Io Matua Kore - History

History

Io was first known generally with the publication in 1913 of Percy S. Smith's two volume work The Lore of the Whāre-wananga, and from some of the writing.

Two esteemed tohunga, of the East Coast Ngāti Kahungunu people, Te Matorohanga and Nepia Pohuhu gave a series of lectures at a whare wananga ("school of learning"), in the Wairarapa district in 1865. H. T. Whatahoro over a period of 40 years wrote down, developed and rewrote these lectures. Whatahoro's text was approved by the Tane-nui-a-rangi Committee in 1907 as an agreed expression of genuine Ngaati Kahungunu tradition in that year. (Not necessarily a tradition known by the general population of Ngaati Kahungunu.)

The Io tradition was initially rejected by scholars including prominent Māori scholar Sir Peter Buck who wrote "The discovery of a supreme God named Io in New Zealand was a surprise to Māori and Pākehā alike." Buck believed that the Io tradition was restricted to the Ngaati Kahungunu as a response of Christianity. This rejection was based on the Euro-Centric and Darwinistic view that differing people groups are historically unrelated. The Io Tradition recounts many Christian and Hebrew historical events and religious characteristics, describing them using Polynesian names: the son of God, the Holy Spirit, the Heavenly Father, Abraham, Isaac, Joseph's life story etc.

Contemporaneous accounts from Hawaii indicate that Io has been known to Polynesians for millennia. Western Scholars have found the early oral traditions of Io, with the place-name Ur, or Uru and the heroic figure Nu'u a difficult fact to swallow.

J. Prytz Johansen also rejects the Io tradition as existing before the introduction of Christianity to Māori. "All things considered there is the greatest probability that Io became a high god after the Europeans came to New Zealand." He does argue, though, that if there were other pieces of evidence "independent of one another, the pre-European existence of the high-god Io would be assured" because of the distance of the tribes from one another.