Transcript
THE MUSKET WARS
MĀNI: In 1822 Te Wherowhero, paramount leader of Waikato, looked out from the top of Mātakitaki.
WILLIAM: Mātakitaki is a raised hill, sitting in a strategic position between the fork of the Waipa River and the Mangapiko Stream.
It overlooks the main route into Waikato territory and was defended by a network of three Pā, or fortresses. They were surrounded both by walls and ditches, and the natural defences of the rivers, dense bush, and steep banks.
About five thousand Waikato Māori were sheltering inside.
MĀNI: Warning had come of a taua, a war party. Now about three thousand warriors of Ngāpuhi were outside.
Ngāpuhi were there to avenge defeats in earlier conflicts with iwi from Waikato and Hauraki.
Leading them was Hongi Hika - paramount leader of his iwi, recently returned from a voyage to England.
WILLIAM: Thanks to Hongi’s efforts on that trip, Ngāpuhi weren’t just armed with traditional weapons like taiaha and patu. They also held hundreds of European muskets.
MĀNI: At first, Te Wherowhero took Ngāpuhi by surprise - raiding one of their camps, killing about a hundred warriors and capturing some of their muskets.
But when his men returned to celebrate their victory, they were hit with musket fire from across the river which killed combatants and non-combatants alike.
WILLIAM: Seeing that slaughter, and hearing the unfamiliar roar of gunfire, the people inside the pā panicked.
MĀNI: They tried to run. But a bridge across a deep ditch at the eastern end of the Pā collapsed under their weight. Many were trampled or smothered to death.
WILLIAM: In the midst of this chaos Ngāpuhi made their assault. Te Wherowhero and the other survivors were forced to flee.
MĀNI: By the end of the day, it’s thought up to 15 hundred Waikato Māori were dead, and hundreds more captured.
WILLIAM: The battle for Mātakitaki was maybe the bloodiest in the history of Aotearoa. It’s possible more New Zealanders were killed that day than any day of the First or Second World Wars.
MĀNI: But it was just one of a series of conflicts which were fought all over Aotearoa for more than 30 years.
Out of approximately 100 thousand Māori living at the time, it’s estimated 50 thousand were directly affected: Killed, injured, enslaved or forced to migrate from traditional lands - sometimes permanently.
WILLIAM: These conflicts had a tremendous influence on the rest of the 19th century and the aftershocks continue to be felt today, 200 years later.
MĀNI: These days they are most commonly known as the Musket Wars.
Sting
MĀNI: So how did the Musket Wars begin? Let’s start by setting the scene.
James Cook’s expeditions to Aotearoa in the 1760s and 1770s were followed by a series of visits from other Europeans - explorers, sealers, traders, and whalers.
WILLIAM: By this point, many Māori were well aware of what a musket could do, some had seen them demonstrated by visiting Europeans, and some had been on the receiving end of the guns as well.
MĀNI: But at first visiting ships only sold the weapons in small numbers. Many were so badly made they didn’t fire at all, others could blow up in your face.
WILLIAM: And the first battle of the Musket Wars didn’t do much to prove the power of firearms over traditional Māori weapons.
MĀNI: In 1807, a taua, a war party, of about 500 Ngāpuhi warriors made its way south to attack two rival iwi - Ngāti Whātua and Te Rōroa.
Ngāpuhi had a handful of muskets, and must have been interested to see what they could do.
WILLIAM: But they never got the chance. As Ngāpuhi settled down for a meal at Moremonui, north of what’s now Dargaville, Ngāti Whātua and Te Rōroa launched a preemptive strike .
MĀNI: Ngāpuhi rushed to load their muskets, but when they raised them to fire the Ngāti Whātua rangatira Murupaenga ordered his warriors to drop to the ground.
The musket balls whizzed over their heads.
WILLIAM: Before Ngāpuhi could reload, Ngāti Whātua and Te Rōroa closed the distance and cut them down.
MĀNI: Eventually, a Te Rōroa rangatira called Tāoho, called an end to the fighting. He was related to Ngāpuhi through marriage so he wanted to avoid an outright massacre.
