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Originally Posted by Raellus
I did not know that. Reminds me of Roman legionaire forts.
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Exactly. For a Stone Age people they adapted their existing military technology very quickly to 19th century warfare and for decades they really gave the British Army a run for its money. At one stage the British Army had between 80,000 and 100,000 troops fighting in the Maori Wars and even brought a couple of steam powered gunboats over from Australia, opposed by less than 10,000 Maori warriors who were all part time warrior/farmers. The British only defeated the Maori in the end because they went into the village areas of the warring tribes, burned or stole their crops and slaughtered their women and children.
One of the most amusing things about the Maori Wars for me is that for a while the Maori had better weapons than the British Army as the Redcoats were still using Brown Bess Muskets but the Maori were being supplied with new fangled rifles being smuggled over from Australia (paid for with good old New Zealand greenstone, a type of jade).