18 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
isolated as the Mori-ori. Moreover, Rongo is always represented as being 
very dark, and as possessing raven black hair, characters which, as it 
appears, distinguished the original inhabitants of the Chathams. My son 
was unable to obtain any definite information as to the parentage of the 
Rongo-mai of the Chatham Islands, the sole idea being that he was a very 
great chief, from whom the first inhabitants were descended. They also 
said that these original people had immigrated from Hawaiki in consequence 
of constant and devastating wars, a statement similar to that which is 
made with respect to the first Maori voyagers to New Zealand. At the 
time of the arrival of the first immigrants, the principal chiefs of the islands 
were: Marupuka, who lived at Awa-patiki ; Rongopapa, who lived at the 
Wakuru; Mumuku, who lived at Muriroa; Mamoa, who lived at Tikeri ; 
and Tarangi-mahora-whakina, who lived at Pitt's Island. The first 
Strangers are said to have come in two large canoes, one of which was 
ealled the Rangimata, under a chief named Mararoa, and the other the 
Rangihoana, under a chief named Kawanga-koneke. They say that the 
people who arrived in these canoes were very numerous, and also came 
from Hawaiki, but no special reason is assigned for their leaving that plàce. 
Mr. Gilbert Mair, in a paper read before this Society, in 1870, mentions 
five canoes, but in other respects his account tallies a good deal with that 
obtained by my son. He, however, says that the people of these canoes 
also left Hawaiki in consequence of inter-tribal wars. The second batch of 
strangers arrived in a canoe called the Oropuke, under a chief named Mohi, 
and are said to have come from Awatea, or Arapawa, which is supposed to 
have been New Zealand, and is stated to have been a cool country. The 
probability is that the latter canoe did come from New Zealand, for the 
name Awatea, or Aotea, is that which is said to have been given to New 
Zealand by its first Maori discoverers. The name Arapawa is also common 
in New Zealand. Further strength is also added to the supposition, that 
some of the ancestors of the present people had come from New. Zealand, 
by the fact, that Mr. Shand, on one occasion, heard some old Mori-oris 
singing a ** Karakia," or song of gladness, upon the completion of a large 
fishing eanoe, during which they used the words “ totara," and ** pohutu- 
kawa;" and, on being questioned as to those words, they mentioned that 
ihey were the names of trees in the country from which some of: their 
ancestors had come. My son also states, that fragments of green-stone, 
similar to that used by the New Zealand natives, have been found on the 
islands, under circumstances which forbid the supposition that they were 
taken over by the Maori invaders of 1836, one of these fragments having 
been obtained from soil below the root of a tree of considerable size. 
It is related that the islands were afterwards visited by another canoe, 