WILLIAM: Still, this was a major defeat for Ngāpuhi.
There were so many bodies left in the sand, the battle became known as “Te-kai-a-te-Karoro”, “The Feast of the Seagulls”.
MĀNI: One of the survivors was a Ngāpuhi rangatira called Hongi Hika.
Hongi’s relative, Pōkaia, was the leader of the taua and ordered him to flee when he saw the battle was lost.
Hongi hid in a nearby swamp and watched as his friends and whānau, including Pokaia, were killed.
Tīkanga demanded that Hongi and his iwi respond to this disaster.
WILLIAM: You might think that having seen muskets fail to swing that battle in Ngāpuhi’s favour, Hongi Hika would have decided the new weapons weren’t worth the trouble.
But he had a broader vision. Hongi had been trained from childhood as a war leader. He was a shrewd tactician and strategist.
MĀNI: He also had help from one of his wives, Turikātuku.
Despite being blind, Turikātuku often went to war with Hongi, she was his closest advisor.
WILLIAM: Hongi and Turikātuku believed that if Ngāpuhi could get enough muskets they would be unbeatable.
MĀNI: And there was only one way to get muskets: From Europeans.
Through the 1810s Hongi Hika and other Ngāpuhi rangatira encouraged Christian Missionaries to live in the Bay of Islands.
Hongi never became a Christian, but he knew a missionary settlement would lead to more trade opportunities - not just for muskets but all kinds of other new technologies.
WILLIAM: By 1815 Hongi was the undisputed leader of Ngāpuhi and more and more ships were dropping anchor at his home in Kerikeri.
Hongi Hika was one of the great figures of New Zealand history. And he did a lot more than just fight battles.
He was a talented artist. He carved this self-portrait for the missionary leader Samuel Marsden.
He was also a lover of innovation. He encouraged his iwi to adopt new tools and crops, and to learn reading and writing.
MĀNI: In 1820 he travelled to England with missionary Thomas Kendall and while there worked with academics at Cambridge University to create the first Māori dictionary.In 1820 he travelled to England with the Missionary Thomas Kendall to put together a full Māori dictionary with the help of academics at Cambridge University
WILLIAM: He spent the rest of his time in England building diplomatic ties. He acted as an ambassador for Ngāpuhi - meeting withgiving lectures to British aristocrats, he even had an lengthy audience with King George the Fourth.
MĀNI: King George gifted Hongi a suit of chainmail armour which he later wore in battle. It saved his life at least twice!
But Hongi’s visit to England wasn’t only about diplomacy and dictionaries.
When he travelled back to Aotearoa in 1821 he stopped in Sydney and picked up several hundred muskets and a huge supply of ammunition.
These weapons kicked the Musket Wars into overdrive.
WILLIAM: Traditional Māori warfare was mostly hand to hand combat with weapons like taiaha and patu.
Almost overnight, Hongi Hika changed the game. He introduced massed volleys of musket fire which could cut down enemies up to a hundred metres away, making his forces all but unbeatable.
MĀNI: Or at least that’s one theory.
Other historians argue guns alone were too unreliable and inaccurate to give musket-armed taua a major advantage in battle.
As Dr Paul D’Arcy of the Australian National University Museum points out…
“...fear of firearms and cannon soon gave way to an acute awareness of both their potential and their limitations … There are examples all over the Pacific of musketeers being overcome when their opponents anticipated their musket discharges and rushed in while the guns were being reloaded” - Māori and Muskets from a Pan-Polynesian Perspective, New Zealand Journal of History, 34, 1 (2000), Dr Paul D’Arcy
WILLIAM: Many historians say muskets alone weren’t enough to fundamentally change Māori warfare. They argue what really tipped the balance was another European introduction: The potato.
MĀNI: Potatoes were much easier to grow than kūmara, and unlike kūmara, potatoes weren’t tapu so there were fewer restrictions on who could grow them.
This meant the best gardeners, who were also often the best warriors, could spend less time farming and more time fighting.
