In the Matter of the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975

and

In the Matter of the Tauranga Moana claims

(Wai 215)

THE KATIKATI-TE PUNA RESERVES

Issues Arising from their Alienation, 1868-1900

An Overview Report Commissioned by the Crown Forestry Rental Trust

The Evidence of Kirstie Ross

January 2001

Contents & Figures

Abbreviations iv

Preface v

Introduction 6

Figure 1 9

Chapter 1 The Purchase of the Katikati-Te Puna Block 10

1.1 Introduction 10

1.2 The Crown’s acquisition of land at Katikati and Te Puna 10

1.3 Concluding comments 23

Chapter 2 The Allocation of Reserves within the Katikati-Te Puna Block 24

2.1 Introduction 24

2.2 Legislation: general comments 24

2.3 Allocating the reserves 27

2.3 Concluding comments 33

Figure 2 From Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 51 34

Figure 3 From Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 195 35

Chapter 3 The Sale of Reserves, 1868 to the Early 1870s 36

3.1 Introduction 36

3.2 Tauranga: 1866 to the early 1870s 37

3.3 Early sales: motives for buying and selling reserves 41

3.4 Richard Gill’s career 47

3.5 Concluding comments 50

Figure 4 52

Chapter 4 Disputes over Land Sales at Rereatukahia 53

4.1 Introduction 53

4.2 The succession case: general background 54

4.1 Native Land Court evidence 57

4.2 Gill’s defence case 62

4.3 Concluding comments 65

Figure 5 67

Chapter 5 Transactions in 1870s and 1880s 68

3.1 Introduction 68

3.2 Legislation and administration: general comments 69

5.3 The extension of Stewart’s lease 72

5.4 Concluding comments 77

Chapter 6 The Katikati-Te Puna Reserves from 1900 78

6.1 Introduction 78

6.2 Parish of Katikati 78

6.3 Parish of Tahawai 79

6.5 Parish of Apata 80

6.6 Parish of Te Puna 81

Conclusion 83

Bibliography 86

Appendix I. Reserved areas and their owners 92

Appendix II. Chronological Table 98

Abbreviations

Preface

My name is Kirstie Ross. I have a Master of Arts in History (First Class Honours) from the University of Auckland, which I completed in February 1999. In June 2000 I submitted a report commissioned by the Crown Forestry Rental Trust and researched and written on behalf of the Ngatiwai Trust Board (Wai 244 #A1).

This overview report was also commissioned by the Crown Forestry Rental Trust and is a general discussion of issues arising from the alienation of the reserves that were set aside for Tauranga Moana Maori in the Katikati-Te Puna Crown purchase. The report’s main focus is the impact of raupatu on the allocation of the reserves in the purchased area and on the rate at which they were subsequently alienated by their recipients.

There are many people I would like to thank for the time and advice they given to me during this project. Staff at LINZ, in Auckland and Hamilton, the Maori Land Court, Hamilton, and in the New Zealand Room, Tauranga District Library, have been very helpful. I would like to thank Bruce Stirling, Marinus La Rooij, Vincent O’Malley, Leah Campbell, Eve Hartley, and Alice Patterson for their assistance with research matters in Wellington. I am also grateful for discussions I have had with Fiona Hamilton, Peter Rolleston, Jenny Rolleston, Erica Rolleston, Colin Bidois, Des Kahotea, and Kevin Bluegum. I would also like to thank Pat Field for copy editing the text. I am, however, solely responsible for any errors or omissions.

Introduction

In the wake of negotiating the terms of a surrender with Tauranga Moana rangatira in August 1864, the Crown purchased two blocks of land – Katikati and Te Puna – which consisted of 88,500 acres.¹ The purchased area was located on the western side of the Tauranga Confiscated Lands District proclaimed by the Crown by Order-in-Council on 18 May 1865 (figure 1). By June 1866, over 50 reserves within the two blocks, covering an area of more than 6000-acres, had been set aside and allocated to individuals or vested in trust for specific hapu. By 1886, a number of additional reserves had also been allocated, yet of the total number, less than half of the reserves were still possessed by the original Maori grantees.

Aside from the fact that the cession of Katikati and Te Puna may not have been voluntary, the apparent ease with which the reserves changed hands warrants some attention. With this in mind, the intention of this report has been to consider the rapid change in the reserves’ ownership, particularly in the period between their allocation and the final return of lands neither confiscated nor purchased by the Crown, in 1886. It draws upon Evelyn Stokes’ research in this area which, in her words, set out ‘to document what lands were returned to Maori ownership in the Tauranga confiscation, to whom, where and under what conditions’ but also amplifies two aspects of Stokes’ findings.² Firstly, while Stokes found that the Crown, in its allocation of Tauranga Moana lands, did not fulfil its protective duty towards Maori, this report considers whether the method by which the Crown allocated and administered the reserves in the Katikati-Te Puna block had any bearing on their rate of alienation. The second question posed by this author is whether or not certain Crown policies and their implementation made the reserves more susceptible to alienation. In conjunction with these considerations, the impact of raupatu on the retention of the reserves, and the tenurial and socio-economic uncertainty it brought to the district, is also touched on in the report.

¹ The two blocks are referred to together as the ‘Katikati-Te Puna block’ throughout this report.

² Evelyn Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves for Maori in the Tauranga Confiscated Lands, Hamilton, 1997, vols 1-2, p. 86.

This overview is primarily concerned with the technical details of the alienations of the reserves – who sold them, to whom, when and for how much – but when general trends or circumstances in the district seem to have impinged on the ownership of the reserves, these have been given due consideration. For practical reasons, not all of the reserves are discussed. Archival limitations, combined with the sheer number of reserves, have led to a case study approach. Most of the transaction details have therefore been presented in a tabular format rather than as narrative accounts. This material is located in a companion volume. Finally, because the rate of alienation is a central theme in this report, a chronology of the transactions has been compiled and may be found at the end of the main report along with a separate list of the reserves and their owners.

Because this is a general overview of land transactions in the Katikati-Te Puna block, some issues are not covered by this report. While general questions of representation and the criteria used by the Crown to allocate lands to individuals and groups within the purchase are discussed, the identification of groups with customary rights in the purchase area has been left to historical reports supporting the claims of specific groups. Secondly, the identification of any boundary issues has been outside the scope of this report, so for this reason, maps that have been produced for other research have been used.

The report is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 considers only briefly the events leading up to and surrounding the purchase and subsequent negotiations as these have already been covered in some detail by other scholars, whereas Chapter 2 focuses closely on the allocation of reserves in the Katikati-Te Puna Block and the award of Crown Grants to these lands³

The next two chapters are closely related. Chapter 3 is devoted to the spate of transactions that occurred from 1868 to the early 1870s and the local context within

³ This author has consulted the following reports for some of the details covered in Chapters 1 and 2: Evelyn Stokes, Te Raupatu o Tauranga Moana, Hamilton, 1990, vol. 1; Stokes, Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, ch. 3-4; Hazel Riseborough, ‘The Crown and Tauranga Moana 1864-1868’, Wai 215 #A23, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, October 1994; Robyn Anderson, The Crown, the Treaty and the Hauraki Tribes, vol. 4, Paeroa, 1997; Vincent O’Malley, ‘The Aftermath of the Tauranga Raupatu, 1864-1981’, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, June 1995; Vincent O’Malley and Alan Ward, ‘Draft Historical Report on Tauranga Moana Lands’ Crown / Congress Joint Working Party, June 1993.

which these sales occurred. The purchasing activities of Richard John Gill, and Te Moananui Maraki’s allegedly ‘clandestine’ sales of reserves at Rereatukahia, which involved Gill, come under particular scrutiny in this chapter. The task of Chapter 4 is to look closely at Native Land Court evidence disputing several of the sales discussed in Chapter 3. Significantly, the minutes from the hearings reveal cases of administrative oversight that facilitated the disposal of the disputed areas.

