‘Me pēhea rā ahau e whiti ai ki tērā wāhi?’ Ka rongo mai a Te Huataki ki te kupu a Tiotio. Ka kīia mai e Te Huataki, ‘Nā, he ara mōu. Ko tōku tuarā.’

‘How can I cross to that marvellous place?’ Te Huataki listened to Tiotio and said, ‘There is a way and it is by way of my backbone.’

This magnificent narrative tells of the migration of Ngāi Tahu from the Wellington area into the South Island. Making their way by sea and land as far as Rakiura (Stewart Island) and Fiordland, the people settled, fought and intermarried – establishing their genealogical right to the land, as Te Huataki acknowledges in the words ‘by way of my backbone’.

Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu takes great pride in helping bring to life the texts of English journalist Hugh Carrington in a new book that will be launched on 21 April at the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch.

‘This is truly a remarkable book which offers the reader revealing insights into Ngāi Tahu history from a rare perspective,’ says Kaiwhakahaere Mark Solomon. ‘In the best traditions of Ngāi Tahu storytelling Carrington has captured our heritage, our people and our kōrero and written it down for us to benefit from today.’

The history was recorded in the 1930s drawing on the knowledge of Oaro elder Hariata Beaton-Morel, earlier Ngāi Tahu scholars and Peter MacDonald (Rangitāne). The Carrington text, from the Alexander Turnbull Library, has been framed and edited by Te Maire Tau and Atholl Anderson. Other traditions and whakapapa complement the text. The editors have brought together the scholarship of several generations in making a history that will come alive for contemporary readers.

Hugh Carrington (1895–1947) came from a British family who lived in Christchurch in the early twentieth century. After serving in the First World War, Carrington returned to New Zealand, and embarked on research into Ngāi Tahu history. Back in England from 1937, Hugh Carrington worked for the Hakluyt Society, publishing a biography of James Cook.

Te Maire Tau writes of reading the Carrington text for the first time: ‘I was captured for the rest of the day. Besides the exhilaration that historians always feel on coming across an old and little known manuscript, the story that Carrington told read differently from the standard histories of Ngāi Tahu written by nineteenth-century scholars….’

Te Maire Tau is a historian of Ngāi Tahu descent, who lives at Tuahiwi and lectures at the University of Canterbury. In Ngā Pikitūroa o Ngāi Tahu (2003), he presents a rich account of tribal history, drawing on historical documents and whakapapa. Articles such as ‘The Death of Knowledge: Ghosts on the Plains’ (New Zealand Journal of History, 35: 2, 2001) and ‘Matauranga Māori as an Epistemology’ (Histories Power and Loss, BWB, 2001) explore the intersection of future and past in aspects of New Zealand history.

Atholl Anderson is Professor of Prehistory in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University. An award-winning scholar of Ngāi Tahu descent, he has made a significant contribution to tribal history through studies of southern New Zealand, including an edition of Traditional Lifeways of the Southern Maori by Herries Beattie (Otago University Press, 1994) and The Welcome of Strangers (Otago University Press, 1998). He brings to this project the experience of research throughout the Pacific, and many years working with the evidence of both tradition and archaeology.

The “migration” of Ngai Tahu was more evolutionary than previous histories portray.

We all have those reading room moments. In 1987, Te Maire Tau stumbled across Hugh Carrington’s manuscript for Ngai Tahu: A Migration History at the Alexander Turnbull Library and was “captured for the rest of the day”, fascinated by a story line different from the conventional texts presented by JW Stack and John White. He forked out to have the manuscript copied and sent it down to the Ngai Tahu Maori Trust Board, where photocopiers made the text “a huge underground success”.

Now Ngai Tahu: A Migration History is presented to a wider audience, to tell the post-16th-century history of, arguably, New Zealand’s most successful iwi. Carrington (1895-1947) was an open-minded Englishman who published two war memoirs and a biography of James Cook. This manuscript was compiled with the help of Ngai Tahu elders in the 1930s, albeit channelled though a critical mind. Carrington intended AH & AW Reed to publish it, but his return to England and death meant the manuscript languished in the Turnbull for half a century.

Ngai Tahu: A Migration History tells the story of Ngai Tahu’s trek from the East Coast of the North Island through Wellington to the South Island. It was a long process, played out more at hapu level than our modern understanding of corporatised iwi may suggest. The editors supplement Carrington’s text by making the point that the “migration” was more evolutionary than conventional, one-paragraph, general histories portray. Marriage alliances (never underestimate the importance of women of mana in Maori history), casual voyaging, trading and shifts in weather that blew canoes across Cook Strait all played their part in this lengthy hikoi.

There’s drama – battles won and lost, challenges over mana and dynastic alliances, the stuff of legends. Waipapa, Kaikoura, Kaiapoi, the great blood feuds are laid out, ending in the introduction of European weapons and Te Rauparaha’s rampage through the south. An epilogue briefly summarises Ngai Tahu’s post-1840 experience, which was characterised by a high level of intermarriage with Europeans. In fact, the editors conclude with the comment that “genetically and culturally there is very little difference between the descendants of the early European settlers and modern Ngai Tahu. Both gave a story that tells of a people who crossed the oceans to a new country, and who became tangata whenua – people of the land.”

The book is an unusual combination of sumptuous and scholarly. Te Runanga Ngai Tahu, through Bridget Williams Books, has created a publishing gem. The text is enlightened by modern colour maps that show not only place names but migration paths and battle-fields. Artistic photo-graphs show ancestral taonga and modern places, bringing the text alive. Back matter presents 34 whakapapa. Two indexes list the people mentioned in the text and the places discussed. Our editors are no sloths.

Indeed, it’s their scholarship that makes this book sing. Tau and Atholl Anderson, no strangers to controversy, know their stuff and have laid out the text very professionally. Two introductions, an introduction to each of Carrington’s 22 chapters, one or more “commentaries” at most chapter conclusions and extensive footnoting on controversial points in the text help the reader navigate without bowdlerising Carrington’s world view or dumbing it down.

Tribal histories, thick and studded with whakapapa, can be daunting to outsiders. Ngai Tahu: A Migration History, on the other hand, should appeal even to non-Mainlanders.

NGAI TAHU: A MIGRATION HISTORY – THE CARRINGTON TEXT, edited by Te Maire Tau and Atholl Anderson (Bridget Williams/Te Runanga Ngai Tahu, $69.99).