Waitaki Girls' High School

Notes

Maori musket wars 1800-1840
130 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates
illustrations (some colour), maps, portraits
Summary: This is a brief account for the general reader of the deadliest and most gruesome chapter in New Zealand's history - the Musket Wars in which around one third of the Maori population were killed. The wars were a continuation of the inter-tribal fighting that had been a feature of native life ever since the tribes arrived in New Zealand in their canoes but the introduction of muskets increased the killing to an industrial scale. Tribes were decimated and forced from their homelands, usually to poorer land, and to attack others, bringing bloodshed, widespread insecurity and social breakdown. Deaths demanded revenge (utu) and more killing. The resulting arms race created an economy based on the frantic production of flax and other goods to be traded for ever more muskets as a matter of self- preservation. Eventually northern chiefs, who had had the most contact with European traders, sea captains, etc., realised the futility of the constant fighting which, had it continued, might well have driven the tribes to extinction. They began to listen to the missionaries and sought a single sovereign power that would be strong enough to keep the peace among tribes; that could only be the British Crown. They themselves became part of the massive cultural change in Maoridom, starting the movement away from the old divisive and tribal ways towards a more collective and peaceful approach to issues. This led them to ask for British sovereignty, which came with the Treaty of Waitangi and other events of 1840

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