End of the New Zealand Wars

After the New Zealand Wars ended in 1872, the King Country remained closed to Pakeha for more than a decade, until Ngati Maniapoto leaders agreed to the construction of the North Island Main Trunk railway in the mid 1880s.

Maori land loss, 1860-2000

South Taranaki also resisted settler incursions until 1881, when the assertive Parihaka community was dispersed by the colonial army. Resistance flared briefly in Hokianga in 1898, and parts of Urewera remained off-limits to Pakeha until 1916.

Weight of numbers and military and economic power had prevailed, though, and the map of New Zealand had been redrawn. By 1900 this was a settler society, with Maori pushed out to its fringes.

Casualties

Several thousand people died in the New Zealand Wars, most of them Maori. The numbers below are those of the historian James Cowan, who counted civilians and sometimes overstated the casualties of Maori who opposed the settlers. The death toll was most balanced in the 1840s and in Titokowaru's War. Pai Marire followers suffered the highest proportionate losses.