WILLIAM: Also, potatoes could be carried long distances without rotting, meaning warriors could attack distant targets and support long sieges.
MĀNI: Some historians think potatoes were so important to these conflicts that the Musket Wars should be renamed as The Potato Wars.
WILLIAM: In any case, by the end of the 1830s, Ngāpuhi taua had reached all over the North Island.
The battle at Mātakitaki Pā in 1822, was just one of these conflicts.
Ngāpuhi swept down the West Coast all the way to Whanganui-a-tara, Wellington Harbour, made repeated forays into the Bay of Plenty, East Coast and Waikato, and even travelled northward to the top of Te Hiku.
MĀNI: There are so many dramatic, heroic and tragic stories from these battles. You should really check them out. Some may have been fought right in your backyard.
WILLIAM: You might think that thanks to all his victories, Hongi Hika would have become like the Emperor of Aotearoa, ruling over the lands of the tribes he’d conquered.
But actually, Hongi almost never occupied land of the people he defeated.
MĀNI: Territorial expansion wasn’t Hongi Hika’s objective.
The point was mana and utu. We’ve talked about these concepts in previous episodes. Mana can be translated as prestige, status, or spiritual power, while utu means something like rebalancing or reciprocity.
WILLIAM: So Ngāpuhi weren’t launching invasions to conquer land. They were settling debts, avenging old wrongs, and enhancing their mana in the process.
In fact, Hongi named his muskets after famous Ngāpuhi defeats as reminders of the utu he needed to achieve.
MĀNI: Utu also shaped the response of the tribes Ngāpuhi attacked. These tribes didn’t just suffer physically or economically, there was a spiritual and psychological element which often couldn’t be resolved without utu.
And that didn’t always mean attacking the people who attacked you. The victim of a raid by one iwi sometimes sought utu by attacking an iwi or hapū which weren’t even directly involved in the original dispute.
WILLIAM: This could create cycles of violence that went on and on, but not always.
Sometimes hapū and iwi were able to break the cycle, to hohou te rongo, to make peace.
MĀNI: For example, in the aftermath of the Battle of Mātakitaki, Ngāpuhi made a peace offering by releasing several high-ranking Waikato women they had captured.
This was followed by a strategic marriage between Hongi Hika’s niece and Te Wherowhero’s brother cementing a peace between their respective hapū.
But when battles did happen, things could get very nasty.
Missionaries wrote in horrified tones about what sometimes followed these battles: kai tangata (cannibalism), and mokomokai (the taking and preserving of human heads).
WILLIAM: And just to be clear, historians question the accuracy of some of these accounts. Missionaries often wrote about what they heard second hand rather than what they actually saw and may have exaggerated the level of violence.
MĀNI: But it’s clear from Māori oral history, and eye witness accounts that kai tangata and mokomokai did happen during the Musket Wars.
WILLIAM: One of those eye witnesses was Samuel Knight, a teacher at a mission school. He wrote about the aftermath of one battle he saw in 1836.
Just a heads up, what comes next is graphic. You may want to skip ahead.
Samuel Knight says…
“I came to a place where a number of bodies were laid out previous to their being cut up for the oven … a body, apparently that moment killed, was dragged into the camp before me. His head was cut off before I could look round. This did not seem to satisfy the wretches. His breast was opened, and his heart, etc., steaming with warmth, was pulled out and carried off.” - Samuel Knight, 1836.
MĀNI: And it wasn’t just Pākehā who were disturbed by this. It was pretty horrifying to Māori as well. Eating any part of an enemy or taking their head was a serious insult to their relatives.
So why did it happen? Well, utu and mana were significant factors. But there were other reasons.
For one, kai tangata was thought to give protection against ātua - gods or deities.
Eating someone literally made them part of you. That was thought to give protection against local ātua which might otherwise rise up against you as an invader.
WILLIAM: Mokomokai, preserved human heads, also had practical aspects. They could be traded back to their relatives in exchange for a peace deal.
MĀNI: Plus, it wasn’t just the heads of enemies which were preserved. Māori preserved the heads of their own whānau as well.
