Captain Cook visited New Zealand on all three of his voyages of exploration and had numerous contacts, some hostile, with the Maori inhabitants. Like all Polynesian peoples the existence of hereditary chiefs and warriors encouraged skilled craftsmanship and they had a wide range of fine objects to use for barter with the Europeans.

New Zealand was the last place colonised by the Polynesians (probably from Tahiti) and the Maori settlement took place in the middle of the first millennium A.D.. The climate is temperate instead of tropical and the Broussonetia papyrifer will not grow there. The Maoris therefore had no bark cloth and used the New Zealand flax instead, developing a new form of hand weaving to produce their fine cloaks.