Changing perspectives upon Māori colonisation voyaging

Abstract

Late nineteenth century scholars accepted the traditional narrative of Māori colonisation occurring c. 600 years earlier by systematic voyaging in multiple canoes. Amplification and revision of traditions in the early twentieth century produced a ‘traditionalist’ hypothesis that envisaged navigated, return-voyaging in fast, windward-sailing migration canoes powered by oceanic spritsails. Construction and sailing of experimental canoes in this image, and the transfer of performance data into computer simulation, reinforced the traditionalist perspective. A recent ‘historicist’ approach’ which analyses historical records of Polynesian sailing technology within an Indo-Pacific context, suggests that the oceanic spritsail developed through the sixteenth century dispersal of the lateen sail, and that earlier East Polynesian and Māori voyaging used a double spritsail, incapable of sailing a canoe to windward. Voyaging to New Zealand, normally upwind into westerlies from East Polynesia, was facilitated by a general reversal of wind directions, AD 1100–1300, into easterlies. Show more