Moriori Genocide

“	The Morioris were taken prisoners, the women and children were bound, and many of these, together with the men, were killed and eaten, so that the corpses lay scattered in the woods and over the plains. Those who were spared from death were herded like swine, and killed even from year to year.	„
	~ Michael King

The Moriori Genocide was the genocide and enslavement of the indigenous Moriori people of the Chatham Islands by Māori invaders from the tribes of Taranaki. This led to hundreds being killed, while the rest of them were enslaved.

History

After members of the Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama tribes were displaced from their homelands in Taranaki during the intertribal Musket Wars, two waves of invaders hijacked a British ship called the Lord Rodney and headed off from Wellington to the Chatham Islands. Upon arriving on the beaches of Port Hutt, the Moriori welcomed the Māori, to which the invaders murdered a 12-year-old girl and displayed her flesh on posts. After the incident, the Māori invaders declared that the islands were now Māori property and that the Moriori were now vassals.

During a council at Te Awapatiki, the Moriori debated on whether or not to fight back against the invaders, but the elders convinced them to remain pacifistic in accordance to a peaceful code known as Nunuku's Law, which prohibited violence. However, this only led to more individuals getting killed, cannibalized, and prohibited from marrying to have children. Those who were not killed were enslaved by the Māori invaders, forbidden to speak their native language, and forced to desecrate their sacred sites. Many women and children were staked on the beaches and were left there to die in great pain for several days. The introduction of European diseases also contributed to the Moriori's decline.

Much of the Moriori population was killed and only 100 remained by 1863.

Legacy

In 1870, the Native Land Court declared that since the Māori have "conquered" the Moriori population, the Māori were the ones who could have ownership of the Chatham Islands, even though the invaders returned to Taranaki. The Moriori's native language has died out in 1898 and the last full-blooded individual, Tommy Solomon, died in 1933. The British also constructed a myth suggesting that the Moriori were inferior Melanesians who had been displaced from their homelands in mainland New Zealand by the Māori. Though the Moriori were regarded as extinct at this point, they were finally recognized as an indigenous people in the 1990's and they were granted rights to their lands in the Chatham Islands.