Maoris and Muskets in New Zealand: Disruption of a War System

Abstract

The New Zealand Maoris live and work now in peace as citizens of a modern nation, but they are a people who, like some North American Indian groups and the Zulu of Africa, first became famous as warriors. A great deal has been written about Maori warfare. Particularly those aspects which seemed strange to European observers-cannibalism, the taking of heads, fighting in order to avenge verbal insults-have been richly and conspicuously documented, but copious materials on other aspects have also been made available by observers and students of Maori life in the two centuries since Captain Cook and other Europeans first landed in New Zealand. In this paper these materials are used to indicate that Maori warfare had an adaptive function within a system operating in pre-European times and to show that the effect of certain changes brought about through contacts