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Māori oral histories recount how their ancestors set out from their homeland inwaka hourua, largetwin-hulled ocean-going canoes (waka). Some of these traditions name a homeland calledHawaiki.
Among these is the story ofKupe, who had eloped withKūrāmarotini, the wife ofHoturapa, the owner of the great canoeMatahourua, whom Kupe had murdered. To escape punishment for the murder, Kupe and Kura fled in Matahourua and discovered a land he calledAotearoa ('land of the long-white-cloud'). He explored its coast and killed the sea monsterTe Wheke-a-Muturangi, finally returning to his home to spread the news of his newly discovered land.[a]
Other stories of variousMāori tribes report migrations to escape famine, over-population, and warfare. These were made in legendary canoes, the best known of which areAotea,Te Arawa,Kurahaupō,Mātaatua,Tainui,Tākitimu, andTokomaru. Various traditions name numerous other canoes. Some, including theĀraiteuru, are well known; others including theKirauta and the sacredArahura andMahangaatuamatua are little known. Rather than arriving in a single fleet, the journeys may have occurred over several centuries.
Percy Smith believed that the Polynesian traditions may have been flawed in detail, but they preserved the threads of truth that could be recovered using a method already well established for Hawaiian traditions byAbraham Fornander (An Account of the Polynesian Race, 1878–1885). The method involved seeking out common elements of tradition from different sources and aligning these to genealogies to give a timeframe for the events. Fornander, Smith and others used the method to reconstruct the migrations of the Polynesians and traced them back to a supposed ancient homeland in India.
Smith used the Fornander method and combined disparate traditions from various parts of New Zealand and other parts of Polynesia to derive the "Great Fleet" hypothesis. Through an examination of the genealogies of various tribes, he came up with a set of precise dates for the Great Fleet and the explorers that he and others posited as having paved the way for the fleet.
Smith's account went as follows. In 750 CE the Polynesian explorer Kupe discovered an uninhabited New Zealand. Then in 1000–1100 CE, the Polynesian explorersToi and Whātonga visited New Zealand, and found it inhabited by a primitive, nomadic people known as theMoriori. Finally, in 1350 CE a 'great fleet' of seven canoes –Aotea,Kurahaupō,Mataatua,Tainui,Tokomaru,Te Arawa andTākitimu – all departed from the Tahitian region at the same time, bringing the people now known as Māori to New Zealand. These were advanced, warlike, agricultural tribes who destroyed the Moriori.
— Kerry Howe,Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand[2]
The Great Fleet scenario won general acceptance, its adherents including the respected Māori ethnologistTe Rangi Hīroa (Sir Peter Buck), and it was taught in New Zealand schools. However, it was effectively demolished during the 1960s by the ethnologistDavid Simmons, who showed that it derived from an incomplete and indiscriminate study of Māori traditions as recorded in the 19th century.[b] Simmons also suggests that some of these "migrations" may actually have been journeys within New Zealand.[3] It is now understood too that the Moriori are an isolated offshoot of Māori who settled the Chatham Islands around 1500 CE,[4] not apre-Māori ethnic group of New Zealand.[1]
The historian Rawiri Taonui accuses Smith of falsification: "The Great Fleet theory was the result of a collaboration between the 19th-century ethnologist S. Percy Smith and the Māori scholarHoani Te Whatahoro Jury. Smith obtained details about places in Rarotonga and Tahiti during a visit in 1897, while Jury provided information about Māori canoes in New Zealand. Smith then 'cut and pasted' his material, combining several oral traditions into new ones. Their joint work was published in two books, in which Jury and Smith falsely attributed much of their information to two 19th-century tohunga, Moihi Te Mātorohanga and Nēpia Pōhūhū".[3]
