History
Pitt Island was originally inhabited by the Moriori the indigenous peoples of the Chatham Islands, who called it Rangiaotea or Rangihaute. Their archaeological remains are found almost everywhere on the island; large quantities of artifacts are constantly coming to light. No remains of momori rakau are visible on the island, but there are records of them once being present
The first Europeans to see the island were the crew of William R. Broughton's ship HMS Chatham, who spotted it in 1791. It was named for William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham. Fifty years later the name was simplified to "Pitt" Island.
The Taranaki Maori who invaded the Chatham Island islands called it Rangiauria, a name which is still in use today.
Over the years there have been many ships wrecked around both Pitt and Chatham Islands. The Glory, a small brigantine was wrecked in what became known as Glory Bay in 1827.
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“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
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“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)