I love a good conspiracy story or historical mystery. :)
New light shed on origins of Maori
Matthew Wright
July 28, 2010
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/opinion/perspective/3964223/New-light-shed-on-origins-of-Maori
[snip] When Pakeha first started looking at the problem, about 160 years ago - based on what Maori told them, and what was also obvious - they basically got it right. Largely on the basis of linguistic similarities, settler- ethnographers such as William Colenso concluded in the 1860s that Maori came probably from the Cook Islands or a nearby group. Whakapapa suggested they had done so early in the fourteenth century - as Colenso put it, “scarcely four centuries before Cook”. [/snip]