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The first people to live in Christchurch were called 'Moa Hunters'. -
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. -
On 16 February 1770 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. -
Their largest settlement was a fortified pā at Kaiapoi. This was also a major trading centre for pounamu or greenstone. -
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). -
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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. -
Captain William Rhodes first visited in 1836. He came back in 1839 and landed a herd of 50 cattle near Akaroa. -
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. -
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. -
In November 1847 John Robert Godley and Edward Gibbon Wakefield met to plan the Canterbury 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). -
The first of the ships, the Charlotte Jane, arrived in Lyttelton on the morning of December 16, 1850, and was met by Godley and Sir George and Lady Grey. The first ashore of the travellers, known as the Pilgrims, was James Edward Fitzgerald, who leapfrogged over Dr Alfred Barker, sitting in the prow of the rowing boat.