ABSTRACT
This chapter uses surviving narrative assemblages from the crews of the flyboat Mascarin (belonging to the King of France) and the Marquis de Castries (belonging to Captain M-J Marion du Fresne). As in Chapter 4, the same sequential, analytical, and interpretive approaches to the various narratives recorded during their stay amongst Northern Māori at the Bay of Islands in 1772 are followed here. This follows the context, initiating circumstance, and the social actors present, together with the critical decision-making tipping points in the action sequences. These are then used to identify when and why the outcomes of transactions were sometimes violent. The chapter also introduces further components to the more familiar interpretation of the massacre that occurred and is reliant on the predictive capacity of astronomical computer simulations and their application to what is known of the season of Mātariki in Aotearoa-New Zealand in 1772. It elaborates upon the concept of “agency of the gods”.