WILLIAM: And while these aspects of Māori culture were disturbing to European observers, Māori were just as disturbed by aspects of European culture.
For example, when a Ngāpuhi Rangatira named Te Pahi visited Sydney in 1805 he was horrified to hear two men were about to be hanged just for stealing food.
He tried to intervene with the Governor who later wrote…
“[Te Pahi] endeavoured to reason with me on the injustice of slaying men for stealing pork … With much earnestness he urged his being allowed to take them to New Zealand, where taking provisions was not accounted a crime.” - Governor Philip Gidley King
MĀNI: So, yes, the Musket Wars feature plenty of gruesome stories, but so do all other wars in history.
And there are also plenty of stories of heroism, perseverance and mercy.
Like the story of Te Waru of Ngāiterangi. His wife and children were captured when Ngāpuhi attacked Tauranga in 1820.
While Ngāpuhi were celebrating their victory, Te Waru set out to rescue his whānau.
Here’s how historian and Waitangi Tribunal member Ron Crosby describes what happened.
“Te Waru stealthily approached the Ngāpuhi encampment near the mouth of the Wairoa River ... where he managed to disarm the Ngāpuhi rangatira Te Whareumu. Te Waru handed over his weapons to Te Whareumu and asked him to bind him and take him to the encampment. Once there he asked for the release of his whānau.
… Ngāpuhi were so impressed by Te Waru’s sparing of Te Whareumu and his courage in allowing himself to be led into their encampment that they acceded to his request. Moreover, peace was made and to mark the peace [the Ngāpuhi chief] Te Morenga made a gift of a musket to Te Waru before the taua departed.” - Ron Crosby, The Forgotten Wars, 2020
WILLIAM: Through the 1820s, an arms race swept across Aotearoa. Ngāpuhi desperately tried to maintain their advantage in firepower, while their rivals tried just as hard to catch up.
But muskets were extremely expensive. Traders wanted up to 200 baskets of potatoes or 25 pigs for a single gun.
MĀNI: This encouraged a vicious cycle. Much of the food production was done by mōkai, war captives or slaves. More captives meant more food, more food meant more guns, and more guns meant more opportunities to capture workers.
WILLIAM: Mōkai were also part of a trade in mokomokai - the preserved human heads we mentioned earlier.
European collectors and museums were obsessed with mokomokai. Demand was so high traders were prepared to offer a musket for two heads.
Hundreds of people were captured, tattooed and killed so their heads could be sold. Many heads were also stolen from burial sites.
MĀNI: This trade was formally banned by authorities in Sydney in 1835 but probably persisted beyond that.
In modern times, major efforts have been made to recover these heads from overseas museums and return them to their descendants.
WILLIAM: All this shows just how desperate the race for muskets got. Iwi and hapū who couldn’t keep up often had to run for their lives. The area around modern day Auckland/Tāmaki Makaurau was mostly deserted between 1825 and 1835 as local hapū fled to escape Ngāpuhi.
MĀNI: These heke (or migrations) were widespread during the Musket Wars, and often triggered further conflicts.
One of the most significant was led by Te Rauparaha of Ngāti Toa.
In 1822 Te Rauparaha and his people were driven from their home in Kāwhia by powerful, musket-armed rivals from Waikato.
Over the next two years Te Rauparaha gathered a coalition of two to three thousand people made up of his own iwi Ngāti Toa and several west coast and north Taranaki iwi.
They journeyed south to Horowhenua, Kāpiti Island and Whanganui-a-tara/Wellington Harbour.
WILLIAM: Sometimes this heke was peaceful. Te Rauparaha, like Hongi Hika, was skilled at building alliances. But he also fought many battles with iwi which opposed his heke.
And unlike Hongi, Te Rauparaha did occupy some territories he seized.
He made up for the loss of access to ancestral lands in Kāwhia and Taranaki by capturing territory all around Kāpiti and the Wellington region.
MĀNI: Then, from 1827 to 18326, Ngāti Toa and its allies struck further, invading the lands of northern South Island iwi and Ngāi Tahu further south, devastating Kaikoura, Ākaroa and Kaiapoi.
