1820s: The Musket Junkie Wars
May 25, 2019
By AHNZ
What a massive transformative, destructive, change to New Zealand it was to introduce the musket. We understand substance abuse in terms of drugs, where individuals neglect all social fabric and livelihood, all industry and morals, clamouring for their hit.
Without the performance enhancing steroids of muskets the New Zealander truly would not be able to compete in the cannibalistic slaughter Olympics (c.1815-1825.)
The athlete or sports team will be a crippled embarrassment in the long run (which our modern media covers up) but today- in the moment- they are a contender with money and fame.
“To get muskets they impoverish themselves, neglecting their agriculture in order to gather flax to buy them with, and literally starving themselves. Many died of starvation in consequence, and in another way muskets proved the death of those who owned them. In the times of clubs and spears the Maoris had their pahs and villages on high hills, where the air was pure and the ground dry; when they got muskets they moved into the low ground, where they were carried off by the dampness and its consequent fevers.
“I have known whole villages and tribes killed in this way, so that not one man, woman or child remained. The musket was fatal to those who owned it as to those who did not; it was deadly either way.”- Ref. A Pakeha Maori, ‘The Boy Travellers in Australia’ (1888)
Colonial New Zealand dawn broke over the wretched ‘dying race’ of survivors (can we really say winners?) of the Murder Olympics. The population was defined by being best able to reject sustainable culture and wreak genocide on their fellows who could not or would not. They were distilled by natural selection into only those *least* able to live a productive life. Now the Closing Ceremony of The Treaty of Waitangi had been held and the Musket Wars were over there was the junkie’s price to be paid: To be washed up, misspent, burt out, unwise, unintelligent, undeveloped the same as many an aged model or sports star today.
“Disruption of the Maoris’ habitual patterns of diet added to the numbers who died early. They abandoned kumara gardening, fern grubbing, fowling and fishing in favour of flour, sugar and rotten maize and potatoes. Tobacco and alcohol wreaked their own havoc.”- p79, Cumberland
Oh to have met the New Zealanders at or before the Opening Ceremony of the Musket Steroid Olympics! A different people! Better for them they had been colonised sooner, before The Games.
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ref. Landmarks, Cumberland (1981)
image ref. Ruapekapeka fortification (not Musket Wars era)
image ref. Kayak And Canoeing Venue, Athens, 2004 Summer Olympics Venue; Bored Panda
image ref. Decaying palisade stockade, Lake Rotorua; Research Gate
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