Story: Northland region

Early contact between Māori and Europeans was usually friendly, but not always. When French navigator Marc Joseph Marion du Fresne called at the Bay of Islands in 1772, a series of misunderstandings led to violence. Marion du Fresne and 24 of his crew were massacred by Māori. In retribution the surviving Frenchmen destroyed three villages and killed or wounded several hundred Māori. This depiction of Marion du Fresne’s death was drawn by Charles Meryon in the 1840s.