Untitled

Hokitika Guardian, 22 March 1933, Page 4

The ddath was recorded' earlier in the week from Chatham Islands of ■Mr Tommy Solomon, the last of the Moriori race, the original settlers of New Zealand. According to Maori tradition, they are said to have been castaways. Th’eiy worn the descendants of the crews of three canoes which had been driven from their homeland by ia westerly gale. The castaways c-amei probably from - the New Hebrides. Maori accounts describe them as having flat noses, distdnded nostrils, bushy hair, and restless eyes. They wore little clothing and had scanty food supplies. From this description it would appear that they might have come from Mekr.odan stock, but their origin may never definitely be known. Among the Maori folic are found many customs and arts not known to the natives of Polynesia proper. Jf these customs—for example, the erecting of defensive car'.'works round villages—wore practised by the original inhabitants. then they cannot have been the rude savages that Maori tradition makes them. Elsdon Best believed that the dcs-ription of the Moriori people had become confused and mixed with that of some inferior folk encountered BY the ancestors of the Maori in far distant lands. There is some evidence he said, in support of

this assumption. After they were driven to the Chatham Islands, the Morions began to decrease in number. In 1866, when, one of flic earliest parties of white men went to the islands there u ere fewer than 100 natives of pure blood. In 1867 an epidemic of measles killed about 40, and Loin then, the Morioris have quickly decreased, ‘•'Tommy” Solomon’s family being for some years the only purely Morion family in the islands. Solomon’s aunt, Airs Heta Namu, the last of the race before' him, died 10 years ago.