History of the Maori Race

According to the legend of their Māori eldest son, in 800 A.D., a man named Kuрe fell in love with a village man's wife, and one day he killed her husband. Afraid that the people of the village would take revenge if they found out, Kuрe prepared his belongings and left the island. After several weeks and nights of boating, Kupe finally foresaw a new and unfamiliar land, a particularly large land with a long white cloud, so Kupe called it "Aotearoa" (Aotearoa), which in English means "Land of the long white cloud". "Land of the long white cloud". Kupe then rowed back to his hometown and reported to his village that the new island was uninhabited and fertile, and that there was a special kind of giant bird that came to be known as "Moa" (Moa).

- In the early days, only a few islanders traveled to "Ahtiharoa" to look for and hunt this "Moa" bird, and they burned the forests and hunted at the same time, so this "Moa" bird was not found for hundreds of years. The "Moa" giant bird was long extinct when Europeans discovered New Zealand hundreds of years later.

- On the west coast of the South Island, a young woman discovered a green jade they called pounamu. This was considered sacred by the Maori and many figures, screw fittings and weapons were made from this jade. In the 14th century, the Maori people, who lived in the South Pacific, began the civilization of New Zealand. Over the centuries they developed a strict tribal and class system. Before Western civilization arrived, the Maori lived in their traditional social patterns.

- They ate vegetables such as sweet potatoes, taro, and yams brought from the islands. The Maori also brought jackets, dogs and rats. After the rats they ate a lot of New Zealand Jacketed Bird Eggs. The Maori mostly ate crabs, prawns, eels, and other seafood.

- In the 1200s, seven canoes arrived at the same time from the islands of the South Pacific to "Athiharoah". This was the first planned migration of islanders. Within a couple hundred years, Maori were living all over the North and South Islands of New Zealand.