This Place Is a Stranger

Father's deathbed scene went like this: Mother and Felix and I were there, right by his bed. Gino and Marco Maritimo, faithful to the end, had driven to the hospital atop their own bulldozer. It would later turn out that these two endearing old poops had done hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of damage on the way, tearing up hidden automobiles and fences and fire hydrants and mailboxes, and so on. They had to stay out in the corridor, since they weren't blood relatives.

On November 19 of that year (1835), a ship carrying 500 Maori armed with guns, clubs, and axes arrived, followed on December 5 by a shipload of 400 more Maori. Groups of Maori began to walk through Moriori settlements, announcing that the Moriori were now their slaves, and killing those who objected. An organized resistance by the Moriori could still then have defeated the Maori, who were outnumbered two to one. However, the Moriori had a tradition of resolving disputes peacefully. They decided in a council meeting not to fight back but to offer peace, friendship, and a division of resources.

Before the Moriori could deliver that offer, the Maori attacked en masse. Over the course of the next few days, they killed hundreds of Moriori, cooked and ate many of the bodies, and enslaved all the others, killing most of them too over the next few years as it suited their whim. ... A Maori conqueror explained, "We took possession...in accordance with our customs and we caught all the people. Not on escaped. Some ran away from us, these we killed, and others we killed--but what of that?"