Short answers, pulled from the story.
Polynesians began settling in New Zealand between about 1280 and 1350, arriving in oceangoing waka canoes. No human remains or structures can be reliably dated earlier than the eruption of Mount Tarawera around 1314.
The Treaty of Waitangi was first signed in the Bay of Islands on the 6th of February 1840. It paved the way for Britain's declaration of sovereignty over all of New Zealand, which was proclaimed on the 21st of May 1840.
Yes. In 1893, New Zealand became the first nation in the world to grant all women the right to vote. The same year's Liberal Government, led largely by Richard Seddon, also guaranteed a minimum wage in 1894, another world first.
New Zealand has three official languages: English, Māori, and New Zealand Sign Language. English is spoken by 95.4 percent of the population; te reo Māori was declared an official language in 1987 and New Zealand Sign Language in 2006.
New Zealand's geographic isolation for approximately 80 million years allowed plants and animals to evolve independently, with about 82 percent of indigenous vascular plants being endemic. The absence of mammalian predators led birds such as the kiwi and kākāpō to evolve flightlessness; human arrival and introduced mammals caused the extinction of at least 51 bird species.
Dutch cartographers named the islands Nova Zeelandia, after the Dutch province of Zeeland, following Abel Tasman's 1642 sighting. That Latin name was anglicised to New Zealand. In Māori the country is called Aotearoa, often translated as 'land of the long white cloud'.