Shooting of a Māori by an English sailor results in the opening of the Wanganui Campaign of the New Zealand Wars.

Māori are the indigenous Polynesian people of mainland New Zealand. The Māori are descended from East Polynesian settlers who arrived in New Zealand in several waves of canoe voyages between roughly 1320 and 1350. Over several centuries in isolation, these settlers developed a distinct culture, whose language, mythology, crafts, and performing arts evolved independently from those of other eastern Polynesian cultures. Some early Māori moved to the Chatham Islands, where their descendants became New Zealand's other indigenous Polynesian ethnic group, the Moriori.