The wars in New Zealand had for the most part their origin in agrarian questions, and were concluded by diplomatic negotiations. They were not--nor was it ever contemplated that they should be--wars of extermination. The Pakeha strove by means more or less legal, if not legitimate, to push the Maori from the soil on which their feet had been firmly planted for six hundred years. The old owners resented the attempt and, in some instances, the manner in which the attempt was made. When argument was exhausted, then, and then only, came the final appeal to arms, and a war resulted which has brought about lasting peace. When the war began there were 170,000 whites in New Zealand, while the Maori population was reckoned at 32,000, of whom about 20,000 were available as fighting men. Remember, the Maori of 1859 were very different from even their immediate forebears. Cannibalism was as extinct as the _moa_. The intelligent natives had recognised the value of the Pakeha methods and studied them with advantage. Many possessed their own holdings, farmed their own ground, and progressed in the education which was freely offered them. There were Maori assessors in the Courts of the Superintendents, and a Maori chief was attached to the Governor's staff as adviser on purely native questions. The two races were distinctly drawn to one another about this period, and the white portion at any rate hardly looked for trouble. What gave the colonists an added sense of security was their knowledge that the great leaders of the past were all dead, or nearing their end. Heke had died of consumption in 1850. Te Rauparaha preceded him to Reinga in 1849, being buried by his son, Thompson Rauparaha, who had been educated in England and was a lay-reader. Rangihaeata helped to bury his old friend, and followed him seven years later to the shades, having never during the whole of his seventy years abated his hatred of the Pakeha. Rangihaeata was a man of great strength and splendid presence, and it is told that, when on one occasion he met Sir George Grey at a _korero_, or palaver, his costume was entirely and markedly Maori, in contrast to that of many of his countrymen, who wore blankets instead of mats, or were clothed in ordinary European dress. In reply to the Governor, Rangihaeata assumed his proudest, sternest expression, and spoke defiantly. "I want nothing of the white men," he concluded, and, with a sneer at his compatriots, "_I_ wear nothing of their work." Sir George smilingly indicated a peacock's feather which surmounted the chief's carefully dressed hair. "Ah! True; that is European," said Rangihaeata with vehement scorn, plucking the feather from his hair and casting it on the ground.