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1000
First people
The first people know to live in the place known as Christchurch were moa hunters, and probably arrived in the early AD 1000. -
Period: 1500 to
Iwi moving from the North to the South Island
Iwi began to move down to the South Island form the North island between the 1500s and the 1700s. -
Cooks sights the Canterbury Penisula
James Cook first spotted the Canterbury Peninsula and thought it was an island, and naming it Banks Island after Joseph Banks, the ship's botanist. -
Kaiapoi trading area
Kaiapoi was established as a major trading area for pounamu by the 1800s. -
Tracks
Tracks developed in Ōtautahi between Kaiapoi and Rāpaki -
Europeans set foot on NZ
It was probably around 1815 when sailors from the sealing ship Governor Bligh landed that Europeans first set foot on Banks Peninsula. -
Period: to
Maori population declines
The reasons why Maori populations were rapidly declining included fighting between different groups of Ngāi Tahu, raids by the Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha and the diseases that Europeans brought over. -
Farming settlements in Akaroa
Captain William Rhodes first visited in 1836. He came back in 1839 and landed a herd of 50 cattle near Akaroa. And his farm was the first European farming settlement in Akaroa. -
The treaty of Waitangi
Major Thomas Bunbury arrived on the HMS Herald to collect the signatures of the Ngāi Tahu chiefs for the Treaty of Waitangi. -
Deans family farm
The Deans arrived and established a farm at Pūtaringamotu. They built the first European house on the Canterbury Plains. They named the area Riccarton after the parish they came from in Scotland, and the nearby river the Avon, after a stream on their grandfather’s farm -
Period: to
The Canterbury Settlements
In November 1847 John Robert Godley and Edward Gibbon Wakefield met to plan the Canterbury settlement. Early in 1848 the Canterbury Association was formed. But first the land had to be bought from the Māori owners. -
Kemp's Deed
Governor Grey sent the land commissioner Henry Kemp to the South Island in 1848 to buy land for the new settlement. Sixteen Ngāi Tahu chiefs signed ‘Kemp’s Deed’, This was signed at Akaroa on 12 June 1848. -
Immigrants arrived in the Charlotte Jane
The first of the ships, the Charlotte Jane, arrived in Lyttelton on the morning of December 16, 1850.