During the 1870s and 1880s the rate of alienation in the Katikati-Te Puna block slowed down. Conversely, and contrasting with the late 1860s, the number of leasing agreements increased during this time. This fall-off in sales coincided with official debates about how best to ensure that transactions involving Maori land were conducted in a fair and equitable manner. Chapter 5 looks at the effectiveness of policies and practices that were initiated by the Crown in the 1870s. Of course, official concern came too late to effectively safeguard the Katikati-Te Puna reserves and only one case of an investigation prior to the alienation of a reserve in the area has been found. The tactics employed by a Katikati settler to bypass legal ‘safety-nets’ in order to extend the lease to a reserve and official reactions to this pressure, are the subjects of this chapter.

Thirty-five years after their allocation, few Katikati-Te Puna reserves were still in Maori hands and those that remained were geographically scattered and increasingly partitioned. While the creation of the reserves was inextricably linked to raupatu, and, for those that had been sold, their alienation as well, by the twentieth century, more sophisticated policies and practices had replaced confiscation as the method used by the Crown to appropriate Maori land. Chapter 6, therefore, provides a descriptive sample of twentieth-century transactions.

A summary of the points raised by this author concludes the main report.

Figure 1

From Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 100.

Chapter 1 The Purchase of the Katikati-Te Puna Block

1.1 Introduction

The purchase of the Katikati-Te Puna block was inextricably linked to the confiscation of lands that followed the conflict between some Tauranga Moana Maori and the Crown. As the details of this conflict and the events leading up to the purchase of lands at Katikati and Te Puna are covered elsewhere, a full discussion of these matters is unnecessary in this report.¹ The purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to summarise these events and the issues surrounding the purchase.

1.2 The Crown’s acquisition of land at Katikati and Te Puna

On 5 August 1864, Governor Grey, Colonial Secretary Fox, and Premier and Attorney-General Whitaker visited Te Papa to arrange the specific terms of the ‘Ngaiterangi’ surrender. At this so-called ‘pacification meeting’, rangatira who spoke gave Grey the mana of the land and left the decision of what to do with the land up to Grey.² According to official records, the chiefs who spoke during the meeting were Peneamini Taka, Enoka Whanake, Te Hokoho, Raniera Te Hiahia, and Te Harawira.³ The Auckland newspaper, the Daily Southern Cross, reported a subsequent meeting that was held to fix the terms of the ‘submission’. This meeting was attended by many of the same ‘leading chiefs’, apart from the influential rangatira, Hori Tupaea, and Raiwiri Taipiri and Harawira both gave speeches to the assembled group.⁴

¹ Evelyn Stokes, Te Raupatu o Tauranga Moana: The Confiscation of Tauranga Lands, Hamilton, 1990, vol. 1, ch. 2; Hazel Riseborough, ‘The Crown and Tauranga Moana 1864-1868’, Wai 215 #A23, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, October 1994. For other interpretations of the conflict see James Cowan, The New Zealand Wars: A History of the Maori Campaigns and the Pioneering Period, vol. 1: 1845-64, Wellington, 1983 and James Belich, The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict, Auckland, 1986.

² Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (AJHR) 1867, A-20, p. 2.

³ AJHR 1867, A-2, p. 2.

⁴ Daily Southern Cross, 10 August 1864, p. 5.

The promises made to the surrendered ‘rebels’ and ‘friendlies’ by Grey at the first meeting touched on how the government would treat these groups and provide for their future welfare. Grey told his audience that:

At present I am not acquainted with the boundaries or extent of your land, or the claims of any individuals or tribes. What I shall therefore do is this:- I shall order that settlements be at once assigned to you, as far as possible, in such localities as you may select, which shall be secured by Crown Grants to yourselves and your children. I will inform you in what manner the residue of your lands will be dealt with.

But as it is right in some manner to mark our sense of the honourable manner in which you conducted hostilities, neither robbing nor murdering, but respecting the wounded, I promise you that in the ultimate settlement of your land the amount taken shall not exceed one-fourth part of the whole lands.

In order that you may without delay again be placed in a position which will enable you to maintain yourselves, as soon as your future localities have been decided, seed potatoes and the means of settling on your lands will be given you.

I now speak to you, the friendly Natives. I thank you warmly for your good conduct under circumstances of great difficulty. I will consider in what manner you shall be rewarded for your fidelity. In the meantime in any arrangement which may be made about the lands of your tribe, your rights will be scrupulously respected.⁵

However, the hui ended, as Grey’s speech reveals, without an indication of any specific areas that those present were prepared to cede to the Crown.

Any intention of buying land during this official visit was not recorded in official documents. Nor, does it seem, was such a plan proposed during the hui itself. The historian, Hazel Riseborough, suggests that the Crown’s acquisition of Katikati and Te Puna was a consequence of Grey’s promise to return three-quarters of the land to Maori made during the pacification hui, an action that was perhaps contrary to the views of Grey’s ministers. Indeed, in Riseborough’s opinion, the Katikati-Te Puna purchase ‘was obviously some sort of solution to the long-running dispute between the Governor and his Ministers’.⁶ This dispute had arisen from a difference of opinion over the extent and function of the confiscation Maori land. While Grey’s approach to confiscation was, in accordance with Colonial Office instructions, relatively moderate, Fox and Whitaker favoured wide-scale confiscation, primarily as a means

⁵ AJHR 1867, A-20, p. 6.

⁶ Riseborough, p. 28.

for the government to acquire as much land as possible without having to consider Maori interests.⁷

Ten months earlier, the threat that Grey’s Ministers posed to both his job and Tauranga lands had been sensed by Henry Tacy Clarke. Clarke, Resident Magistrate at Tauranga from 1862, had written to Civil Commissioner T. H. Smith in Maketu from Auckland in October 1863 predicting the fate of Tauranga and the degree of influence Grey’s Ministers would have in the matter:

I have no wish to go back to Tauranga till I see how matters progress – I am thoroughly disgusted with the heartlessness of Ministers[.] [W]ith them, Auckland is their great – I was going to say sole anxiety – you and I may get on as well as we can …. I look at as a certainty, that Tauranga is fated to fall in to the hands of the military settlers. The Governor has assured the Tauranga Natives that he will not go there as ‘he has no quarrel with’. I believe he will be forced to do it.⁸

Indeed, Stokes has argued that ‘Fox and other ministers were pushing for the confiscation of all the Tauranga lands’ and the Katikati Te-Puna purchase, happening so soon after Grey’s promise to return three-quarters, might be viewed as a means by which this aim was partially effected.⁹

After the pacification hui, Clarke was instructed by Fox to hold a separate meeting with ‘rebel natives’. Clarke held this other meeting, apparently ‘for the purpose of endeavouring to ascertain their wishes on the subject of the land which the Governor should retain as satisfaction for their having joined in the rebellion’, on the evening of the official hui, and immediately reported its outcome to Colonial Secretary Fox.¹⁰ Clarke’s later version of the meeting, written in June 1865 for Walter Mantell, the Native Minister under the Weld Ministry 1864—1865, stated that:

before the Governor declared the terms upon which he would accept the surrender of Ngaiterangi, I was instructed by the late Ministers, Messrs. Whitaker and Fox, to meet the Natives and try to induce them to give up some specific block of land.¹¹

Clarke’s comment suggests that Whitaker and Fox, in arranging this alternative meeting before the terms of the surrender were negotiated between Governor Grey

⁷ For full details see J. Rutherford, Sir George Grey: A Study in Colonial Government, London, 1961, ch. 33.

⁸ H. T. Clarke to T. H. Smith, 6 October 1863, Letters 1861-1866 (typescript), Tauranga District Library (TDL).

⁹ Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 34.

