Talk:Boyd massacre

Recent Edits

I've been monitoring this site, as I grew up near Whangaroa and have been researching the massacre for the past two years. Most of the recent edits have been constructive, but some of them have skewed the facts. In reference to the opening paragraph, please note that it is correct to say that the massacre was "one of the bloodiest instances of non-Maori being killed in New Zealand", or something to that effect. However, it is wrong to say "...in New Zealand's history", as many battles in the two world wars resulted in greater numbers of Pakeha deaths. Note also that it is correct to say that the death toll was among the highest recorded for an instance of cannibalism. In my research, I have found only one other instance with a greater toll.

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Could "deal with the aftermath of the massacre" be explicated? RickK`

YES :) I will come back to this when I have time, unless someone

beats me to it! I am also wary of copyright violation. --ledgerbob

this article is emphatically miscatagorized ... the treaty of waitangi wasn't signed till 1840, which means the only law which had relevance at the time was maori law, utu is not a seen as a crime, the body of a maori chief is tapu and therefore if anyone was breaking the law it was the crew of the boyd. This seems to me like an act of war, not a mass-murder, and if we are going to stretch the idea of mass-murder to include acts of war, then saying this was new zealand's bloodiest is quite a stretch. I dont have the literature here and I know of one instance off the top of my head where a french ship killed upwards of 250 northern maori in the late 18th C

Okay, give more info about the French ship.

When 66 people - most of them innocent - are killed and eaten as utu for the flogging of one person, that is mass-murder. There is no argument about that.

The article does not state anything about "law". Murder doesn't have to be part of a "law" to still be murder.

Incorrect - murder is a legal definition (see the Murder article on WP) and in a situation where you have two cultures with differing interpretations of what would constitute murder, if you want to use the term murder in the article then it should be made clear that it was murder from the European point of view, but not the Maori (and more specifically the Whangaroa tribe), who clearly considered it a justified revenge killing by their standards. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.98.182.39 (talk)

The article does not currently use the term "murder", and I don't think it should. "Mass killing" seems more appropriate, as does "massacre". -- Avenue (talk) 15:50, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

More information on the French incident would be good. Maybe you could start an article about it in Wikipedia. Then comparisons could be made re: biggest mass-murder.

Perhaps the editor above is referring to the incidents surrounding the death of Marion du Fresne in 1772. He was killed, along with two boats of his countrymen (27 people), by Maori after breaking tapu by fishing in a bay where locals had earlier drowned. The French burned a village in revenge, killing ~250 people. Shows how dramatically these cross-cultural misunderstandings can spiral out of control. -- Avenue (talk) 15:50, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Blood libel

Unless this is sourced, it appears to be a blood libel against the Maori.Bless sins (talk) 16:39, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Did you see the page linked to at the bottom of the article? Googling "boyd massacre" seems to give plenty of other sources; I've added a few. Did you have some specific issues with the article's text? I can see a few things that should be improved, but I can't see enough to warrant a {{totally disputed}} tag. -- Avenue (talk) 01:45, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Please add sources to specific passages of the article, esp. the parts that accuse the Maori peopel of cannibalism.Bless sins (talk) 22:25, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

If there are no sources then I will have no choice but to delete this material. This is very contentious info.Bless sins (talk) 06:47, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

accuse the Maori people--what the hell, that's not an accusation, it's history. Nga Puhi's tribal motto was "Kaitangata", which means human food, which indicates they ate people, see http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-TreRace-t1-body-d6-d3.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.102.85.53 (talk) 07:19, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi there,

There are plenty of sources. Google-search the topic and you will find them. This is a very well documented topic in New Zealand, and there is no controversy involved. I would add the sources myself, but I don't know how to do it. Deleting material would not be constructive. Anyhow, what does blood libel mean? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.60.3.77 (talk) 13:32, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Not only is it easy to find sources via Google, but several are given as references in the article, and have been there for months. Threatening to delete supposedly unsourced material when you haven't bothered to read the references given is far from constructive. I have shifted some references into inline citations nonetheless. -- Avenue (talk) 15:03, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm guessing the people saying this "wasn't a mass murder" or it is a "blood libel" are maori or maori sympathizers who regret the fact that the maori people, at least at this point in history, were barbaric and cannabalistic savages. Sometimes the truth hurts —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.230.234.79 (talk) 00:33, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

It is considered a mass murder by European (and contemporary Maori) standards, but if the article is to have a NPOV then it must be accepted that the Maori of the Whangaparoa peninsula at that time did *not* consider this murder and by their standards it was a justified revenge killing as I noted above. I have no idea what "blood libel" is, I think the earlier poster just made that up. Cannibalism is accepted to have existed in Maori society at the time by most modern historians, European and Maori alike, although there is some debate as to the reasons for it. As for "barbaric" and "savage", well I would suggest the personal issues you seem to have about Maori would make you an unsuitable editor for this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.98.182.39 (talk)

so killing and eating people isnt savage because the people doing the killing and eating dont consider it savage? HA! and I didn't edit a thing on this page, dont worry yourself 99.231.211.103 (talk) 04:43, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

You're entitled to your point of view, however the article is supposed to be written from a neutral point of view. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.126.194.81 (talk) 04:03, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

See blood libel. That article describes the term as referring to "false and sensationalized allegations" of human sacrifice and cannibalism. The Boyd massacre may have been sensationalised at the time, but I don't think there are reasonable grounds for thinking the accusations of canniblism were false. The original poster seemed to be ignorant on this point (and unwilling to read the links provided in the article that would have remedied their ignorance).

I have added something about utu (revenge) being in line with contemporary Maori customs. I think this was implied by the link to utu, but it won't hurt to be explicit. -- Avenue (talk) 16:13, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Blood libel is a misnomer. There is no doubt that the crew of the Boyd was attacked, killed and eaten. To report that fact cannot be libel. It is also a fact that primitive Maori believed that utu permitted, or required, revenge for perceived insults to a chief. It is not clear that utu required deaths, much less the deaths of up to 70 people.Royalcourtier (talk) 21:40, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Loss of mana

I am interested in the concept that suffering a loss of "mana" by one minor chiefs son can warrant the killing of 70 people. Is there any academic discussion on this? I would have thought that even in a society as violent as that of the Maori, this would have been a disproportionate response. In the absence of any evidence for this response having been deemed by Maori to be culturally acceptable, I would have thought that Wikipedia would have to take the view that the massacre was possibly precipitated by the flogging, but not justified by it.Royalcourtier (talk) 21:16, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't think it's possible for an encyclopedia to determine whether or not the Māori's reason was justified or not. It presumably was to them. --2A00:23C6:CC00:A00:B864:46FF:C5F0:4DC7 (talk) 20:22, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

How can this be known?

'Chief Piopio sparked a flint. This ignited the gunpowder, causing a massive explosion that killed him and nine other Māori instantly.'

If this huge explosion killed everyone present, how can it be known which individual struck a flint? This is written from an authorial, third-person, viewpoint. Was there a survivor who related this tale?Dean1954 (talk) 10:30, 14 August 2020 (UTC)