Musket Wars

The Musket Wars were a series of five hundred or more battles fought in New Zealand amongst Māori between 1807 and 1842, after Māori obtained muskets.

Northern tribes such as the rivals Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Whātua were the first to obtain firearms, and inflicted heavy casualties upon each other and on neighbouring tribes, some of whom had never seen muskets. The wars were characterised by their brutality and ruthlessness – with treachery, the burning of villages, killing of prisoners, torture, slavery, and cannibalism being commonplace.

The first occasion appears to have been the defeat of a Ngāpuhi war party by Ngāti Whātua at Moremonui near Maunganui, between Hokianga and Kaipara harbours in 1807. In this instance, it was the Ngāpuhi who were equipped with muskets. But the Ngāti Whātua ambushed them with traditional weapons before Ngāpuhi had sufficient opportunity to load or reload. —Michael King

Hongi Hika, who was later to lead Ngāpuhi raids across most of the northern North Island, saw two of his brothers killed in this debacle.

Hongi Hika actively sought muskets and other technology from the west. In 1814, as leader of the Ngāpuhi, Hongi went to Sydney and encouraged missionaries to establish themselves on his land. He went to England in March 1820 with the missionary Kendall. He met many people at Cambridge, including French adventurer "Baron" de Theirry, with whom he completed a land-for-guns transaction. With the aid of a large musket-based army, Hongi Hika captured many slaves. They were put to work producing cash crops that could be traded for muskets from passing ships. This gave the Ngāpuhi a huge advantage in subsequent wars, until other tribes also acquired muskets of their own. It is estimated that more than 18,500 Māori were killed, from a population of only about 100,000.

These early inter-tribal conflicts caused much territory to be won and lost between various tribes, which complicated dealings with European settlers wishing to gain land. It also gave Māori experience in fighting with and defending against muskets, and may help explain why rebel Māori felt so confident in taking on the combined British and New Zealand forces in the New Zealand Land Wars in the 1860s.