In 1835 some displaced
Ngāti Mutunga and
Ngāti Tama, from the
Taranaki region, but living in
Wellington, invaded the Chathams. On 19 November 1835, the brig
Lord Rodney, a hijacked
[31] European ship, arrived carrying 500 Māori (men, women and children) with guns, clubs and axes, and loaded with 78 tonnes of potatoes for planting, followed by another load, by the same ship, of 400 more Māori on 5 December 1835. Before the second shipment of people arrived, the invaders killed a 12-year-old girl and hung her flesh on posts.
[32] They proceeded to enslave some Moriori and kill and
cannibalise others. With the arrival of the second group "parties of warriors armed with muskets, clubs and tomahawks, led by their chiefs, walked through Moriori tribal territories and settlements without warning, permission or greeting. If the districts were wanted by the invaders, they curtly informed the inhabitants that their land had been taken and the Moriori living there were now vassals."
[33]
A
hui or council of Moriori elders was convened at the settlement called Te Awapatiki. Despite knowing that the Māori did not share their pacifism, and despite the admonition by some of the elder chiefs that the principle of Nunuku was not appropriate now, two chiefs — Tapata and Torea — declared that "the law of Nunuku was not a strategy for survival, to be varied as conditions changed; it was a moral imperative."
[33] Although this council decided in favour of peace, the invading Māori inferred it was a prelude to war, as was common practice during the
Musket Wars. This precipitated a massacre, most complete in the
Waitangi area followed by an
enslavement of the Moriori survivors.
[34]
A Moriori survivor recalled : "[The Māori] commenced to kill us like sheep.... [We] were terrified, fled to the bush, concealed ourselves in holes underground, and in any place to escape our enemies. It was of no avail; we were discovered and killed – men, women and children indiscriminately." A Māori conqueror explained, "We took possession... in accordance with our customs and we caught all the people. Not one escaped....."
[35] The invaders ritually killed some 10% of the population, a ritual that included staking out women and children on the beach and leaving them to die in great pain over several days.
[36]
During the following enslavement the Māori invaders forbade the speaking of the Moriori language. They forced Moriori to desecrate their sacred sites by urinating and defecating on them.
[36] Moriori were forbidden to marry Moriori or Māori, or to have children with each other. Which was different from the customary form of
slavery practiced on mainland New Zealand.
[37] However, many Moriori women had children by their Māori masters. A small number of Moriori women eventually married either Māori or European men. Some were taken from the Chathams and never returned. In 1842 a small party of Māori and their Moriori slaves migrated to the subantarctic
Auckland Islands, surviving for some 20 years on sealing and flax growing.
[38] Only 101 Moriori out of a population of about 2,000 were left alive by 1862.
[39]
