Timeline of Waitaha/Canterbury

By jahnawanna1
  • 1000

    First Inhabitants- 1000

    The first people to live in Christchurch were moa hunters. Who are have said to arrivedw there as early as AD 1000. The hunters cleared large areas of mataī and tōtara forest by fire and around about 1450 the moa had been killed off
  • 1500

    Iwi migrate to the South Island/ Te Waipounamu

    North Island Māori (Ngati Māmoe and later Ngāi Tahu) arrived in Canterbury between 1500 and 1700. The remaining moa hunters were killed or taken into the tribes.

  • Kaiapoi established by Ngāi Tahu as a central trading kainga

    By 1800 the Ngāi Tūāhuriri sub-tribe of Ngāi Tahu were in control of the coast from the Hurunui River in the north to Lake Ellesmere in the south. Their largest settlement was a fortified pā at Kaiapoi. This was also a major trading centre for pounamu or greenstone.

  • Tracks developed in Ōtautahi between Kaiapoi and Rāpaki

    The main track between Kaiapoi and another settlement at Rāpaki followed a path between the swamps and the two rivers, Ōtākaro (Avon) and Ōpāwaho (Heathcote). One of the two remaining patches of forest or bush was at Pūtaringamotu (Riccarton), and was an important place for food gathering like birds, eels, fish and freshwater crayfish

  • Cook sights the Canterbury Peninsula

    On 16 February 1770, Captain James Cook was in his ship, when he first sighted the Canterbury peninsula for afar. He thought it was an island so he named it Banks Island after the botanist on the ship, Joseph Banks.

  • Europeans land on Banks Peninsula

    It was around 1815, when the sailors decided to step foot onto Banks Peninsula. In 1827 Captain William Wiseman, a flax trader, named the harbour Port Cooper, after one of the owners of the Sydney trading firm, Cooper & Levy.

  • Māori population declines

    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 Te Rauparaha from 1830 to 1832, and the impact of European diseases, especially measles and influenza, from which hundreds of Māori died.

  • 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.

  • Farming settlements established in Akaroa

    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.

  • Deans family establish farming at Riccarton Bush/ Pūtaringāmotu

    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, and the nearby river the Avon, after a stream on their grandfather’s farm.

  • Canterbury Settlement underway

    In November 1847 John Robert Godley and Edward Gibbon Wakefield met to plan the Canterbury settlement. Wakefield believed that colonisation of countries like New Zealand could be organised in such a way that towns could be planned before settlers arrived. These towns would be like a community back in England, with landowners, small farmers and workers, and with churches, shops and schools.

  • Ngāi Tahu chiefs signed ‘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’, selling the larger part of their land for £2,000, but keeping some land for settlements and reserves, and those places where they gathered food (mahinga kai). This was signed at Akaroa on 12 June 1848. Ngāi Tahu were to be given back larger reserves of land once the surveying had been done.

  • Immigrants from England arrive on the ship Charlotte Jane

    In December Captain Joseph Thomas, a surveyor, was sent to Canterbury to choose a site for the Canterbury settlement, and prepare for the first settlers. By the time that John Robert Godley, leader of the Canterbury settlement arrived with his family on the Lady Nugent on 12 April 1850, Captain Thomas had built a jetty, customs house and barracks accommodation for the newly arrived settlers.