¹⁰ Clarke to Fox, 7 August 1864, AJHR 1867, A-20, p. 6.

¹¹ Clarke to Mantell, 23 June 1865, AJHR 1867, A.-20, p. 12.

and local chiefs, had the foresight to implement a plan that might effect a cession of land that was more in keeping with their own objectives.

In accordance with the Ministers’ instructions, the location of a contiguous area to make up the quarter retained by the Crown was discussed during this later meeting held by Clarke. A specific block was actually proposed, which was, in Clarke’s words, ‘that portion of Tauranga between the rivers Waimapu, on the south, and Te Wairoa on the north’.¹² ‘The Natives’, observed Clarke, in a short memo written for Fox, ‘took exception to the proposition’ and rejected it.¹³ Those who were at the meeting – Clarke did not specify who attended – reiterated their position taken at the public meeting: ‘they unanimously declined to adopt any other course other than to leave the entire settlement of their lands to His Excellency the Governor’.¹⁴ Nonetheless, the Ministers’ plan to ‘induce’ the ‘Natives’ to ‘give up some specific block of land’ was not completely thwarted. Another proposal – to purchase all the land held ‘north of Te Puna’, for which three shillings per acre would be paid – was duly accepted by those at the meeting instead.¹⁵

Grey left Tauranga for Auckland in the HMS Miranda the day after the two official meetings. Fox and Whitaker, however, stayed on, taking a trip in the Sandfly the day after Grey’s departure, which the Daily Southern Cross’ correspondent reported as follows:

In accordance with an agreement made with the leading chiefs who had surrendered, they were on Monday taken on a trip in the ‘Sandfly’ in the direction of Te Puna, and the patches of land pointed out to them where they would permitted to plant their seed potatoes promised to them by his Excellency the Governor, in order that the prodigals who had thus returned repentant might start life afresh. … There were … between 20 and 30 natives, whose presence was required to point out the boundaries of the Tauranga district, as belonging to the Ngaiterangi tribe. The steamer proceeded in the direction of Te Puna river, skirting the banks of the island, known generally as Rangiwaea, from the settlement of that name, and formed by the mouth of the harbour, the river Wairoa and the Katikati. It is of considerable extent, and several native settlements exist upon it, amongst which are Oponui, Opureora, and Matakana, with several pas. A great part of the island is said to be formed of sandhills; but there are exceedingly fertile patches well known by the natives, and portions of which they will be allowed to cultivate. They will also have settlements on the island of

¹² Clarke to Mantell, 23 June 1865, AJHR 1867, A-20, p. 12.

¹³ Clarke to Fox, 7 August 1864, AJHR 1867, A-20, p. 12.

¹⁴ Clarke to Fox, 7 August 1864, AJHR 1867, A-20, p. 7.

¹⁵ Clarke to Mantell, 23 June 1865, AJHR 1867, A-20, p. 12.

Motuhoa. The natives appeared highly pleased with the locations allotted to them for future residence …. The only Maori on board who expressed a desire to be permitted to reside elsewhere was the chief Hori Ngatai, who had formerly lived at Otumoetai, and begged to be allowed again to make his home there. It is very probable his request will be acceded to, as the great desire of the chiefs and their followers appears to be to fix their settlements as near as possible to the camp, or to any place where it may be surmised that a body of military settlers will have their farms. Having tendered their submission to the Queen’s authority, and being to all appearance earnestly desirous to remain in peaceful occupation of their lands, the old feeling seems returning to them of the necessity and advantage of having pakeha traders in their midst – with the new feeling superadded, that a residence near a military camp is necessary for their personal safety from enemies of their race.¹⁶

Fox and Whitaker, having cleared the way for a purchase of a portion of a contiguous block of land, and arranged the relocation of local hapu, subsequently returned to Auckland in the company of 18 chiefs, reportedly Hamiora Tu, Mere, Raniera te Hiahia, Mere Taka, Wiremu Patene, Wiremu Parera, Hohepa Hikutaia, Tamati Manuao, Tomika te Mutu, Ranapia, Turere, Maihi Pohepohe, Tawaewae Paerata, Rini Te Matekapua, Te Patu, Arama Karaka Whati, Pikaka, and Hohaia.¹⁷ A number of these rangatira – Hohepa Hikutaia, Wiremu Parera, Wiremu Patene, Tomika Te Mutu, Turere, Pikake, Hamiora Tu, and Raniera Te Hiahia – signed a receipt on 18 August 1864 and received their share of the £1000 deposit for Katikati and Te Puna while they were in Auckland.¹⁸ Many of these rangatira were also known by government officers as ‘leading men’. For example, of those who went to Auckland, Maihi Pohepohe, Hamiora Tu, Wi Patene, and Te Kuka had been appointed Assessors under the Native Circuit Courts Act 1858 and received a salary of £30 per annum.¹⁹ Moreover, seven of the eight signatories were named in the 1866 ‘Return of Officers in the Employ of the Government’: Hamiora Tu, Wi Patene and Te Kuka as Assessors, while Hohepa Hikutaia, Wi Parera, Turere, and Tomika te Mutu began receiving an annual pension of £12.10.0 from December 1864.²⁰

The validity of the transaction, however, was called into question when Enoka te Whanake, who had spoken at the pacification hui and later commented that, ‘[i]f the

¹⁶ Daily Southern Cross, 17 August 1864, p. 4.

17 Daily Southern Cross, 22 August 1864, p. 4. According to an earlier report, only 14 chiefs travelled to Auckland. Daily Southern Cross, 16 August 1864, p.4.

18 There were a number of discrepancies between names on the receipt and those who received a share of the purchase payment. See Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 31.

19 AJHR 1864, E-7, p. 17, cited in Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 217.

20 ‘Return of Officers in the Employ of the Government’, AJHR 1866, D-3, pp. 65-6.

matter of the one thousand pounds had been one by all the tribe, well – but it was the work of the men to Auckland’.²¹ There is no documentary evidence to suggest that the fulfilment of these promises and the payment to the ‘leading men’ was politically strategic. However, gaining the support of important chiefs was a policy not uncharacteristic of Grey and other Crown officials. Clarke, too, when writing on another matter to Civil Commissioner Smith in 1862 confided that:

we must be careful how we act … if we abandon those [chiefs] who [have] declared for the Government the consequences may be serious. It will [be] a point gained to have a party containing after all the principal men.²²

Certainly, as Stokes points out, many of the chiefs who went to Auckland were recipients of reserves awarded with individual titles in the confiscated block and the Katikati-Te Puna block. This issue receives closer scrutiny in Chapter 2. Several promises were also made to these ‘leading men’ after they received the deposit. The surveyor, Theophilus Heale, recalled that it was agreed that surveyors would return to Tauranga with the chiefs, work would commence on roads using Maori labour, European settlers ‘should speedily be sent’ and Crown Grants, as promised by Grey, would be issued to those who received land.²³

Gauging the character of the initial negotiations for Katikati and Te Puna and ascertaining exactly who took part in them is frustrated by a scarcity of sources. Furthermore, two reports about the purchase contain conflicting statements about what might have been motives or pressures that precipitated the sale. One account, written in 1867 by James Mackay, the Civil Commissioner for Thames, implied that Maori were amenable to the sale because of the security it would afford them in the future. According to Mackay, ‘the ex-rebel natives’ thought that the prospect of settlers on the land would provide them with ‘an insurmountable barrier’ between themselves and their ‘ancient enemies Taraia and the Thames people’." The Daily

²¹ AJHR 1867, A-20, p. 20.

²² H. T. Clark to T. H. Smith, 24 February 1862, Letters, 1861-1866 (typescript), TDL.

²³ Memorandum by Theophilus Heale, 27 June 1865, AJHR 1867, A-20, pp. 13-14.

