Māori people peaceful tribes from their productive turangawaewae, such as the Moriori in the Chatham Islands by invading forces from North Taranaki, had a catastrophic effect on these conquered tribes. At the same time, the Māori suffered high mortality rates for new Eurasian infectious diseases, such as influenza, smallpox and measles, which killed an unknown number of Māori: estimates vary between ten and fifty percent. The spread of epidemics resulted largely from the Māori lacking acquired immunity to the new diseases. A huge influx of European settlers in the 1870s increased contact among many of the indigenous people with the newcomers. Te
Genocide of indigenous peoples considered genocide can be a matter of scholarly debate. Historians often draw on broader definitions such as Lemkin's, which sees colonialist violence against indigenous peoples as inherently genocidal. For example, in the case of the colonization of the Americas, where 90% of the indigenous people of the Americas were wiped out in 500 years of European colonization, it can be debatable whether genocide occurs when disease is considered the main cause of population decline since the introduction of disease was mostly unintentional. Some genocide scholars separate the population declines due to disease from the genocidal aggression of one group toward