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<\/p>\nWaitangi Bay, Chatham Island.\u00a0 If you want an ultimate of remote and rugged isolation constantly swept by storms and the gale-force winds of the Roaring Forties, here is where you come.<\/p>\n
And if you want to know how an unknown genocidal atrocity can teach us how to better deal with guilt-mongering, well, here too is where you come. \u00a0Believe it or not, it\u2019s in Polynesia.<\/p>\n
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This island is so old they\u2019ve found dinosaur bones on it 90 million years old. \u00a0It was part of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana, broke off from what became Antarctica, sank into the sea, subterranean volcanoes and tectonic uplift raised it back to dry land 3.6 million years ago, and remained uninhabited by man until less than a thousand years ago.<\/p>\n
By then, Polynesians had steadily moved east across the Pacific. Originating among the aboriginal people of Taiwan, 5,000 years ago (3000 BC) they began hop-scotching down the east coasts of the Philippines, and along the north coast of New Guinea, to reach New Britain and New Ireland in about 1400 BC.<\/p>\n
There they lingered and learned how to master the sea. By 900 BC via the Solomons and Fiji, they settled Tonga, and by 800 BC, Samoa.\u00a0 There they lingered again \u2013 for some sixteen centuries.<\/p>\n
Then, starting about 700 AD, came the epic migrations by which we hail the ancient Polynesians as among the greatest seafarers of history.<\/p>\n
Reaching the Marquesas by 700 (all dates now AD), they made those islands with the magical names (Fatu Hiva, Hiva Oa, Nuku Hiva, etc.) their cultural center, from whence they radiated out to settle Hawaii by 900, the Cooks by 1000, and Easter by 1200.<\/p>\n
By the end of the 13th\u00a0century (around 1300), a series of migrations from Rarotonga and other islands in the Cooks reached New Zealand.\u00a0 Calling themselves\u00a0Maoris, they settled throughout both North and South Island, separating themselves into different tribes (called\u00a0iwis).<\/p>\n
One such\u00a0iwi\u00a0in the southeast corner of South Island decided to conduct what turned out to be the last epic Polynesian migration.\u00a0 Sometime in the early 1400s, they sailed 530 miles across an unknown empty sea to reach islands they named\u00a0Rekohu, meaning \u201cmisty sky.\u201d\u00a0 They called themselves\u00a0Moriori.<\/p>\n
The \u201cPolynesian Triangle\u201d was now complete, from Hawaii to Easter to New Zealand.\u00a0 Note Chatham (Rekohu) at the bottom extremity.<\/p>\n
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The islands were colder, the seas rougher, the skies stormier than what the Moriori were used to \u2013 but there was sea life in glorious abundance: seals, fish, shellfish such as abalone, lobsters, sea birds all in countless numbers.\u00a0 The main island was fairly large (360 square miles) with many tracts of dense forest, large areas of marshy peat uplands, and huge lagoons.\u00a0 They rarely ventured inland, as they could live such a good life along the sea.<\/p>\n
They left their Maori homeland to escape the constant wars between the various\u00a0iwis\u00a0or tribes.\u00a0 But there were fights among them too, until one day a chief named Nuhuku-Whenua decided to put an end to it.\u00a0 He declared it was now a moral law that there was to be no war, no fighting, and no cannibalism between them.\u00a0 If two men decided they had to fight, once one of them drew blood of any amount, the fight was over.<\/p>\n
The Moriori accepted Nuhuku\u2019s Law and internalized it as the foundation of their\u00a0mana, the moral energy that gives life meaning.\u00a0 As a result, they became one of the most peaceful and pacifist peoples ever known.<\/p>\n
For 400 years they lived in peace among themselves \u2013 and in utter isolation from the world.\u00a0 All memories of the Maoris they left behind vanished.\u00a0 They came to think that they were they only people in the world \u2013 indeed, the world was their island (along with a smaller island and a handful of smaller islets), and the vast empty ocean beyond.<\/p>\n
Their isolation was broken in the year 1791, when something huge and mysterious appeared on the horizon.\u00a0 It was a brig of the British Royal Navy named\u00a0HMS Chatham, captained by Lt. William Broughton.\u00a0 The Moriori thought he and the British sailors were from the Sun and called them Sun People.<\/p>\n
Broughton\u2019s ship had been blown off course and stumbled upon the island, which Broughton named after his ship.\u00a0 His report of the island\u2019s vast numbers of seals brought sealers, and then whalers who mostly stayed offshore in their ships leaving the Moriori alone.<\/p>\n
But in 1835, another people arrived, and brought Hell with them.<\/p>\n
They were a group of 500 Maori cannibals determined to take Rekohu for themselves.\u00a0 They had heard about the island, its great abundance of food, inhabited by people who didn\u2019t fight.\u00a0 Led by two chiefs, Matioro and Pomare, they hijacked a merchant ship,\u00a0Rodney, and, loaded with guns, knives, and clubs, forced the British captain to sail to Chatham.<\/p>\n
They arrived in November and informed the Moriori the island now belonged to them.\u00a0 If they resisted they would be killed and eaten.\u00a0 Those who did not resist were now their slaves.<\/p>\n
The Moriori retreated to a sacred place and held a council.\u00a0 Many argued they must fight \u2013 if they did not break Nuhuku\u2019s Law they would die.\u00a0 Others said the Law was not a strategy for survival, it was a moral imperative \u2013 if it was broken, the Moriori would lose their\u00a0mana.<\/p>\n
After three days of deliberating, they decided not to fight, but to offer the Maori peace and reconciliation.<\/p>\n
When they returned to the Maori with their decision, they were instantly attacked, \u201ckilled like sheep\u2026 we fled, but they found us and killed men, women, children, and ate them.\u201d<\/p>\n
I am overlooking Waitangi Beach as I am writing this.\u00a0 It\u2019s where one of the many massacres took place.\u00a0 Over 50 Morioris were captured and laid in the sand end-to-end touching each other, parent and child, with stakes driven into them and left to die.\u00a0 When they died, they were roasted in an oven, cooked, and eaten.<\/p>\n
That Maoris practiced cannibalism extensively is beyond doubt.\u00a0 Historian Paul Moon has catalogued all the massive evidence in\u00a0This Horrid Practice, starting with the eyewitness accounts by Captain James Cook in 1769 and 1773.\u00a0 French Captain\u00a0Marion Dufresne<\/a>\u00a0and 26 of his crew were murdered and eaten by Maori in 1772.<\/p>\n By that time, of course, the Maori had been killing and eating each other for centuries.\u00a0 There is an island, now a beautiful private resort, off the east coast of New Zealand\u2019s North Island, called Slipper.\u00a0 On a slave-raiding trip, tribes would come down the coast, stop at Slipper to capture some islanders, and break their legs so they couldn\u2019t escape \u2013 that way the raiders would have food waiting for them on their return journey.<\/p>\n
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