{"story":["Fighting between kin groups was part of Māori political life long before muskets. Battles were usually fought in autumn, once winter food was stored, with mere, patu and other hand weapons, and were often ritualised affairs that killed relatively few. Diplomacy, marriages, gifts and taua muru, the stripping of an offender's goods, settled many disputes without bloodshed. The early trade muskets were unreliable and took a long time to load again after each shot. When Ngāpuhi first took them into battle, at Moremonui in about 1807, Ngāti Whātua warriors with traditional weapons beat them. Over the following years Hongi Hika became convinced that guns would work if used in numbers. To buy them, tribes had to grow far more pigs and potatoes, which served as currency for the trade.","From 1818 Ngāpuhi war parties (taua) armed with muskets ranged across the North Island, and their opponents faced death, slavery or exile. In 1818 a taua under Hongi Hika destroyed some 50 villages, reaching as far as Tolaga Bay, and took about 2,000 captives to dress flax for trade. In 1821 Hongi came back from England with between 300 and 500 more muskets, and in the years that followed he took huge armies against Ngāti Pāoa and Ngāti Maru, Waikato and Te Arawa, from Tāmaki to Rotorua. Fear did much of the work: communities that had only heard of muskets often panicked. But the effort was hard to sustain. The 1823 expedition to Rotorua involved about 3,000 Ngāpuhi; by 1825 Hongi's force against Ngāti Whātua numbered 350. He was wounded in 1827 and died in 1828, and Ngāpuhi's part in the wars faded.","Tribes under threat had to arm and fight in turn. Waikato tribes expelled Te Rauparaha and Ngāti Toa from Kāwhia in 1820–21, and Ngāti Toa moved south through Taranaki to the Kāpiti Coast, where they took Kāpiti Island as a base and beat off an attack on it in 1824. Waikato joined Ngāti Tūwharetoa to beat Ngāti Kahungunu at Napier in 1824. Led by Te Wherowhero, Waikato also struck into Taranaki, invading in 1826 and again in the early 1830s, and some Taranaki groups moved south to join Ngāti Toa. Beginning in 1827, Ngāti Toa and Te Āti Awa, their allies, raided south and seized a large part of the upper South Island, where some of the heaviest fighting fell on Ngāi Tahu. Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama carried the war offshore to Rēkohu, the Chatham Islands, in 1835 and conquered the Moriori.","Once every tribe had guns, easy victories ended. Pā (fortified villages) were rebuilt with earthworks, trenches and heavier palisades, campaigns drained economies that also needed warriors as farmers and fishermen, and introduced diseases took their own toll. By the 1830s chiefs were war-weary, missionaries found a hearing, and rivalry turned economic. Estimates of the dead vary widely, from as many as 20,000 to as many as 40,000, in a population of perhaps 100,000. Far more were taken as slaves or driven out as refugees. Whole regions were emptied, which later complicated questions of ownership and has featured in Waitangi Tribunal claims. British unease about traders supplying the guns fed into the decision to colonise in 1840. The historian Angela Ballara argues that the wars grew out of custom and old scores, and that the musket made them deadlier rather than causing them."],"sources":[{"title":"The Musket Wars","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/new-zealands-19th-century-wars/the-musket-wars","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Overview (The Musket Wars)","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/musket-wars/overview","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Beginnings (The Musket Wars)","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/musket-wars/beginnings","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"The arms race (The Musket Wars)","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/musket-wars/arms-race","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Aftermath (The Musket Wars)","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/war/musket-wars/aftermath","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Musket wars","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/musket-wars","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Musket Wars","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musket_Wars","publisher":"Wikipedia"}]}