The Māori generally respected the British, partially due to encouragement from missionaries and also due to British status as a major maritime power, which had been made apparent to Māori travelling outside New Zealand. The other major powers in the area around the 1830s included American whalers, whom the Māori accepted as cousins of the British, and French Catholics who came for trade and as missionaries. The Māori were still deeply distrustful of the French, due to a massacre of 250 people that had occurred in 1772, when they retaliated for the killing of Marion du Fresne and some of his crew. While the threat of the French never materialised, in 1831 it prompted thirteen rangatira (major chiefs) from the far north of the country to meet at Kerikeri to compose a letter to King William IV asking for Britain to be a "friend and guardian" of New Zealand. It is the first known plea for British intervention written by Māori. In response, the British government sent James Busby in 1832 to be the British Resident in New Zealand. In 1834 Busby drafted a document known as the Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand which he and 35 northern Māori chiefs signed at Waitangi on 28 October 1835, establishing those chiefs as representatives of a proto-state under the title of the "United Tribes of New Zealand". This document was not well received by the Colonial Office in Britain, and it was decided that a new policy for New Zealand was needed.