Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
One or two dozen bloody clashes dot the history of Maori-European contact before
1840 but, given the number of visits, inter-racial conflict was modest. Europeans needed
Maori protection, food and labour, and Maori came to need European articles, especially
muskets. Whaling stations and mission stations were linked to local Maori groups by
intermarriage, which helped keep the peace. Most warfare was between Maori and
Maori: the terrible intertribal 'Musket Wars' of 1818-36. Because Northland had the ma-
jority of early contact with Europe, its Ngapuhi tribe acquired muskets first. Under their
great general Hongi Hika, Ngapuhi then raided south, winning bloody victories against
tribes without muskets. Once they acquired muskets, these tribes saw off Ngapuhi, but
also raided further south in their turn. The domino effect continued to the far south of the
South Island in 1836. The missionaries claimed that the Musket Wars then tapered off
through their influence, but the restoration of the balance of power through the equal dis-
tribution of muskets was probably more important.
Europe brought such things as pigs (at last) and potatoes, which benefited Maori,
while muskets and diseases had the opposite effect. The negative effects have been exag-
gerated, however. Europeans expected peoples like the Maori to simply fade away at
contact, and some early estimates of Maori population were overly high - up to one mil-
lion. Current estimates are between 85,000 and 110,000 for 1769. The Musket Wars
killed perhaps 20,000, and new diseases did considerable damage too (although NZ had
the natural quarantine of distance: infected Europeans usually recovered or died during
the long voyage, and smallpox, for example, which devastated native Americans, did not
make it here). By 1840 the Maori had been reduced to about 70,000, a decline of at least
20%. Maori bent under the weight of European contact, but they certainly did not break.
The Ministry for Culture & Heritage's history website (
www.nzhistory.net.nz
)
is an excel-
lent source of info on NZ history.
Making Pakeha
By 1840, Maori tribes described local Europeans as 'their Pakeha', and valued the profit
and prestige they brought. Maori wanted more of both, and concluded that accepting
nominal British authority was the way to get them. At the same time, the British govern-
ment was overcoming its reluctance to undertake potentially expensive intervention in
NZ. It too was influenced by profit and prestige, but also by humanitarian considerations.
It believed, wrongly but sincerely, that Maori could not handle the increasing scale of un-
official European contact. In 1840 the two peoples struck a deal, symbolised by the treaty
first signed at Waitangi on 6 February that year. The Treaty of Waitangi now has a stand-
ing not dissimilar to that of the Constitution in the US, but is even more contested. The
