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The history of Otago in New Zealand tells the story of human settlement of one of the more isolated outliers of the inhabited earth. == Archaic Māori period == The precise date at which the first inhabitants of New Zealand reached Otago and the extreme south (known to later Māori as ''Murihiku'') remains uncertain. Māori descend from a race of Polynesian sea-wanderers who, in some far-off age, moved from East Asia and south-east Asia to the islands of the Pacific. Tradition tells of their further journeyings from Hawaiki to New Zealand, and some commentators have identified this homeland as Havai'i,〔 ''Vikings of the Sunrise'', Peter H. Buck, p.65 〕 an island in the Society Group. Overpopulation, scarcity of food and civil war forced many of them to migrate once more, and New Zealand became their new home. Māori settled New Zealand between AD 1250–1300, and had learnt to hunt the numerous species of moa indigenous to New Zealand. From time to time the people of Tahiti and the Cook Islands continued to make contacts with New Zealand, and migrants arriving in the 14th century knew their precise destination. The first parts of New Zealand settled by Polynesians were the very far north and the east coast of the South Island where population was initially concentrated.〔Anderson 1998; Hamel 2001〕 Later the contraction of food sources led to depopulation in the south while the introduction of the kumara led to an expansion in the North Island and the evolution of a different material and social culture. A similar evolution occurred in the south but the greater numbers in the North Island led to migrations from there from late in the sixteenth century.〔Anderson, 1983, McLintock, 1949, Hamel 2001.〕 Tradition speaks of the first inhabitants of the South Island as the Kahui Tipua, a tribe associated with many weird tales and whose members the tales generally classed as supernatural beings, the "Band of Ogres". After these fearsome people came another tribe named Te Rapuwai which has also left very few traces, perhaps because, as Waite suggests, no Māori claim descent from them.〔''South Island Maoris'', J.W. Stack p.15.〕 On the other hand, Anderson has suggested these are names of earlier assimilated groups whose descendants are still with us but have been re-categorised under the names "Waitaha" and "Kati Mamoe" as Kai Tahu have since claimed those groups as integral to a new one, that known now, in modern standard Māori, as "Ngai Tahu".〔Anderson, 1998.〕 But Te Rapuwai left many place names to record their presence, and heaps of shells along the beaches as more tangible evidence. The Kaitangata Lake district, in South Otago, was apparently a favourite haunt, and almost certainly there were settlements at the mouth of the Matau (Clutha). Researchers know almost as little of the immediate successors of Te Rapuwai, the Waitaha. Hector suggested that another tribe, the Katikura, an offshoot of the Ngapuhi tribe of Tamaki Makarau, lived in Otago at some remote period before the arrival of the Waitaha. But beyond a vague tradition that they burnt off the forest and made the open grassland (E Waka-Papihi), no information survives concerning them.〔 Waite, op. cit., p.29 〕 According to the lore of North Island Māori, the Waitaha people arrived in the ''Takitimu'' canoe captained by Tamatea. The ''Takitimu'', legendarily associated with the discredited theory of a great fleet dated to 1350 AD, made its landfall in the Bay of Plenty and then sailed down the coast of both islands, even as far as the Waiau River in Southland, leaving settlers at suitable districts. This voyage of Tamatea became so important a landmark in post-pākehā conceptions of Māori history that the antiquity of any event, such as the great fires which destroyed the forests of Otago and Southland, have been indicated by saying, "That happened in the time of Tamatea." Stack, one of those who developed this now contested conception, portrayed the Waitaha occupation of Te Wahipounamu as covering a century, from 1477 to 1577 AD,〔 ''South Island Maoris'', J.W. Stack, Volume Ten, p.60 〕 a calculation based on the assumption of twenty years to a generation. His conception of what was happening is probably wrong, but his dating, taken broadly is probably about right for this later settlement phase, which may indeed be that of the historical Waitaha. The estuaries, mudflats, sandy beaches of Murihiku provided fish, seals, seabirds, mussels, pauas, pipis and cockles. The dense podocarp forest, including matai, totara, kahikatea, and rimu, teemed with wekas, tuis, pigeons, and other birds. In the coastal lakes such as Waihola, eels abounded. At some point during the first centuries of occupation they discovered pounamu. Thus the South Island also became known as Te Wahipounamu. The southern Māori moved with the seasons to exploit the rich resources of Murihiku. Tradition attributed to the Waitaha a profound knowledge of incantations (''karakia'') and of the science of navigation. They painted designs in caves and named many of the distinctive features of the Otago landscape, well illustrated in the fictional tale of Rakaihautu, the great digger of lakes.〔 Rakaihautu, ''The Great Digger of Lakes'', H. Beattie, Vol.27, p.142 〕 The Waitaha settlement of the South Island seems to have been the latter part of a period of peace and plenty. Stack said that "they increased and multiplied so rapidly that they are described as having covered the face of the land like ants".〔 ''South Island Maoris'', J.W. Stack p.23 〕 A more credible explanation might be that, on the arrival of the first Waitaha wave in the south, they found it an abundant land and, under such favourable conditions, their numbers greatly increased.〔 〕 However this time of prosperity was not to last. Already, by the end of the fourteenth century New Zealand's environment was beginning to change. The climate became cooler, the podocarp forest retreated, and the moa population began to decline. The changing environment affected those who relied upon moas and seals for food and forced them to develop more effective techniques for catching birds and fish. The largest settlements of the early centuries lost their importance and declined. The population declined because of emigration north to regions where one could cultivate kumara (sweet potatoes). Recent evidence, has led some to identify the Waitaha of Otago with the moa-hunters of whom so many traces remain. This is not entirely unreasonable, although on Stack's dating of Waitaha, and on modern dating of moa hunter sites, they would only be late arrivals. In reality their name has probably been used in tradition, confusingly, to also comprehend earlier arrivals whose own names for themselves are now obscured in the etymological ghost names of Kahui Tipua and Te Rapuwai. The Waitaha of historical oral tradition may have enjoyed a good food-supply for many years and they were probably some of the later moa hunters of the archaeological record. These latter probably preserved moa-flesh in fat, wrapped up in bands of kelp, fastened with totara-bark strips and bartered it for such northern products as flax mats, huia feathers and kumara. The Waitaha must have hunted the moa with such steady persistence that its complete extermination became merely a question of time, though at what date this occurred is not known. Certain it is, however, that the moa found its last stronghold in the inland districts of Otago where the most valuable discoveries of moa remains have been made. Either the birds survived there much longer or else the remarkable preservative quality of the dry air caused the remains to resist decay. Probably both these alternatives apply though it seems more likely that, as its numbers diminished and the attacks of its foes proceeded with unabated vigour, the moa became restricted to the fastnesses of Central Otago, especially to the area between Lake Wakatipu and the Lammerlaw Range. The moa lingered on in Otago till the beginning of the eighteenth century. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of the Otago Region」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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