Half way through the expedition's stay Marion was killed during a military assault by the Ngare Raumati iwi (tribe) of Maori.

[3] During the War of the Austrian Succession Marion commanded several ships as a privateer, including the Prince de Conty where he transported Charles Edward Stuart from Scotland to France.

[4] In the Seven Years' War, he was engaged in various naval operations including taking the astronomer Alexandre Guy Pingré to observe the 1761 transit of Venus in the Indian Ocean.

[5] In October 1770 Marion convinced Pierre Poivre, the civil administrator in Port Louis, to equip him with two ships and send him on a twofold mission to the Pacific.

Marion's fellow explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville had recently returned from the Pacific with a Tahitian native, Ahutoru.

Marion was tasked with returning Ahutoru to his homeland, and then to explore the south Pacific for the hypothetical Terra Australis Incognita.

[8] No part of Marion's mission could be achieved; Ahutoru died of smallpox shortly after embarkation, and the expedition did not locate Terra Australis or make a profit from trade.

The French officers made a detailed study of the habits and customs of Maoris including greetings, sexual mores, fishing methods, the role of females, the making of fern root paste, the killing of prisoners and cannibalism.

[11] That night more Maoris were found on Moturua Island prowling around the hospital camp but ran when sentries approached.

That night 400 armed Maoris suddenly attacked the hospital camp but were stopped in their tracks by the threat of the multiple blunderbusses.

The French charged this huge force with 26 armed soldiers and put them to flight, the Maoris fleeing back to Te Kauri's pa.

[11] Roux, Julien–Marie Crozet and Ambroise Bernard-Marie du Clesmeur took joint command and undertook reprisals against the Maoris over a one-month period as the ships were prepared for departure.

[14] A month later on 7 July Roux searched Te Kauri's deserted pa and found a sailor's cooked head on a spike, as well as human bones near a fire.

However, both published and unpublished accounts of Marion's death circulated widely, giving New Zealand a bad reputation as a dangerous land unsuitable for colonisation, and challenged the stereotypes of Pacific Islanders as noble savages then prevalent in Europe.

[13] An account told by a Ngāpuhi elder to John White (ethnographer 1826–1891), but not published until 1965, describes Te Kauri and Tohitapu as leading the military resolution to the landing.

[13] Tapu had been placed on Manawaora Bay after members of the local tribe drowned here some time earlier, and their bodies had been washed up at Te Kauri's (Tacoury's sic) Cove.