Story: Hawaiki

In 1885 – some 20 years before S. Percy Smith wrote the influential Hawaiki, the original homeland of the Maori – scholar Edward Tregear published The Aryan Maori. In this book he claimed that Māori people were of Aryan origin like the British settlers of New Zealand. As with later theories about Māori origins, Tregear’s argument relied heavily on interpretation of tribal traditions.