HISTORY
According to Maori related history the region of Canterbury was first inhabited over a thousand years ago by a tribe of moa-hunting people. These were then succeeded in the sixteenth century by the Waitaha tribe who has migrated from the North Island. This tribe was then joined first by the Ngati Mamoe and in the early eighteen hundreds by the Ngai Tahu tribe. Captain James Cook was the first European to arrive in the area in 1815 and preceded the first settlers by some twenty five years when people such as the Scottish Deans brothers arrived to farm the area and the port of Lyttelton became a base for the whale ships. The city itself came into being as part of a colonization policy of the Canterbury Association. The area had been chosen by the association's surveyor Captain Joseph Thomas who had been sent by the association, made up of members of Christchurch College Oxford with the Archbishop of Canterbury as its head, to find a site to create an Anglican community in New Zealand. He had recognised the great agricultural potential the area had. In 1850 the founders of Christchurch proper arrived in four ships and the city became the first established city in New Zealand and made part of the Royal Charter in 1856. The idea never took off as the settlers were not real Anglicans and they were more interested in creating a new life in the new land in a town that was not more than a few wooden buildings. The idea of being descended from the settlers of the four ships still carries a lot of weight in the city and you may hear mention of it. On a historical note, New Zealand was the first place in the world to give women the right to vote that was awarded in 1893.
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