²⁴ Mackay, ‘Report on the Katikati Purchase and other questions relating to the District of Tauranga, 1867’, Le 1 1867/114, National Archives, Wellington (NA), cited in Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 27. NB. A transcription of the entire report is in Stokes, Te Raupatu, vol. 2, pp. 105-16.

Southern Cross, as we have seen, also believed that the purchase would function as a buffer zone between Tauranga Maori and their neighbours.

Conflict between Ngai Te Rangi and Hauraki tribes, especially Ngati Tamatera, had been a feature of the area’s geopolitics for some time, most recently in 1842. The ongoing nature of this tension was commented upon by a witness, with links to Ngai Tamatera and Ngati Raukawa, during the title investigation for Waihi in 1870:

After Ngamarama were destroyed there was fighting at Tauranga – it continued. Ngati Tamatera fought Nga Te Rangi. The last fight of Ngati Tamatera and Ngaterangi was at Ongare (1842). The cause of that fight was Katikati. It was because Ngaiterangi had occupied it. The chief of Ngati Tamatera at that time was Taraia. … That fight was undertaken to prevent Ngaiterangi getting Katikati. Some of the former fights between Ngati Tamatera and Ngaiterangi were about Katikati.²⁵

Another witness, who had been at Ongare in 1842 and identified himself as Ngai Tamatera, spoke about the fighting that had occurred there and its subsequent effect on the occupation of the area:

Ongare was a fight between Ngaiterangi and Ngai Tamatera. I was at it. After the fight at Ongare all the land about Ongare was deserted on account of the people who had been slain there. Te Whanake came there to take possession as a pretext to get all the land as far as Waihi and he would have done so had not Taraia killed him. Te Whanake was a Ngaiterangi man. … I have said that the land from Ongare to Waihi was tapu. It was tapu because it was left as a fighting road. The first fighting was with Ngamarama[,] afterwards with Ngaiterangi.²⁶

Purchasing this particular area to solve inter-tribal conflict, which was ostensibly the aim of the Katikati-Te Puna purchase, had first been mooted in by the government soon after the attack on Ongare. Edward Shortland and George Clarke, Aboriginal Protector, visited the district and proposed the purchase of the disputed area and leaving the two groups to divide the purchase money between themselves. Shortland’s offer, however, was rejected, as it was believed that the government had no right to interfere in matters that concerned only Maori.²⁷

²⁵ Waiturutuu, 21 October 1870, Hauraki Minute Book (HMB) 5, p. 200.

²⁶ Tinipoaka, 21 October 1870, HMB 5, pp. 180.

²⁷ See Edward Shortland, Journal, 7 July 1842, MS Copy Micro 354, Alexander Turnbull Library (ATL). See also Richard Boast, ‘Ngai Te Rangi Before the Confiscation: A History Based on Native Land Court Minutes and Commissioners’ Court Sources’, Crown Forestry Rental Trust / Treaty of Waitangi Research Unit, August 2000, pp. 63-7 and Vincent O’Malley and Alan Ward, ‘A Draft Historical Report on Tauranga Moana Lands’ Crown / Congress Joint Working Party, June 1993, p. 43.

An earlier report on the Crown’s purchase of Katikati and Te Puna, submitted by H. T. Clarke in June 1865, explained the transaction differently. Clarke stated that ‘it was distinctly understood by the Natives at the time that the peace was made, that Te Puna [block] would be absolutely required by the Government, but that it should be paid for’.²⁸ This implies that no choice was given to Maori in the matter.

Clarke was also given an opportunity to describe the purchase when presenting evidence before the Native Affairs Committee in 1877. In this account of the purchase, Clarke explained that:

It was then stated to them that this particular block between Te Puna and Katikati should be sold, because it had always been a bone of contention between themselves and the Thames Natives. They urged it themselves on that ground. These were the conditions on which that sale was made. Directly after Sir George Grey returned to Auckland a number of chiefs went directly to Auckland, and they received a deposit of £1000 on this block.²⁹

This statement suggests that the Crown used the ongoing customary dispute over land on the western side of the harbour to justify its acquisition of the area. However, it is debatable whether the resolution of traditional conflict was the sole, or even the primary motive for the purchase, especially as Hauraki tribes were not consulted before the purchase was made. Moreover, Clarke’s representation of the sale is reinforced by the way Fox described the cession that was in a letter to Grey dated 24 September 1864. In this letter Fox referred to the purchase of the Katikati-Te Puna block as ‘a forced acquisition of Native Lands under colour of a voluntary purchase’.³⁰ Therefore, while the purchase seemed, on the Crown’s part, to be well-intentioned, Fox’s reference to the purchase as a forced acquisition and Clarke’s phrase ‘stated to them that this block … should be sold’, cast the transaction in an altogether different light.

The apparent ease with which the purchase was carried out was complicated by the assertion of rights by ‘Ngaiterangi’s’ so-called ‘ancient enemies Taraia and the Thames people’.³¹ Fox and Whitaker had either overlooked or ignored the rights of

²⁸ Clarke to Mantell, 23 June 1865, AJHR 1867, A-20, p. 12.

²⁹ H. T. Clarke, Le 1 1877/5, NA, p. 2. Thanks to Eve Hartley for this reference.

³⁰ Fox to Grey, 24 September 1864, G 17/3, no. 5, NA, cited in Riseborough, p. 32.

³¹ See Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, fig. 2, p. 10. See also Stokes, Te Raupatu, vol. 2, ch. 2-3, and O’Malley and Ward, pp. 6-18.

northern and Hauraki groups in the purchase area, even though, it seems, the rights of such groups were generally known. Indeed, within a month after the receipt for £1000 was signed in Auckland, the exclusive right of the Tauranga Moana chiefs to sell Katikati- Te Puna was challenged by other groups, including some from the Hauraki district. Four letters were sent to the government, one each from Nepia Te Ngarara and Taraia, and two from Te Kou o Rehua Tawera, on behalf of Ngati Tamatera, Tawera/Ngati Pukenga, and Waitaha.³² Although Ngai Te Rangi had a valid claim to the area through take raupatu, the writers of these letters were adamant that the take of the Hauraki groups had not been extinguished by the Ngai Te Rangi conquest of the area.

As a consequence of these letters, Clarke and Mackay arbitrated at two meetings that were arranged to hear the claims from a limited number of representatives from Ngati Tamatera, Ngai Te Rangi and Tawera in December 1864. As Stokes has observed, the restrictions placed on attendance in the official invitation ‘suggest that it was not considered necessary to have representatives of the Hauraki tribes, Ngati Paoa and Ngati Maru, present, nor any others such as Pirirakau, Ngati Tokotoko, Ngati Hinerangi and so on who did not recognise any Ngai Te Rangi right to offer the Katikati-Te Puna land to the Crown’.³³ Thus, the Crown again failed to properly consider the complex nature of the district’s geo-politics.

One of the advertised meetings took place from 12 December to 17 December. Te Moananui appeared on behalf of Ngati Tamatera and Hohepa Hikutaia and Te Harawira on behalf of Ngai Te Rangi. The disputed areas were identified in a map drawn by Te Moananui, and extensive minutes were taken.³⁴ From the evidence given, it was acknowledged that both Ngai Te Rangi and Ngati Tamatera ‘exercised certain rights of ownership’ in the area. Mackay forwarded the documents generated by the meeting to the Native Minister in January 1865, including the decision of the arbitrators: that the Katikati block ‘be surveyed and valued, and that the amount of the purchase money be equally divided’.³⁵

³² For details see Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, pp. 32-3.

³³ Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 35.

³⁴ Stokes, Te Raupatu, vol. 2, p. 88.

³⁵ ‘Decision of the Arbitrators’, December 1864, AJHR 1867, p. 7.

