From Moriori: A People Rediscovered, by Michael King (Penguin, 2017), Kindle Loc. 1392ff.:
Peace was sealed late in 1842 when a party of Church of England Maori missionaries arrived in the Chathams and converted most of Ngati Tama and Ngati Mutunga en masse. Many of those who were not persuaded were mopped up the following year by the Reverend John Aldred, a Wesleyan, who established loyal followings of Maori and Moriori at Hawaruwaru and Tupuangi. Only the Ngati Kuri hapu of Ngati Mutunga remained aloof from both denominations.
Although there was inevitably some doubt about the depth, understanding and sincerity of such rapid conversions, the adoption of Christianity did have one immediate and long-term benefit for the Moriori: while most remained enslaved, it brought to an end the callous and spontaneous killings with which their owners had, up to this time, been able to terrorise them. From 1842 Moriori lives were still nasty and brutish; but they were not as short as they had been previously.
In spite of a gradual improvement in their circumstances, and of their apparent docility in the eyes of European observers, the Moriori remnants were never reconciled to the events of 1835 and their aftermath. Their view of what had taken place was simple and unequivocal. Their mana whenua (which arose from at least half a millennium of occupation of Rekohu) had been ignored by the Maori, but had never been extinguished. They had not been defeated in fair contest, as they had not engaged in a contest. They had been dealt with neither as owners of the islands, nor as the partners they had been prepared to be. Their offer to share the resources of Rekohu with those who were, after all, distant Polynesian kin, had been hurled back in their faces. They had been ignored, insulted, slaughtered and enslaved — brought to their knees physically, culturally and spiritually. But because they had neither broken Nunuku’s injunction nor vacated their island, their own mana was intact.
..
Had they possessed an intimate knowledge of Maori tribal culture in 1835, however, Moriori would have known that the outcome of the Ati Awa invasion was inevitable, given that they declined to defend themselves. This was particularly so in the light of the previous decade of Ngati Mutunga and Ngati Tama history. For these Maori at this time, displaced from their own ancestral home and insecure in their previous one, mana was to be derived almost solely from fighting, and even more so from successful conquest. There was the additional fact that the Moriori were dealing with what Rhys Richards has called ‘a post-European Maori culture … strong tribal organisation was kept, as was communal living in well-built fortified villages [pa]; but, with the aid of European guns, gods and potatoes [the latter permitting more mobile campaigns and longer sieges], warfare was elevated to an even more important role in their lives’.
