History of Oceania, South-East Asia and Pacific: The Maori Wars

Violent contact between the peoples of Europe and New Zealand began in 1642, when a party of Maoris slaughtered members of Abel Tasman's crew. It was a fitting prelude for the next two centuries of New Zealand's history.

New Zealand was a majestic but sparsely-populated set of islands before European colonization began; it was also a noticeably dry environment in terms of its animal inhabitants - its only large predators were its human population. The Maoris were a Polynesian people who had supplanted previous settlers and eaten them. Ritual tattoing, eating the flesh of dead enemies, and chants and dances used to 'psyche' the warriors up before battle were the most readily identifiable traits of their culture.

The Maoris bore some resemblance to the Native tribes of the Americas - they did not understand that selling land to the white man was a permanent exchange, but they did quickly learn to understand the white man's guns. In the wars of the 19th Century, the Maoris respresented a bizarre fusion of cultures - some fought with guns, others with traditional green-stone clubs (patu pounamu); some were tatooed, others were not; some wore western clothing, others still went naked or in loincloths; Christianity, native beliefs, and combinations of the two were all practiced.

Several periods of intense small-scale violence in New Zealand - dubbed 'Maori Wars' by the British - broke in the mid-19th Century (1843-1848; 1863-1866; 1868-1870). These were termed Te Riri Pakeha - the 'White Mans' Anger' - by the Maoris themselves.

In the earlier conflicts, the Maoris attempted to defend their families and possessions from fortifications known as pa. As the British learned to storm these, the nature of the Maori wars changed; it became a brutal bush-war full of ambushes, raid, and counter-raid.

Maori armies were usually small, numbering in the dozens or hundreds; the largest on record in the 1860s numbered around 1500 men. The general term for a warrior was toa but there was no clear distinction of 'soldier' or 'civilian' in their culture; like most tribal peoples the Maoris expected every man, and when defended a pa, even the women, to combat the enemy.

The Maori used a variety of weapons. In the early 19th Century they used antique Napoleonic-era firearms they had acquired from merchants; these were termed ngutu-parera. By the 1860s they had obtained more effective arms, double-barrelled percussion shotguns they called tupara - these were among the most iconic weapons of the Maori Wars. Primitive weaponry included spears (taiaha), halberds (kakauroa), axes (patiti), and edged clubs made of stone or whalebone.

The last of the guerilla-leaders surrendered in 1872, bringing an end to one of the more brutal of Britain's many 19th Century 'small wars'.