While this arbitration meant that the Hauraki claims could be extinguished, by deed, at a later date, fears of ‘Hauhau rebels’ in 1865 and 1866 and interruptions to the survey of the confiscated block impeded the allocation of reserves in both the confiscated and purchased blocks, as well as the establishment of military settlements. During this time, the question of the Native Land Court’s role in determining native title in the district was also raised, but the proclamation issued on 18 May 1865 brought the Tauranga district under the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863, and thus removed the lands from the Court’s jurisdiction. Notably, this proclamation extinguished customary title, not only in the confiscated block but over the entire district, including – albeit unnecessarily – the area purchased by the Crown.

The Katikati-Te Puna purchase would remain incomplete until the western boundaries of the confiscated block could be agreed upon and surveyed accordingly.³⁷ Concern and confusion over the confiscated and purchased areas were apparent in the speeches of rangatira who attended meetings at Tauranga held by Colonel Haultain, Defence Minister, on 26 February 1866, and by Grey and Whitaker on 26 March 1866, although the only record of the latter meeting was written some time after it. From the statements made by Maori speakers at both meetings, it is clear that an agreement had to be reached on the issue of precisely what area had been confiscated. However, Gilbert Mair, who had attended the latter meeting as interpreter, later suggested that an agreement about the block to be confiscated was reached only after threats of military force were made. In Mair’s words, written in March 1867, when those at the meeting were informed that the confiscated block might extend west to the Te Puna river, they became ‘rather excited … and said they would not consent; but upon being informed by the Governor that they had been treated better than any other tribe, but that if necessary, they should be put down by force of arms.’³⁸ Needless to say, this proposal was accepted. Neither Clarke nor Mackay were present at this meeting, but Mair’s report was corroborated by Mackay, who was later ‘told by the natives that His Excellency then told them, “he wanted 50,000 acres of land,

³² Stokes, Te Raupatu, vol. 1, ch. 8; Vincent O’Malley, ‘The Aftermath of the Tauranga Raupatu, 1864-1981’, Wai 215 #A22, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, November 1996, pp. 11-16.

³³ This is covered more fully in Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, ch. 5.

³⁴ W. G. Mair to Rolleston, 20 March 1867, AJHR 1867, A-20, p. 53.

and if they would not give that he would take the whole of it’”.³⁹ Thus, under threats of military force, the survey of the western boundary of the confiscated block recommenced.

The purchase of the Katikati-Te Puna block came closer to completion after a meeting was held at Te Papa from 29 June to 19 July 1866. Under Whitaker’s directions, the sole function of this hui was to arrange the settlement of purchase payments.⁴⁰ There was wide representation at this meeting, with people from Arawa, Ngatihaua, Ngati Tamatera, Ngati Maru, Tawera, Ngati Paoa, and Ngai Te Rangi in attendence. Pirirakau, who were implicated in the survey disruptions, and had not yet surrendered, also attended. At the hui’s conclusion, Mackay returned to Auckland, where he was instructed by Whitaker to complete the Hauraki purchases. Three deeds, numbered 458, 459 and 460, were signed by Hauraki tribes in less than a month: on 10 August 1866, Ngati Paoa signed a deed and received £100; on 14 August 1866, Tawera/Ngati Pukenga did the same for £500; and on 3 September, Ngati Tamatera, Ngati Maru, and Ngati Whanaunga recieved £1,130 after signing a third deed.⁴¹

‘Ngaiterangi’, as all hapu of Tauranga Moana were usually labelled by Crown officials, did not sign a purchase deed or receive their payment for a further two months because of the persistent delays to the survey of the confiscated block’s boundary.⁴² In order to complete the purchase, the Native Minister, J. C. Richmond, sent Mackay to Motuhoa to enter final negotiations for the two blocks. Mackay was relatively successful in resolving the boundary dispute. However, only one representative from Pirirakau, who were continuing to dispute the extent of the confiscated block, attended these negotiations.⁴³ On 1 and 2 November Mackay finalised the details of the Ngai Te Rangi claims and a deed, No. 461, was signed on 3 November 1866 for £7700. The amount still owed, £6700, was paid in three

³² Mackay, Le 1 1867/114, NA. See also Stokes, Te Raupatu, vol. 2, p. 108.

³³ Whitaker to Clarke, 10 April 1866, AJHR 1867, A-20, p. 64.

³⁴ H. H. Turton, ed., Maori Deeds of Land Purchases in the North Island of New Zealand: Copied From Originals, vol. 1, Wellington, 1877-1878, pp. 633-4; 634-5; 635-638.

³⁵ Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, ch. 5.

³⁶ Mackay, Le 1 1867/114, NA. See Stokes, Te Raupatu, vol. 2, pp. 112-116.

instalments: £700 on 10 December 1866; £3000 on 24 June 1867; and £3000 on 23 January 1868.⁴⁴

Documentary evidence suggests that paying Ngai Te Rangi in full was impeded by confusion amongst local Crown officials about payment procedure and confusion amongst Maori about what exactly had been promised to them by the Crown. On 4 May 1867, H. T. Clarke wrote to the Agent for General Government in Auckland informing him that ‘at a meeting held at Motuhoa on the death of Tomika Te Mutu, – the natives interested in the Katikati-Te Puna land purchase, strongly urged the completion, at once, of the transaction’.⁴⁵ Clarke, too, thought that it was ‘important that the balance of the purchase money … be paid with as little delay as possible ⁴⁶ However Clarke had not completed that payment because a Native Office circular that he had received in January 1867 had given him the impression that he was barred from doing so because of his position. Clarke, therefore, requested that ‘a proper person’, be appointed to complete the transaction.⁴⁷

Clarke mentioned this problem again in June, as well as the ‘earnest request of the United Ngaiterangi chiefs’ who were ‘anxious to receive the balance … as soon as possible’⁴⁸ Clarke did not go into why the money was needed so urgently. In June, however, he explained that since this last communication:

the Natives interested have been clamorous for the money I need, and at the earnest request of the United chiefs, I have been led to modify my opinion as to the correct reading of your instructions. … I therefore on the 24^th inst. paid over to the parties interested Three thousand pounds. The subdivision was made by themselves and the remaining Three thousand pounds not yet received has been allotted. I hope that in this matter I have not exceeded my instructions.⁴⁹

Another factor that influenced the payment process was advanced by Mackay in his report of June 1867:

The natives although pressed to have the land surveyed, and the area ascertained before permanently fixing the amount of each payment to be made for it obstinately refused to do so. I think they did this for two reasons:- first, they did not wish any longer delay and secondly they found they had in their first arrangement with Messrs

⁴⁴ Turton, ed. Maori Deeds, pp. 638-641.

⁴⁵ H. T. Clarke to Agent for General Government, Auckland, 4 May 1867, IA 14/35, NA.

⁴⁶ Ibid.

⁴⁷ Ibid.

⁴⁸ H. T. Clarke to Agent for General Government, Auckland, 25 June 1867, IA 14/35, NA.

⁴⁹ H. T. Clarke to Native Minister, 26 June 1867, IA 14/35, NA.

Fox and Whitaker made no stipulation for any reserves and they had an idea if the land was once surveyed it all became Government property.⁵⁰

This suggests that that the signatories required at least a small portion of the purchase monies, but were prepared to forgo the entire payment until they were certain that the reserves that they had been promised verbally and on paper were actually allocated to them on the ground.

