A Brief History of New Zealand

(Lynn)
I've been reading Michael King's History of New Zealand and have made it through World War I. The earlier years are most interesting to me. There were no humans on these islands until around 1300 AD. Prior to human arrival this was the only land in the world devoid of poisonous animals and mammals. Birds of many sizes and types ruled the land. The largest bird, the moa, was a six foot tall flightless bird. Giant eagles with 12 foot wingspans fed on the moa. Birds, usual and flightless, flourished without any significant predators around. Two foot tall kiwis scuttled all about the island at night. Kauri trees (similar to Giant Redwoods) and ferns covered the hills. All of this existed until about 800 years ago- we're not talking about prehistoric cave man or dinosaur times here! Every other habitable landmass in the world had been discovered and changed by humans at least 10,000 years ago. It's as if God gave one little part of creation a long break from us just to let things roll along naturally. Thoughts of the Garden of Eden from which we were banished come to mind.

Well, by 1300 the break was over and the first Polynesians paddled ashore. Dogs and rats hopped out of the canoes and tore into the bush. Humans, dogs and rats ate every easily accessible bird and within 100 years the moa was extinct. Without anything to eat the giant eagles disappeared. All told, the first settlers in New Zealand contributed to the extinction of over 20 of God's creatures and the next wave of boat people wiped out about another 10. The next wave, the Europeans, did not find some utopia. Instead, they found a land already under stress by the tribes of Polynesians warring with one another and with nature. It is at this point that New Zealand history begins to sound like so many other countries: one day some dark skinned people with complex social and religious systems looked out to sea and saw huge, strange floating objects heading their way. Lighter skinned men stepped off of these objects and offered guns, alcohol, and cigarettes if the brown men would point to deposits of gold. The different colored people worked together a little, fought and killed each other alot, and, eventually, new infections from the light skinned people won the day and almost annihilated the darker skinned people. A treaty was contrived and the darker people lost most of their land and livelihood.

The bright spot in the rest of the story for New Zealand is that through a combination of Maori creativity and fierceness -and the compassion of early Christian missionaries pleading on their behalf- Maoris were not wiped out completely. I think they have one of the best comeback stories of all time. Their total number dipped below 50,000 at one point and now they number around a million. "Sweet as!", as modern day Maori say.

Some of the birds were not so fortunate. No one can bring the moa back, but in the more remote areas of the islands it's reassuring to know that dumpy looking Kiwis still run through the forests at night- just as God intended.