Joy Mark's conclusions on Maori warfare cries out for correction. Unfortunately, despite our intelligence, us humans are scarcely the most peaceful animal on the planet. Our warfare and racial conflicts go back as long as history itself.
Over time, it seems that it is only the weapons that change. Maori tribes, like all native peoples had their disagreements, ambitions, and thus battles, but relatively minor and never on the scale of Europe's woeful record. Scale provides the basis confounding such hypocritical and red-necked nonsense.
Maori survived without metal or wheel and were effectively stone age, relying on such as obsidian and green stone for their implements and weapons. Balance ruled; until we Europeans arrived in ‘paradise', soon after we were trading steel and guns. This led to unbalanced warfare between those tribes with more or less of such arms. For example, the whaling, liquor and brothel dependant Russel sent hyped up tribes on raids, including to our Bay of Plenty. Once armed, they became no more and no less merciless than the Romans, Vikings, Crusaders, or Conquistadors.
But remember just who armed them - without doubt our none too distant, unprincipled, and colonising ancestors.
Keith Corbett, Welcome Bay.