The government made one further purchase agreement that involved the Katikati-Te Puna block, on 16 May 1871, with Pirirakau, Ngati Hinerangi and Ngati Tokotoko, for £471. Stokes explains that when the agreement was made, it was ‘a belated recognition of the rights of Pirirakau and other inland hapu which Clarke had refused to acknowledge in the dispute over the survey of the boundary of the Confiscated Block during 1866-1867’.⁵¹ However, from comments made by H. T. Clarke to Sir Donald McLean in February 1871, it seems that Clarke believed a need for money was a factor that motivated Pirirakau:

I have had lots to do here since I came. I have been meeting with the surrendered – both the Urewera and Pirirakau. Had a most satisfactory [meeting] with the latter yesterday have promised to go and see them at Te Puna. They are our only remaining Tauranga trouble and will be delighted to report that we have not a disaffected native in the district …. I may require a bonus of £400. Could I have it? This bonus would be really required to give to those Pirirakau in satisfaction of all their claims in the Te Puna Kati Kati Block – although [strictly] speaking they do not deserve a farthing – I have in all my dealings with [them] maintained [the] Tauranga confiscated Boundary of that portion which carried trouble from years ago – They have not disputed the point. I will raise the question again at our meeting – better to start fair and with a clear understanding.⁵²

Research submitted to the Waitangi Tribunal on behalf of Pirirakau suggests that it was actually Ngati Tokotoko’s poverty that allowed the Crown to extinguish the interests of these groups in the purchase area. Furthermore, the Crown negotiated with just one individual from Pirirakau whose authority to do so was not recognised. Reserves were not set aside in the Katikati-Te Puna block for Pirirakau while Ngati Tokotoko and Ngati Haua received land, to be held in trust, at Omokoroa.⁵³

⁵⁰ Mackay, Le 1 1867/114, NA. See Stokes, Te Raupatu, vol. 2, p. 114.

⁵¹ Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 53.

⁵² H. T. Clarke to D. McLean, February 1871, MS Copy Micro 0535, reel 45, ATL.

1.3 Concluding comments

This chapter has summarised the purchase of the Katikati-Te Puna block. It has noted the transaction’s ambiguous character, suggesting that although the purchase was depicted as a solution to the long-standing customary conflict in the area, in reality it was closer to being a de facto confiscation. The transaction was, at times, conducted in a confusing manner. Certainly, official guidance for officers in the field was not forthcoming and often procedure tended to be shaped by political contingencies or the agendas of individuals, rather than by formal policy or according to equity and good faith. Therefore it is not surprising that Maori were confused and wary about the purchase and what it entailed. As we will see in the following chapter, an ambiguous and ad hoc approach, based on the political interests of the Crown, characterised the allocation of reserve in the purchase area as well.

⁵³ Pirirakau Claims Committee, ‘The Te Puna Reserves and Lands Returned: Three Cases of Injustice Arising out of the Allocation Process’, Addendum to the Pirirakau Report, April 1998, p. 20.

Chapter 2 The Allocation of Reserves within the Katikati-Te Puna Block

2.1 Introduction

Like the purchase of the Katikati-Te Puna block, the allocation of reserves to Maori in the ceded area was related to the confiscation of land in the district. In order to validate the confiscation of 50,000 acres at Tauranga, special legislation was passed by the government. These statutes also legitimised the method and rationale behind the Crown’s subsequent return of lands outside of the confiscated block. However, none of these laws existed when reserves in the Katikati-Te Puna block were allocated, although as this land was already owned by the Crown, there were other that the reserves could have been legitimately set aside. The task of this chapter is quite straightforward: it examines the allocation of the Katikati-Te Puna reserves and the function they may have had within the context of the confiscation and return of land. The chapter begins by briefly describing legislation that might have influenced the procedure of Crown officials, while the second part looks more closely at the mechanics of the actual allocation process.

2.2 Legislation: general comments

Legislation for lands reserved for Maori has been covered by a separate report, so it is unnecessary to comment on this material here.¹ The legislation in force at the time the reserves were set aside in the Katikati-Te Puna block was the Native Lands Act, 1866, which operated from 1 December 1866 to 10 October 1867. This was an amendment of the Native Land Act 1865, and although unpopular in some quarters, was justified by J. C. Richmond thus:

Cases are already coming to the knowledge of Government in which Natives have divested themselves of all their land, and it is with a view to protect the public generally, and the Natives themselves, from the curse of pauperism; to prevent the

¹ See L. E. Murray, Rangahaua Whanui National Theme L. Crown Policy on Maori Reserved Lands, 1840 to 1865 and Lands Restricted from Alienation, 1865-1900, [Wellington], 1997; See also Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, ch. 2.

establishment of a sort of gypsy race, homeless, destitute, and idle, as well as to secure the permanent good working of the original Act by securing its popularity among the Natives against the revulsion of feeling that might otherwise ensued.²

Vincent O’Malley and Stephen Robertson, in their of survey of politics and land in Muriwhenua, have noted that the 1866 amendment ‘made it mandatory (rather than merely optional) for the [Native Land] court to report on the advisability of imposing restrictions with respect to every block investigated’. Section 5 of the Act provided the legal means for ‘Native reserves’ to be protected from unscrupulous buyers for a period of time:

Every Crown Grant which shall hereafter be issued of any land comprised in any Native Reserve shall contain a provision that the land therein comprised shall be inalienable by sale or mortgage or by lease for a longer period than twenty-one years from the making of any such lease except with the assent of the governor in Council.⁴

An important reason for placing a restriction on land including reserves was, according to Richmond, to ‘retard’ the sale of land, ‘to give a somewhat longer time and better chance for the adoption of European habits of mind before the Maori settles down to the poverty and necessity for labour to which he must in most cases come’.⁵ This provided some legal protection for reserves, even if it was motivated by paternalism and a particular view of Maori culture and society.

The return and re-allocation of land to Maori was a complex and drawn-out process, made under the provisions of the Tauranga District Lands Acts’ of 1867 and 1868. The two Acts had provisions for the ‘due enquiry’ into the title of the three- quarters returned by the Government. H. T. Clarke was duly appointed the Commissioner of Tauranga Lands under these Acts to conduct the enquiry.⁶ As native title had been extinguished in this area in a proclamation made in May 1865 – even

² J. C. Richmond to J. H. Burslem, 15 January 1867, Appendices to the Journal of the Legislative Council (AJLC), 1867, p. 41, cited in Vincent O’Malley and Stephen Robertson, ‘Muriwhenua Land and Politics, 18662-1909’, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, September 1997, p. 67.

³ O’Malley and Robertson, p. 66. See New Zealand Statues, 1866, no. 28, Section 11, pp. 142-3.

⁴ New Zealand Statutes, 1866, no. 28, Section 5, p. 142.

⁵ J. C. Richmond to J. H. Burslem, 15 January 1867, AJLC, 1867, p. 41, cited in O’Malley and Robertson, p. 67.

⁶ Evelyn Stokes, Te Raupatu o Tauranga Moana: The Confiscation of Tauranga Lands, Hamilton, 1990, vol. 1, p. 144. H. T. Clarke, William Mair, H. W. Brabant, and J. A. Wilson were all Commissioners between 1868 and 1886. The Commissioners of Tauranga Lands are the subjects of a separate report. See Tony Nightingale, ‘The Commissioners of Tauranga Lands 1868-1886’, Wai 215 #A4, Waitangi Tribunal, November 1996. For a succinct chronology of the Commissioners’ appointments see Vincent O’Malley, ‘The Aftermath of the Tauranga Raupatu, 1864-1981’, Wai 215 #A22, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, November 1996, pp. 218-9.

though technically only 50,000 acres were confiscated – the Native Land Court had no role in determining customary title and the return of these lands to Maori.⁷ This afforded the Commissioners complete discretion in the award of lands and in the choice of factors used to make their decisions. It has been argued by historian Vincent O’Malley that rather than abandon the confiscation of the ‘three quarters’ returned and allow the Court to decide the title to these lands – a move which had the support of local Maori – the Act allowed the return of lands ‘by means of Crown grants through a process over which [the government] had complete discretion in terms of who the lands would be awarded to’, perhaps with the intention ‘enforcing] a kind of tenurial reform in the district’.⁸