This was partly to try and control the valuable trade in pounamu.
WILLIAM: But those who were successful early on in the Musket Wars didn’t always remain successful.
Hongi Hika died in 1828 after being accidentally wounded the previous year during a battle at Mangamuka, north of the Hokianga.
MĀNI: That same year, Te Wherowhero of Waikato launched the first of two several successful taua in the Tāmaki, Whangarei and Tūtūkākā areas.
Ngāpuhi’s unchallenged dominance of the upper North Island was over.
WILLIAM: In 1833 and 1834 Ngāi Tahu launched two taua the full length of Te Waipounamu (the South Island) seeking utu from Ngāti Toa and their allies.
MĀNI: And as more Taranaki iwi migrated south, conflicts broke out within Te Rauparaha’s coalition over rights to resources.
In 1835 those conflicts encouraged two North Taranaki iwi, Ngāti Tama and Ngāti Mutunga, to invade and occupy Rēkohu (The Chatham Islands), home to the Moriori people. We’re telling that story in a separate episode.
WILLIAM: Wars also ravaged the East Coast, the Central North Island and South Taranaki as inland tribes got muskets of their own. Virtually every part of Aotearoa was touched by these conflicts.
MĀNI: Our best guess is that 20 thousand people died during the Musket Wars. The highest toll of any conflict in New Zealand history. More than the First or Second World Wars, or the New Zealand Wars.
Plus, the population of Aotearoa was far lower during the Musket Wars than in those other conflicts. So, if you think of the deaths as a percentage of the total population the Musket Wars look even worse.
WILLIAM: However, you’ve gotta remember the Musket Wars lasted more than 30 years, much longer than those other wars.
If you spread the 20 thousand deaths over 38 years, the discrepancy isn’t quite so large.
MĀNI: But however you look at it, the Musket Wars were unusually bloody, and there are a few reasons for that.
First, these conflicts were fought inside Aotearoa.
In the World Wars, New Zealand’s non-combatants were mostly safe from the fighting. In the Musket Wars they were right in the firing line.
WILLIAM: Second, and probably most significantly, when we talk about causes of death during any war, we’re including deaths from disease. And the Musket Wars overlapped with the arrival of a bunch of deadly new viruses and bacteria from Europe.
It’s likely taua and heke helped spread these infections and worsened their impact.
MĀNI: Towards the end of the 1830s, the Musket Wars were finally coming to an end.
Why? Well, again, there are several reasons.
Probably the biggest was the end of the arms race. As historian James Belich puts it:
“[The Musket Wars] began when and because some Māori had muskets and potatoes, and stopped when and because everyone had them.” - Making Peoples, James Belich, 1996
WILLIAM: Plus, Māori had designed new types of defensive fortification: The so-called gunfighter pā.
These had networks of palisades with deep trenches and elevated firing positions. Enough to make any potential attacker think twice.
MĀNI: The spread of Christianity played a role too.
While some of the missionaries helped perpetuate the wars by providing access to muskets, others preached against aggressive warfare, and personally intervened to prevent conflict.
WILLIAM: As time went on, Christian teachings became increasingly influential.
For many Māori Christians it became a point of principle to turn the other cheek, rather than engage in violent forms of utu.
MĀNI: For example Wiremu Tāmihana Tarapīpipi of Ngāti Hauā was a rangatira who took part in several battles in the 1820s.
But in the 1830s, Tāmihana converted to Christianity and became a dedicated pacifist - putting an end to feuds and speaking out against violence. In the process he became greatly respected, even by some of his former enemies.
WILLIAM: In 1834, on the East Coast, another Māori Christian, Piripi Taumata-a-Kura of Ngāti Porou, imposed rules of warfare which banned cannibalism and killing wounded prisoners.
MĀNI: The Musket Wars also had a big impact on the founding documents of modern Aotearoa: He Whakaputanga (the Declaration of Independence) and the Treaty of Waitangi.
WILLIAM: Part of the reason the Missionaries lobbied so hard for the Treaty is they hoped British intervention in Aotearoa might bring an end to the conflicts.
