Raid

 In 1830 a murderous PoS from the Taranaki region called, I believe, Te Rapraha, hopped on a visiting European ship with his cohort of co-murderers and sailed down to Canterbury.

There he and his mates proceeded to fight, murder or enslave approx nine out of every ten Ngai Tahu tribesmen he encountered.

A contemporary account mentions a number of "meat packs" being loaded aboard the ship for the return journey.

An official Ngai Tahu historian told me there were approx 350 Ngai Tahu left alive after the raid. Most of those were old men and women and women (usually with child) who had been hidden from the raiders.

The historian told me that this group numbered about 350 spread over the area from Akaroa and Lyttleton to Kaiapoi.

The only way Ngai Tahu in Canterbury survived was a deliberate program of breeding with visiting seamen (mainly white) off the whaling, sealing and flax-trading boats.

Hence the numbers of red-headed "maori" running around when settlers started arriving around 1850.

I mention this history because I note the current (shamefully given he's a racist liar) Prime Minister spent Waitangi day among the descendants of this group. Basically he spent the day among sunburnt white people.

What a shame he didn't spend maori-troublemaker day with his maori mates.

A couple of other questions arise from this historical foray:

1/ Meatpacks? Before the introduction of bovine, ovine, equine or porcine species to the region.

2/ Why, as with the Chathams murderous raid, did the Taranaki outfit need to use white-man's ships if they were, as we are so often told, masters of the seas and oceans?