The first three Katikati-Te Puna transactions were validated by the Tauranga District Lands Act 1867 and Tauranga District Lands Act 1868, although the primary function of these statutes was to validate the act of confiscation itself. O’Malley has also suggested that this legislation was ‘an implicit acknowledgment on the part of the Government that it had not … acted in accordance with the requirements of the New Zealand Settlements Act’.⁹ Furthermore, the original schedule of land was found to be ‘incorrect’. According to the 1867 Act’s schedule, lands that had been surveyed as part of the Katikati-Te Puna and confiscated blocks fell outside the confiscated district. The second Bill was introduced and then passed (the Tauranga District Lands Act 1868) with an amended schedule that incorporated the lands already surveyed.¹⁰

The 1867 Act was passed on 19 October 1867; so too was the Confiscated Lands Act 1867. The earlier New Zealand Settlements Act 1863 and the New Zealand Settlements Amendment and Continuance Act 1865 had outlined behaviour that would disqualify a person from receiving compensation, but the Confiscated Lands Act was specifically concerned with the redistribution of land confiscated from Maori to Maori. Section five of the 1863 Act declared that no compensation could be granted to any person who had carried arms against the Crown, ‘adhered to aided

⁷ This is covered more fully by O’Malley, ‘Aftermath’, pp. 11-16.

⁸ O’Malley, ‘Aftermath’, pp. 26, 35.

⁹ O’Malley, ‘Aftermath’, p. 20.

¹⁰ O’Malley, ‘Aftermath’, p. 21.

assisted or comforted’ rebels, ‘counselled advised induced enticed persuaded or conspired with any other person’, ‘concerned in any outrage against person or property’, or refused to give arms’.¹¹

On the other hand, under the provisions of the Confiscated Lands Act, which has been discussed, land could be granted to:

such person or persons of the Native race as he [the Governor] shall think deserving and who appear to him and have acted in the preservation of peace and order and in suppressing the rebellion or by warrant under his hand to set apart out of the lands so reserved as last aforesaid such portion or portions thereof as he should think fit for the benefit of any such person or persons of the Native race as last mentioned.¹²

Indeed, at the second reading of the Confiscated Lands Bill, in September 1867, J. C. Richmond declared that the Bill’s object was ‘to enlarge the powers of the Government in dealing with confiscated lands’. This was because no provision under the New Zealand Settlements Act had been made for the ‘return confiscated lands to their former proprietors’ Richmond continued, saying that ‘[t]here was also need of powers to make reserves and gifts to persons who had done great services during the war’. Richmond downplayed criticisms voiced by Graham that the Bill was being passed so that Arawa could be awarded land at Tauranga, arguing that the Bill’s purpose was to ‘plant the amiable rebel Natives on their own land again. The Bill was one for giving not taking’.¹³ The main point about this debate is that eligibility for compensation was based on the Crown’s highly subjective – and no less political – evaluation of Maori ‘friendliness’ and ‘loyalty’.

2.1 Allocating the reserves

Before being appointed Commissioner of Tauranga Lands in 1868, it was unclear to H. T. Clarke exactly who had the ultimate authority to award land in the District. In April 1866, he was obliged to ask Colonel Russell, then Native Minister, ‘[a]m I to act on any instructions I may receive from the Government Agent in this

¹¹ New Zealand Statutes, 1863, pp. 20-1.

12 New Zealand Statutes, 1867.

13 New Zealand Parliamentary Debates (NZPD), 26 September 1867, pp. 1102-3.

Province?’.¹⁴ Clarke did not receive a reply to his letter so when Colonel Russell visited Tauranga in May 1866, Clarke drew his attention to this problem. Russell responded by writing in Clarke’s minute book ‘please act in accordance with the Government Agent’s instructions until you are further advised on this subject’.¹⁵ Documentary evidence of any further official advice on the subject of the reserves has not been located.

The apparent neglect of legislation or absence of official instructions setting out criteria to be used in the allocation of reserves in the Katikati-Te Puna block means that the precise bases for their award are unknown. Apart from general notes about requests, Mackay did not keep substantial or organised records of this process.¹⁶ This also frustrates attempts to ascertain how reserves came to be set aside. However, from the requests for land that have survived, it appears that the applications, either from individuals or hapu, guided the process. O’Malley notes too that kainga currently occupied were awarded in trust to chiefs.¹⁷

It was Whitaker, and more specifically Mackay, who dealt with applications for reserves in the purchased area. In his June 1867 report, which has been referred to in Chapter 1, Mackay described why some of the reserves were set aside by Whitaker during the March 1866 meeting:

Mr Whitaker made several arrangements for reserving pieces of land for natives, in compensation for their claims within this [confiscated] block, and also to enable them to fulfil engagements entered into with Europeans for the sale of some of the land.¹⁸

¹⁴ H. T. Clarke to Colonel Russell, 13 April 1866, Appendices to the Journal of the House of Representative (AJHR) 1867, A-20, p. 20.

¹⁵ H. T. Clarke to Native Minister, 26 June 1867, IA 14/35, National Archives, Wellington (NA).

¹⁶ Records of the Tauranga confiscation are commonly referred to as the DOSLI files. They are housed at LINZ, Hamilton and the name comes from this agency’s former acronym. Their content and organisation is described by Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, pp. 209-301. This material has been copied and may be found in the RDB, vol. 124-7. Mackay’s notes are found in the DOSLI files, box 1, folder 5. See also Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 105, and Raupatu Document Bank, vol. 124.

¹⁷ O’Malley, ‘Aftermath’, p. 22.

¹⁸ Mackay, ‘Report on the Katikati Purchase and other questions relating to the District of Tauranga, 1867’, Le 1 1867/114, NA, cited in Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves for Maori in the Tauranga Confiscated Land, Hamilton, 1997, vol. 1, p. 40. A full transcript of Mackay’s report may be found in Stokes, Te Raupatu, vol. 2, pp. 105-116.

The Katikati-Te Puna purchase was also, at this time, being guided to completion by Whitaker. Clarke commented on Whitaker’s involvement in both the purchase and the award of lands to those affected by the confiscation:

In the month of April 1866 Mr Whitaker then Superintendent [of Auckland Province] and was also General Government Agent …. made awards to those people who were entitled to receive land or who were at any rate entitled to receive compensation.¹⁹

Mackay, too, noted that at the July 1866 hui ‘some friendly Natives, who had lost considerable pieces of land within the 50,000 [confiscated] block, applied for reserves, and they were promised that their cases would be heard’.²⁰ By the time Mackay tabled this comprehensive report he had compiled a list of applicants for reserves in the purchase area. These were then mapped at a slightly later date.²¹ (See also figure 2 and figure 3).

Mackay’s June 1867 report strongly suggests that other criteria influenced the award of reserves. In a discussion of the confiscated block, Mackay commented very directly on this point:

As it also appeared to me that some of the loyal natives had lost a good deal of land elsewhere, I offered to make certain reserves which with those previously sanctioned by Mr Whitaker made a total of upwards of six thousand acres within this block’.²²

The allocation of the reserves to Maori, therefore, bore a direct relation to raupatu. As noted above, allocating land to loyal Maori was formalised in the Confiscated Lands Act 1867. Moreover, while customary tenure was not entirely jettisoned as a criterion for the award of land, the political concerns of the Crown influenced this process as well.

The creation of the reserves was also couched in terms of judicial and political expediency. Mackay wrote to the Under Secretary of the Native Department in July 1867:

The great meetings held at Tauranga in June and November 1866 were convened with the intention of disposing of the loyal claims and thus superceding the necessity of a sitting of the Compensation Court, that is, if there ever was any necessity.²³

¹⁹ Clarke, Le 1 1873/10, cited in Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 151. See also Raupatu Document Bank (RDB), vol. 1, p. 81.

²⁰ Mackay, to Richmond, 22 November 1866, AJHR 1867, A-20, p 27.

