Christchurch Timeline

By Nia22
  • 1000

    First Inhabitants

    The first people to live in Christchurch were moa hunters. who probably arrived as early as AD 1000
  • 1500

    Kaiapoi established by Ngāi Tahu as a central trading kainga

    The main track between Kaiapoi and another settlement Rapaki followed a path between the swamps and the two rivers, Otakoro (Avon) and Opawaho (Heathcote). One of the two remaining patches of forest or bush was at Putaringamotu (later Riccarton), and was an important place for gathering (birds, eels, fish, and freshwater crayfish.
  • 1500

    Iwi migrate to the South Island/ Te Waipounamu

    North Island maori arrived in Canterbury between 1500 and 1700. The remaining moa hunters were killed or taken in to tribes.

  • Tracks developed in Ōtautahi between Kaiapoi and Rāpaki

    Captain James Cook in his ship the endeavour first sighted the Canterbury peninsula. He thought it was an island, and named it Banks Island after the ship's botanist Joseph Banks

  • Cook sights the Canterbury Peninsula

    It was probably not until 1815 when sailors from the sealing ship Governor Bligh landed that Europeans first set foot on Banks Peninsula. In 1827 Captain William Wiseman, a flax trader, named the harbour (now known as Lyttleton Harbour) Port Cooper, after one of the owners of the Sydney trading firm, Cooper & Levy.

  • Europeans land on Banks Peninsula

    During the 1820s and 1830s the local Māori population fell. The reasons included fighting between different groups of Ngāi Tahu, raids by the Ngāti Toa chief Rauparaha from 1830 to 1832, and the impact of European diseases, especially measles and influenza, from which hundreds of Māori died.

  • Farming settlements established in Akaroa

    Captain William Rhodes first visited in 1836. He came back in 1839 and landed a herd of 50 cattle near Akaroa.

  • Māori population declines

    More whaling and sealing ships visited the peninsula and harbour, and in 1837 Captain George Hempelman set up a whaling station on-shore at Peraki on Banks Peninsula.

  • Deans family establish farming at Riccarton Bush/ Pūtaringāmotu

    The first attempt at settling on the plains was made by James Herriot of Sydney. He arrived with two small groups of farmers in April 1840. Their first crop was successful, but a plague of rats made them decide to leave.

  • Te Tiriti o Waitangi signed

    In May 1840 Major Thomas Bunbury arrived on the HMS Herald to collect the signatures of the Ngāi Tahu chiefs for the Treaty Of Waitangi. The Treaty had been signed by many North Island chiefs in the Bay of Islands earlier in the year on 6 February. During Bunbury’s visit only two of the Ngāi Tahu chiefs signed it.

  • Canterbury Settlement underway

    In August 1840 Captain Owen Stanley of the Britomart raised the British flag at Akaroa, just before the arrival of sixty-three French colonists on the Comte de Paris.

  • Ngāi Tahu chiefs signed ‘Kemp’s Deed’

    In 1843 William and John Deans arrived and established a farm at Pūtaringamotu. The Manson and Gebbie families also came with them, to work on the farm. Together they built the first European house on the Canterbury Plains. They named the area Riccarton after the parish they came from in Scotland.

  • Immigrants from England arrive on the ship Charlotte Jane

    In November 1847 John Robert Godley and Edward Gibbon Wakefield met to plan the Canterbury settlement.