Description

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. In fact, but for the seemingly insoluble
horrors and social chaos of the Musket Wars the chiefs might not have been so
eager to embrace the rule of Queen Victoria. With the introduction of British
law, conflict resolution would henceforth be through the courts and not by
bloody conflict. With the Treaty setting our beautiful islands on to a new and
safer path, the Musket Wars were brought to an end.