Acuriously Arched Rock on the Coast of New Zealand./A New Zealand Chief whose head is ingeniously Tatawed, and a Subaltern Warrior of the same..

Title

Acuriously Arched Rock on the Coast of New Zealand./A New Zealand Chief whose head is ingeniously Tatawed, and a Subaltern Warrior of the same..

Description

Three images on a plate with a decorative border. Lower image shows New Zealand Maoris with a tattooed face and a warrior with his weapon. Upper image View of Arched Rock on the coast of New Zealand, on its top is a hippa or retreat.

ca. 1794

Artist

Baldwyn

Historical Description

New Zealand was one of the last areas on earth to be colonized by humans. In his book The Penguin History Of New Zealand, New Zealand historian Michael King describes the Maori people as “the last great community on earth to live untouched and unaffected by the outside world”. The Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand. Their ancestors from the Pacific islands are believed to have been the first immigrants to settle in previously uninhabited New Zealand in several waves from Polynesia in the 13th century, some 300 years before the European seafarers. Early European explorers including Abel Tasman, who reached New Zealand in 1642, and Captain James Cook, whose first visit took place in 1769, described encounters with Maori. These early accounts describe the Maori as a fierce and combative warrior people. Fighting between tribes was common at this time and the vanquished were sometimes enslaved or killed. From the 1780s onwards, Maori encountered European sealers and whalers, some of whom signed on to their ships. Refugees from the Australian convict colony also had an increasing influence on the Maori at this time. The close contact of many tribes with the Europeans and their weapon technology, especially muskets, led to a military imbalance between the tribes and to numerous armed conflicts between various tribes, which in the middle of the 19th century went down in New Zealand's history as the Musket Wars. In addition, the Musket Wars led to various forced migrations of individual fleeing tribes with displacements of their traditional settlement areas. The Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840, stipulated that the Maori tribes should have undisturbed possession of land, forests, fishing grounds and other taonga. In the years leading up to 1872, there were several armed conflicts as a result of ambiguities in this treaty. Today, the Waitangi Tribunal settles disputes. Even though Maori and Europeans intermarried to a considerable extent and thus intermingled, many still retained their cultural identity. There are therefore numerous ways of defining who is Maori and who is not. In this respect, there is no clearly homogeneous social group called Maori.