Of course, they fell in love with the beautiful Māori wāhine they met and beautiful children resulted.
This has occurred in this fair land for well over 200 years so I would easily surmise that there are hundreds of thousands of Pākehā with tribal affiliations.
Many know this and either embrace it, simply acknowledge it or ignore it completely.
I have embraced it within reason. My affiliation to Ngāti Mutunga is as important but as distant to me as my affiliation to the Rattenburys of Bondleigh, Devon, England and the Hennesseys of Youghal, County Cork, Ireland. I am proud of it, it is me and I like to know a bit about it but I am no more Māori than I am Irish or English, or am I?
Most of us are genetically the sum of many parts. What we choose to be influenced by is prompted by our upbringing and our community.
I was raised in a Pākehā home with a Māori father but the overwhelming influence in my home was my mother's Irish side.
We learnt the music, went to the appropriate schools and church, mixed mostly with other children of Irish descent.
I never really thought about it but now as an older man, I still mix with some of those people. They are my people.
Subliminally we did also learn a lot about Dad's background as well over the years.
He never pushed being Māori as an event or issue, it just was.
His friends were both Māori and Pākehā, we all grew up with a love of kaimoana and with those Māori terms that we did not even know were not English, taihoa, e hoa, kia ora.
We learned that great-grandfathers fought in the New Zealand Wars against Māori but then either married into the local iwi or had later generations who did.
We learned how this split the family at times but overall it just became part of our family history. A New Zealand family's history, brown or white.
I tend to try to write looking at issues not always from a Pākehā perspective.
This can cause upset to some who do not know me but I always believe it is important to know both sides of any story, not just the side the winner writes.
This is why I am such a fan of the New Zealand History Curriculum due in schools in 2023.
This is a curriculum that is not totally written by the paternalistic and racist victors, as was done in the late 19th century when assimilation of Māori was the goal.
This is a curriculum that some may find confronting but it is only because we were not taught it as children. It is based on three words: understand, know, do.
Under the heading of "Understand", colonisation is mentioned:
"Colonisation and its consequences have been central to our history for the past 200 years and continue to influence all aspects of New Zealand society. Colonisation began as part of a worldwide imperial project."
Colonisation has had good outcomes for many, but also terrible outcomes for some. It gave my forebears a safe home and a chance to better themselves in a new country.
However, it displaced thousands of people through land confiscations via war reparations, wars initiated by the coloniser to make a case for reparation as the owners would simply not sell the land.
In my view, we still live with this today and, as a country, are literally paying for the theft and duplicitous behaviour committed by an imperial power over an indigenous people.
We also live with the social effects of that displacement in Māori health statistics, incarceration and education.
It's absolutely scandalous that in a first-world country, 17.1 per cent of its population can expect to die younger than their age-peers simply because they are Māori.
We cannot change our history, but we can learn from it and not repeat it. We can, as a nation, put in place policies and actions that remedy some of the terrible inequities still hurting many.
Imagine a foreign power arriving, taking your property, forbidding your tongue, giving you diseases. Unimaginable? Never.
