Gilbert Mair (trader) - Witness of The Musket Wars

Witness of The Musket Wars

During his trips around NZ Gilbert Mair witnessed "the savagery" of the Musket Wars, the wars between Māori iwi in the years between 1818 and 1830. He saw for instance the results of a clash at Ohiwa Harbour in 1828, with fifty dead bodies on the shore. And in that same year, he saw the remains of a fight at Te Papa pa at Tauranga Harbour, with "hundreds of bodies of men, women and children, dead animals and human bones, the remnants of a cannibal feast". He later told his son Gilbert of a visit he had made to the Te Totara Pa site in 1826. Five years before, in 1821, a Nga Puhi taua (war party), led by Hongi Hika, had slaughtered the Ngati Maru, living there. But when Gilbert Mair senior walked there in 1826, he had still found it "... strewn with human bones – a veritable Golgotha".

Shortly after Elizabeth and Gilbert married, in 1828, the famous Ngā Puhi rangatira Hongi Hika died. He had provided protection to the missionary community, and the time following his death was of considerable anxiety for the settlers.