the gods, drifting down long degrees and braving the dangers of the deep in a manner unknown to our European ancestors, throwing the rolling sea leagues behind them even as our forbears paddled their dugouts across the Thames. Of a truth, could the story of the Polynesian voyagers be written in full, then would it be the wonder-story of the world. For, look you, the true Argonauts are here - here in the palm-lined isles of the Many-isled Sea - here where their ancestors broke through the hanging sky and learned of new lands and the ways of many waters. In this manner was Crescent Island settled by a party of refugees from Mangareva. Not possessing any canoes, these folk constructed rafts, whereon they trusted themselves to ocean currents. This occurred about one hundred and fifty years ago, and the traditions of Mangareva state that other such parties had left that isle in former times - left it in order to escape death, possibly to find it on the great water wastes of the Pacific. The natives of Tongareva assert that they are descended from a party of refugees expelled from Rakahanga, while the folk of the latter isle trace their origin to Rarotonga, in the Cook Group. Rarotongan voyagers used to visit Manihiki Isle, six hundred miles distant. Hale tells us that a system of voluntary emigration existed at Ponape, in the Caroline Group of Micronesia, where a party would victual a canoe and trust to chance to find a new home for themselves.