The official story is that the Spanish didn’t reach New Zealand’s shores before the Dutch, right? Well, kind of. In actual fact, there has been plenty of suggestion to this theory long before most Kiwi’s would imagine. Here follows some excerpts from a 1949 publication of Joseph Angus Mackay (the good bits are often quotes of famous NZ historians – be warned, you may be shocked).

All of these excerpts are licensed with a Creative Commons NZ license and are available in the full document hosted at the NZETC website.

It was widely believed in England, at the opening of the nineteenth century, that the Dutch might not have been the first non-Polynesian discoverers of New Zealand. Indeed, some of the highest British authorities were convinced that sailors belonging either to Portugal or to Spain—or, perhaps, to both of those countries—had gazed upon the striking headlands and pretty bays which adorn the mid-eastern section of the North Island coast over two hundred years before Cook stepped ashore, in 1769, at Boat Harbour (Poverty Bay) and nearly a century before Tasman, in 1642, sighted the rugged western coast of the South Island.

Alright, so we quickly establish that the Spanish have been spoken of. So naturally there has been plenty of research into this important possibility. Nah, not in New Zealand.

Not a great deal that is fresh has been written on this important subject for many years, mainly because the search for new material would involve much time, expense and difficulty. Hocken and McNab—two of the Dominion’s most gifted historians—held that further research might reveal that the true story of the discovery of New Zealand has yet to be told. Unhappily, neither gained an opportunity to elucidate what both seem to have rated a first-class historical mystery.

Very unhappily. But wait a second… Hocken and McNad really were very important historians, their research should surely have been followed up. Why wasn’t it. Let’s look at what Hocken had to say:

In Transactions of the New Zealand Institute (1894) at p. 616, Hocken says:

“Doubtless before Tasman, there were voyagers who had visited New Zealand…. We are justified in thinking that there are buried in the old archives of Portugal and of Spain journals which, if found, would give an earlier account of New Zealand than those which we consider our earliest…. The iron-bound chests of Portugal and of Spain are the probable repositories of these treasures, or they may have been emptied into the Papal and monkish libraries … and may lie covered with the accumulated dust of centuries.”

OK. This gives us something to go on. The article goes on to discuss the Jean Rotz map of 1542, which both Hocken and McNab cite as shadowing a strong possibility that New Zealand was know to the Europeans. McNab goes further to say that evidence suggests that the country had even been seen previously to Cook on more than one occasion (which would exclude Tasman).

McNab Teases Us

McNab adds the following quote that beckons a tantalising treasure hunt (not for gold, mind, but for evidence):

I believe that the information will one day be unearthed, and I further believe that I know where it will be found, but it will be only after a search that might last for years.

Let’s hope that something can be found. Is there anyone searching in Spain or Portugal, by chance? Let me know.