A Trip to Australia and New Zealand
Waitangi & The Bay of Islands - War Canoes
Maori canoes are formidable water craft. They range in size from small fishing canoes to large war canoes. Some of the larger canoes can hold more than eighty warriors and are over one hundred feet long. The really big ones use sail as well as paddles and some of the ocean going canoes are double hulled. Outriggers are common for canoes that are used to transit rough water. Genealogy within the Maori culture traces individuals back to their family's migratory canoe. The structure of Maori canoes and the terms used to describe their features are thought by many scholars to be another link to central Polynesia. The Treaty Grounds has an excellent collection of large canoes and the museums throughout our trip all had examples and models of canoes used to cross the open ocean.
The ornamentation on these canoes ranges from simple to ornate and some of it is a bit provocative, but art was not in the forefront of these people's thoughts when they built these canoes. The men and women that sailed across hundreds of miles of open ocean in these fragile craft were formidable seafarers. They navigated by the sun, the stars, and the moon. They used the trade winds and the currents as highways. They learned from the marine animals, fish and birds. They weathered storms and calms and most of all they endured. These were highly intelligent, unbelievably courageous, and extremely resilient individuals with pretty darn good immune systems.
