Photography - Historical |
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New Zealand - Wellington - Lambton Quay, Busy street scene, delivery vehicles and cars, trams running down centre - 1920 Period - Tanner Bros Photographer - Real Photo Postcard Format #335106 Wellington - Legends recount that Kupe discovered and explored the region in about the 10th century. Before European colonisation, the area in which the city of Wellington would eventually be founded was seasonally inhabited by indigenous Māori. The earliest date with hard evidence for human activity in New Zealand is about 1280. - Wellington and its environs have been occupied by various Māori groups from the 12th century. The legendary Polynesian explorer Kupe, a chief from Hawaiki (the homeland of Polynesian explorers, of unconfirmed geographical location, not to be confused with Hawaii), was said to have stayed in the harbour from c. 925. A later Māori explorer, Whatonga, named the harbour Te Whanganui-a-Tara after his son Tara. Before the 1820s, most of the inhabitants of the Wellington region were Whatonga's descendants. - At about 1820, the people living there were Ngāti Ira and other groups who traced their descent from the explorer Whātonga, including Rangitāne and Muaūpoko. However, these groups were eventually forced out of Te Whanganui-a-Tara by a series of migrations other iwi (Māori tribes) from the north. The migrating groups were Ngāti Toa, which came from Kāwhia, Ngāti Rangatahi, from near Taumarunui, and Te Atiawa, Ngāti Tama, Ngāti Mutunga, Taranaki and Ngāti Ruanui from Taranaki. Ngāti Mutunga later moved on to the Chatham Islands. The Waitangi Tribunal has found that at the time of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, Te Atiawa, Taranaki, Ngati Ruanui, Ngati Tama, and Ngati Toa held mana whenua interests in the area, through conquest and occupation. - Steps towards Pākehā (European) settlement in the area began in 1839, when Colonel William Wakefield arrived to purchase land for the New Zealand Company to sell to prospective British settlers. Prior to this time, the Māori inhabitants had had contact with Pākehā whalers and traders. - European settlement began with the arrival of an advance party of the New Zealand Company on the ship Tory on 20 September 1839, followed by 150 settlers on the Aurora on 22 January 1840. Thus the Wellington settlement preceded the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi (6 February 1840). Over the next century, food-processing plants, engineering industries, vehicle assembly and oil refineries clustered to the north-east of Wellington Harbour, which caused the main industrial growth in the Hutt Valley. The 1840 settlers constructed their first homes at Petone (which they called Britannia for a time) on the flat area at the mouth of the Hutt River. Within months that area proved swampy and flood-prone, and most of the newcomers transplanted their settlement, which had been planned without regard for a hilly terrain, across Wellington Harbour to Thorndon in the present-day site of Wellington city. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington)