The two thousand British immigrants to New…

The two thousand British immigrants to New Zealand (called Pakeha by the Maori) have planted themselves among a Maori population of one hundred thousand.

The Treaty of Waitangi, prepared hastily and without legal assistance, and concluded by Captain William Hobson and about fifty chiefs of the North Island’s Maori iwi (tribes) on February 6, 1840, cedes sovereignty of New Zealand to the British Crown while granting the Maoris the rights and privileges of British citizenship and their continued possession of tribal lands and natural resources.

By this time, the Maori have killed, largely at whim, most of the Moriori they had enslaved four years earlier.