MĀNI: And some historians think Ngāpuhi hoped closer links with Britain would discourage taua from southern iwi seeking utu for Ngāpuhi’s attacks earlier in the war.
You can also see that desire for security and stability in He Whakaputanga, where the northern chiefs who signed the document say…
“[We] invite the southern tribes to set aside their animosities, consider the well-being of our land and enter into the sacred Confederation of New Zealand.”
WILLIAM: And while the Musket Wars continued after the signing of He Whakaputanga and The Treaty of Waitangi, British intervention did sometimes prevent violence.
MĀNI: The final conflict of the Musket Wars ended in 1845 when British officials intercepted a Ngāti Tūwharetoa taua en route to attack Te Ihupuku Pā in South Taranaki.
The Anglican Bishop of New Zealand and a British Army Major managed to talk both sides out of fighting. Ngāti Tūwharetoa fired the final shots of the Musket Wars symbolically into the air before returning peacefully to Taupō.
WILLIAM: But even after these wars ended, the consequences kept rippling outward and set the stage for the next major conflicts in New Zealand history: The New Zealand Wars.
MĀNI: While the Musket Wars were raging Pākehā were getting serious about colonising Aotearoa, and the places they chose to live were heavily influenced by the wars.
WILLIAM: In some cases, it was a mutually beneficial situation. For example, Ngāti Whātua encouraged Pākehā to settle in Auckland/Tāmaki-Makaurau in the hope they would help defend the region against future Ngāpuhi taua.
MĀNI: Other cases were much more messy.
Settlements in and around New Plymouth and Whanganui were built on land some Māori had temporarily withdrawn from to escape pressure from rivals in Waikato.
Pākehā then came in and negotiated to buy that land while some or all of the rightful owners were elsewhere.
WILLIAM: As you might imagine, this led to some very tricky situations and triggered several wars.
MĀNI: What’s more, throughout the New Zealand Wars the Crown relied heavily on Māori allies, and those alliances were heavily influenced by the Musket Wars.
WILLIAM: For example, in the Northern War Hone Heke and Te Ruki Kawiti fought a three-sided war against the British, and a fellow Ngāpuhi rangatira, Tāmati Waka Nene.
Nene fought partly due to a personal rivalry with Heke, but also to preserve Ngāpuhi’s relationship with Britain.
Nene saw that alliance as crucial to preventing rival iwi taua from seeking utu.
MĀNI: Similarly, when Hone Heke urged Te Wherowhero of Waikato to attack Auckland, the Tainui chief refused. Instead he vowed to defend the Pākehā settlement.
Partly that was because Te Wherowhero saw Auckland as a strategic roadblock to any future Ngāpuhi taua.
WILLIAM: The Musket Wars help explain why Māori as a whole didn’t unify against the British during the New Zealand Wars.
For many, the trauma of those conflicts was just too raw. How could you make an alliance with people who had slaughtered your relatives just a few decades earlier?
MĀNI: But some managed to overcome that history.
Remember Wiremu Tāmihana? The Ngāti Hauā rangatira who became a devout Christian?
In 1825, Tāmihana had participated in a taua which resulted in the death of Te Wherowhero’s grandmother.
But he and Te Wherowhero were able to put that old grudge aside.
In the 1850s Tāmihana was instrumental in making Te Wherowhero the first monarch of the Kiingitanga, the Māori King Movement, which aimed to unify iwi and retain Māori land and authority
WILLIAM: And there’s one final ripple of the Musket Wars which we are still living with today.
The horrific accounts of the wars from missionaries and other Pākehā writers painted a picture of Māori as an unusually barbaric and warlike people.
Those narratives were used to justify British colonisation, and those justifications are still trotted out today.
That’s a bit hard to swallow given many Europeans helped perpetuate these wars by, y’know, supplying all the muskets. And that Europeans had plenty of their own nasty wars over the years.
MĀNI: The Musket Wars were horrific, but that’s the nature of war - not the nature of Māori.
That’s all from us this episode. Hei kona.
