[2] As more settlers arrived, feral pigs released during the earliest visits to the islands, which became known as Captain Cooker types, became scarcer as they were over-hunted.
Settlers were also offered free passage and the possibility of eventually buying land at an affordable price, but high enough to make them work manually for a few years to raise the necessary funds.
[5] This continued into the 1850s, with unprecedented masses of Pākehā settlers arriving from Britain and other European countries, most of which understood little of local Māori culture and customs.
Bringing with them England's Victorian era cultural practices,[7] their settlement resulted in the social and occupational composition of Wanganui being much the same as Wellington.
There was unrest between the Māori and Pākehā until 1848, when Donald Maclean, an assistant to the Native Protector, sorted out boundaries and land title by purchasing the area officially.
This originally brought a large number of settlers to the region but in 1843 it was no longer financially viable for the English company in charge of this arrangement to offer this opportunity.
A promotional campaign started up in Scotland and a public meeting in the Glasgow Trades Hall inspired people enough to warrant the use of two ships to transport the new settlers to New Zealand.
Unfortunately land sales were disappointing and even after a campaign promoting the Canterbury settlement the first batch of settlers included 545 with assisted passages and only 40 paying the full price.
Land was easy to purchase from Māori as the isthmus had been fought over by many hapū for several generations during the Musket Wars and the native population had either been killed as at Panmure or fled or welcomed the protection afforded by large numbers of Europeans and their technology.
The whole of eastern Auckland was bought by William Fairburn after local Māori pleaded with him to buy the land to protect them from the feared Ngāpuhi invaders.
After 1847 large numbers (over 2,500) of retired British soldiers called Fencibles and their families came to Auckland and established new outlying settlements at Panmure, Howick, Ōtāhuhu and Onehunga.
Historian David Vernon Williams suggests, by the early 20th century, "colonial state power had overwhelmed tribal rangatiratanga in an insistent and persistent exercise of forceful measures to individualise land holdings and to promote colonisation by Pākehā settlers".
[citation needed] Campaign posters advertising New Zealand in England did give many settlers false hopes, manipulating their reasons.
Pure loneliness and isolation could encourage people to write exaggerated letters to their relatives in the hope of luring their extended families to join them thus providing them with some comfort.
According to Christchurch newspaper The Press, European emigrants to New Zealand transported over many of their cultural and political norms; "Pākehā settlers brought with them a profound belief in self-reliance, property rights, and the autonomy of local communities".
[13] In 2002, then in opposition, future Prime Minister Bill English was said to reject the "cringing guilt" from the legacy of Pākehā settlers,[13] after the government Race Relations Commissioner compared the cultural impact of European settlement in the islands with the Taliban destruction of the Buddhas of Bamyan.
[15] In 2007, anthropologist Michael Jackson wrote that the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa was an expression of residual "liberal Pākehā guilt" in its "extolling Māori spiritual superiority and pandering to the stereoptype of crass Western materialism, Pākehā seek to compensate Māori for their political powerlessness without actually changing the status quo".