Tasman Encounters the Maori (New Zealand)
Tasman Encounters the Maori refers to the pivotal moment on December 18, 1642, when Dutch explorer Abel Tasman first arrived at the shores of New Zealand. While searching for a hypothetical southern continent, Tasman anchored his ships in a bay where he encountered the indigenous Maori people. His initial interactions included communication attempts that quickly escalated into conflict, resulting in an attack on his crew. This encounter marked the first recorded contact between Europeans and the Maori, who had inhabited New Zealand for centuries. Tasman’s voyage was part of a larger mission to expand Dutch commerce, yet his discoveries, including New Zealand, held limited immediate value for the Dutch. The Maori, characterized as a formidable warrior culture, effectively kept European explorers at bay for nearly two centuries following this encounter. Ultimately, significant European settlement in New Zealand did not commence until the mid-19th century, after treaties were established to foster peace with the Maori. This historical event highlights the complexities of early European exploration and the rich cultural heritage of the Maori people.
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Tasman Encounters the Maori (New Zealand)
Tasman Encounters the Maori (New Zealand)
On December 18, 1642, the Dutch navigator and explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman anchored his two ships in a sheltered bay off the coast of an unknown land he had just discovered east-southeast of Australia. Tasman hoped he had found the tip of a huge hypothetical continent that was supposed to occupy the entire bottom of the globe, but in fact he had discovered New Zealand, which consists of two large islands in the South Pacific.
Tasman had spent five days sailing along the rugged coast before finding a place where he could anchor and investigate. However, he would not be able to send a landing party ashore. That very day native people in fast-moving war canoes approached his ships and engaged in brief exchanges with his sailors, with much shouting and blowing of horns on both sides. (The natives' instrument “produced a sound like the Moors' trumpets,” Tasman noted.) The next day the natives returned and attacked a small ship's boat and its crew, killing several sailors. Cutting short his explorations, Tasman named the anchorage Murderers Bay and sailed on. He had not only discovered New Zealand, but he had also discovered the Maori, an exceptionally warlike people who had been living on the islands for millennia and who would keep Europeans away for the next two centuries.
Tasman, who was born in the Dutch village of Lutjegast in 1603, was the greatest of Holland's mariners. His 1642 voyage had been commissioned by Antony Van Diemen, the colonial governor of the Dutch East Indies, who hoped to expand Holland's commercial empire. At that time, very little was known about the extreme Southern Hemisphere, and some people believed that a huge southern continent must connect Australia with the islands off South America, possibly offering valuable natural resources or a coastal trade route between east and west. Tasman was sent to look for this continent and also to find out more about Australia. The theoretical geographer Frans Visscher helped plot his course, although bad weather sometimes forced changes in the route.
Tasman set out from Batavia (now Jakarta) with two small ships on August 14, 1642. Sailing for 10 months through largely uncharted seas, he established that Australia was a separate continent, not a part of any other land, and discovered the islands now known as Tasmania, New Zealand, and Tonga. None of these discoveries held any immediate commercial prospects for the Dutch, however, and no other Europeans would visit New Zealand for more than 100 years, when the English captain James Cook arrived to map the coast. Significant settlement would not be undertaken until the mid-19th century, after a peace treaty was signed with the Maori.