What a charmingly awkward Brit is Linybeige!

Polynesian warriors in general, won their first engagements with their European enemy, due largely to the fact that, being warriors rather than soldiers they fought much more intelligently and with more initiative and that, once close quarters were gained, there was a huge disparity in physical vigor and size. It was also fortunate that the Maori had the good fortune to fight the British. The reasons for this were two fold, British valued courage highly and were a colonial power in search of native soldiers. The British permitted the Maori to recover and bury their dead and even tended enemy wounded. The hierarchal nature of Polynesian society, in general, permitted integration into imperial schemes rather than demanding eradication. Perhaps the most important aspect of Pacific conquest was that in the Pacific theater small forces were in play, permitting honor-based settlements between the parties. Also, Christian missions were generally near at hand, in some cases placing an ethical brake on purely military expedience.

All these factors are related by Melville in Typee.

While still merely Englishmen and not yet British, the soldiers of the greatest naval power had learned firsthand in 17th century America that “primitives” were superior fighters to soldiers. Thus British riflemen were trained by Native American warriors and managed to turn the tables on Napoleon in Spain and at Hugomount at Waterloo. Eventually those “Indian file” methods would be adapted by the German infantry in WWI and formed the basis for 20th and 21st century infantry tactics. The extent to which this battle prefigured the eventual conduct of WWI is unsettling.