Tommy Solomon

Who was Tommy Solomon?

Tame Horomona Rehe, also known by the anglicised name Tommy Solomon, is believed by most to have been the last full-blooded Moriori. Moriori were the indigenous people of the Chatham Islands.

Solomon was born at Waikaripi in the Chatham Islands and raised on the Moriori Reserve near Manukau Point. His mother died in 1903 but because of his youthful irresponsibility the interest in her land was vested in his father during his lifetime.

Solomon was married in 1903 to Ada Fowler of the Kāi Tahu iwi and began learning the trade of sheep farmer first on leased land and then on the family holding which gradually increased in size as the other Moriori people died off. When his father and his wife died in 1915 Solomon was running 7000 sheep and a herd of cattle on the family farm. He remarried in 1916 to Whakarawa, the niece of his first wife and subsequently had five children.

As the Kāi Tahu are a South Island Māori tribe rather than Moriori, Solomon's children were considered of mixed descent. Modern scholars, however, reject the concept of a phylogenetically much distinct Moriori, and instead consider them a culturally distinct offshoot of an early South Island Māori group, as evidenced by similarities between the Moriori language and the k-dialect of southern Māori.