Pai Marire
Background to the Treaty
New Zealand in the 1830s
New Zealand was largely a Maori world in the 1830s. There were perhaps 100,000 Maori, divided into major iwi or tribes. Relations between groups could be tense, and conflict was common. Maori traditions and social structures prevailed, but more Europeans arrived in New Zealand through the decade. There were about 200 in the North Island in the early 1830s. By 1839, there may have been 2000 throughout the country (including around 1400 in the North Island), attracted by trade and settlement.
The Christian missionaries
Agents of virtue
Overview - a frontier of chaos?
Setting the scene
The explorers Abel Tasman, James Cook and Marion du Fresne had all encountered violence while in New Zealand. This convinced many Europeans that New Zealand was a dangerous place. From the 1790s, though, the arrival of sealing and whaling gangs forged a new set of largely ad hoc, commercial interactions with Maori.
British intervention - taming the frontier?
Protecting Maori
The death of Carl Völkner - Pai Marire
The ritual killing by Pai Marire followers of missionary Carl Völkner in 1865 shocked many people. The government used the event as a reason to take harsh action against Pai Marire in general.
The death of Carl Völkner
Land and ideals - background to the Treaty
Maori and Pakeha had long traded with each other, and part of their exchanges included transactions for land. By the later 1830s the British government grew concerned about how land was obtained from Maori. Once settlers headed to New Zealand, the British government could no longer let matters drift. Action was needed to protect the interests of Maori from the worst ravages of European impact.
The land trade
Europeans claimed to have gained land in several ways. Missionary organisations made arrangements with chiefs for the land needed for their stations and farms. There were also small-scale transactions when whalers, timber millers and merchants acquired pieces of land. Some were for commercial purposes, but sometimes traders got property for their part-Maori families. As British intervention became more likely by the end of the 1830s, capitalists in New South Wales became involved in land speculation and claimed to have bought large areas in the hope of converting them to secure titles later. In a class by themselves were the massive and controversial claims of the New Zealand Company, in 1839–40, to some 20 million acres in central New Zealand. Some missionaries, against orders from London, reserved tracts of land for tribes in order to prevent such sales.
