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The
people are mostly Polynesian Cook Island Maoris, related to the New
Zealand Maoris and the Tahitians. The Pukapukans however, are unique in
that they are closer to the Samoans. Most of the population lives on
Rarotonga and in the Northern Group, preferring to be by the water, except
on Atiu and Mauke where they live inland.
They are an open, friendly
people who are happy to introduce you to their way of life. The local
greeting is 'kia orana' ('may you live on').
The northern islands were
most probably settled around 800 AD by migrants from the west -- Samoa and
Tonga. The southern group inhabitants are largely descended from voyagers
from the Society Islands and the Marquesas.
When European contact was first made in the late
18th century the southern islands had thriving populations. Rarotonga
supported about 8000. However, European diseases virtually wiped out the
pure Rarotongans in the mid-19th century and reduced their number to fewer
than 2000. Since then, periodic additions of outer islanders have built
Rarotonga's population back to about 9000. The total population of all the
islands is about 18,000. There are believed to be a further 37,000 Cook
Islanders living in New Zealand and Australia.
The islanders are of the Maori race, very closely
linked in culture and language to the Maori of New Zealand, the Maohi of
French Polynesia, the Maori of Easter Island (known as Rapanui) and the
Kanaka Maoli of Hawaii.
Current thinking posits that the
islands of the South Seas were first reached by a series of waves of
brown-skinned migrants from South-East Asia between 5000 and 1500 BC.
Recent work by DNA researchers indicates that the forebears of the
Polynesians reached Papua New Guinea possibly 7000 years ago. This became
the jumping-off point for their first advances into the South Pacific
Ocean.
The genetic evidence is
that these people co-existed with the Melanesians before moving on
eastwards to what is now Polynesia without taking any Melanesian genetic
elements with them.
In their sophisticated ocean-going canoes they
arrived in Micronesia, then Fiji and later, Tonga. From there they headed
north to Samoa, the Tokelaus and then made the huge leap east to the
Marquesas. Following a period of consolidation, the Marquesans ventured
south and west around 500 AD to Tahiti and Easter Island and north to
Hawaii, west to the Cook Islands and then across the vast, empty expanse
to New Zealand. About 800 to 1000 AD, Raiatea in the Society Islands,
established itself as a centre of culture and religion and sent voyagers
to Hawaii, the Cooks and east to the Tuamotu archipelago to rule over
those islands. They took with them their religion, cultural traditions,
medicine and language which was, of course, Maori.
Today the Cook Islands use three languages: Maori, English and
Pukapukan. The latter originated in western
Polynesia and has links with the tongues of Samoa, Tokelau and Niue.
The
Maori used by the people of the Cooks has six dialects. They are:
Rakahanga/Manihiki, Penrhyn, Mangaia, Rarotonga, Aitutaki and Atiu/Mauke/Mitiaro.
Pukapukan is spoken in Pukapuka and Nassau.
The people of Palmerston
speak English in the accents of Victorian Gloucestershire. This is because
Palmerston was uninhabited until 1862 when a Gloucester man, William
Masters, settled there with his three Polynesian wives and stayed till he
died in 1899. His hegemony was taken over by one of his sons until 1956
when it was passed on to a grandson. Nearly all the islanders are named
Marsters -- someone having added an 'r' to the original name.
Most southern group Cook Islanders are able to
communicate with those from the far-flung northern atolls. There has also
been a considerable influx of people from the outer islands into Rarotonga
in search of opportunities and this has resulted in greater homogeneity of
language.
Although fun-loving and friendly, Cook Islanders,
like Tahitians and other Polynesians, are a conservative and generally
religious people who cleave to their customary way of life and culture.
They do not fit the ill-founded Western myth that they are loose-living
hedonists of easy morals. The early missionaries stamped their indelible
print on these islands in the 19th century.
Nature
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