²¹ The map is attached to Le 1/1867/114, NA. See also Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 44 and Stokes, Te Raupatu, vol. 2, between pp. 116-7.

²² Mackay, Le 1 1867/114. See Stokes, Te Raupatu, vol. 2, p. 113.

Mackay went on:

The intention of the Governor in the first instance was evidently that the question of compensation to the Loyal Natives should be adjusted out of three fourths of the whole district, to be returned to the tribe and not out the one fourth retained by him as the Order in Council set forth …. The fact that the Natives having sold to the Crown the Katikati and [Te] Puna blocks which formed a considerable proportion of the three fourths above alluded to, … to a certain extent altered the position of the case. However in arranging this question Mr Clarke and myself endeavoured to adjust any outstanding claims by making reserves for some of the loyal persons who had received but little before on account of their lands being within the Military Settlement Block of 50,000 acres, although they had very small right to land otherwise within the Katikati and [Te] Puna blocks. We also proposed to the rebel party who owned the greater part of the purchased blocks that they should adjust the matter by giving a large share of the consideration money to the loyal claimants. Neither party however cared much for this proposition and it was negatived at the time by them.²⁴

Clarke’s allocation of reserves on the eastern side of the Tauranga harbour was documented more fully. At the end of May 1867, he submitted a schedule of lands that he recommended be granted to Maori in the confiscated block. This was accompanied by a clear description of the criteria he used for his decisions. As Stokes writes: ‘[t]he lists are indicative of the scale and nature of reserves intended to be granted’.²⁵ Four years later Clarke was instructed to file a report on lands granted to ‘Friendly Natives’ and ‘Returned Rebels’ and ‘lands surrendered to Natives’.²⁶ This included the reserves in the Katikati-Te Puna purchase. The description of lands was thus:

1. Lands awarded to friendly natives within the 50,000 acres block actually confiscated.

2. Lands awarded to returned Rebels within the 50,000 acre block actually confiscated.

3. Lands awarded to mixed friendly and rebel Natives within the 50,000 acre block actually confiscated.

4. Lands awarded to Natives in the Township of Tauranga and Greerton.

5. Lands awarded to Natives within the Te Puna and Katikati purchased block estimated to contain 80,000 acres

²³ Mackay to Under Secretary, Native Department, 31 July 1867, DOSLI files, box 1, folder 1, cited in Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 106.

²⁴ Mackay to Under Secretary, Native Department, 31 July 1867, DOSLI files, box 1, folder 1, cited in Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 106. Emphasis added.

²⁵ Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 107.

²⁶ Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 112.

6. Lands under operation of Tauranga District Lands Act to be surrendered to Natives.²⁷

Clarke attempted to clarify the allocation procedure while presenting evidence before the Native Affairs Committee in 1877. The Katikati-Te Puna reserves were obviously considered by Clarke to be distinct from the others, prefacing his evidence with this statement, ‘I think I ought to state first of all that the reserves in the purchased block are very different to the reserves made in other parts of the block’.²⁸ When asked to explain to the Committee how the reserves differed from others in the district. Clarke stated that:

I think they may be classed under four different classifications. There are reserves made to the loyal natives; there are reserves made to returned rebels; there are reserves made for military services and there are reserves made in this purchase.²⁹

The reserves were differentiated with respect to the restrictions placed on them.

Clarke thought that:

[I]n every case of the ex-rebels they have been made inalienable; those that were made to the loyal natives as compensation awards to do as they liked with them; and those for military services of course were made alienable.³⁰

Therefore, the reserves were not set aside to provide subsistence for Maori until they had assimilated into European society and abandoned communal ownership of land, which was the prevailing philosophy behind reserves legislation. Perhaps Clarke and other officials thought that those who were left to ‘do as they liked’ with their reserves in the Katikati-Te Puna block, and the reserves themselves, did not require active Crown protection.

When asked whether or not those who were involved in the transaction had also been in rebellion, Clarke said: ‘There were both those who had and those who had not. In fact, the whole of the Tauranga people were parties to this except Ngatihi [sic]

and Ngatihoko tribe who had no interest in it’.³¹ Clarke also confirmed that the reserves were made at the conclusion of the purchase of Katikati and Te Puna.³²

²⁷ DOSLI file, box 2, folder 5, cited in Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 112.

²⁸ Evidence of H. T. Clarke, Le 1 1877/5, NA, p. 1.

²⁹ Evidence of H. T. Clarke, Le 1 1877/5, NA, p. 6.

³⁰ Evidence of H. T. Clarke, Le 1 1877/5, NA, p. 6.

³¹ Evidence of H. T. Clarke, Le 1 1877/5, NA, p. 3.

³² Evidence of H. T. Clarke, Le 1 1877/5, NA, pp. 3-4.

It is difficult to come to any firm conclusion as to the grounds on which the reserves were allocated, given that Clarke classed Katikati-Te Puna reserves differently from other areas set aside in the confiscated district, yet did not explain the source of that difference. However, although Clarke did not state it outright, the extent of alienation restrictions placed on the reserves pointed to the probable reasons that influenced the award of land. Reserves granted with title in one or two names were likely to be compensation for either loyalty or the loss of land in the confiscated block. The allocation of reserves to individuals with Ngati Tapu affiliations illustrates this point. Ngati Tapu had interests from Maenene to Te Papa, in the 50,000 block kept by the Crown.³³ Simon Hedley, in a report written on behalf of Ngati Tapu, has identified nine reserves that were granted to individuals with Ngati Tapu affiliations in the Katikati-Te Puna block.³⁴ Similarly, a number of the reserves vested in trust for a hapu were allocated ‘returned rebels’. For example, Ngai Tamawhariua, who helped to construct Gate Pa, were awarded land in trust in the Parish of Tahawai while Ngai Tuwhiwhia were awarded four allotments covering 500 acres in the Parish of Te Mania.³⁵

Most of the reserves were surveyed in 1867, but the Crown grants confirming their ownership were still not ready when Governor Bowen visited the area in June 1868. Clarke alluded to this oversight on two separate occasions. In 1879 he mentioned that at the time of the visit local Maori had been anxious to receive their grants but did not elaborate any further.³⁶ Clarke had actually explained the situation more fully two years earlier. In 1877, he told the Native Affairs Committee that:

in June 1868, when Sir George Ferguson Bowen, who was then Governor, visited Tauranga at his very first meeting with the Natives on the Beach a [—] was made on him for the issue of Crown Grants for these very reserves. They said “We have sold you our land and made certain reserves; we want to deal with them”. A promise was then made that Crown grants should be issued. I received instructions from Mr Richmond to have these Crown Grants prepared. Mr Skeet, now Government Surveyor at Taranaki was ordered to draft these Crown Grants. The surveys had been already made and the maps complete, and there was nothing to do but to issue these Crown Grants. These were prepared at once and issued. In making these Crown

³³ Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 61, fig. 10.

³⁴ Simon Hedley, ‘Ngati Tapu Lands Claim: Ngati Tapu Historical Report’, Waitangi Tribunal, April 2000, pp. 77, 88-90.

³⁵ Stokes, Te Raupatu, vol. 1, pp. 33, 36.

³⁶ H. T. Clarke, 12 November 1879 Tauranga Minute Book (TMB) 1, p. 226.

Grants, I consulted the Natives as to what they wished – whether they wished to have any restrictions placed on them or have them free. Most of them, I believe, had already been dealt with, if the truth be told, because I believe this request for Crown Grants emanated more from the settlers than the Natives themselves. Upon this application I consulted them with regard to this and restrictions were placed on plots that they desired to be restricted’.³⁷

Had the reserves been awarded under the Native Lands Act 1866 they would have, in theory, been protected by the clause that restricted alienations to leases no longer than 21 years. However, the Native Lands Act 1866 is not referred to in any of the surviving documents. It suggests that the reserves set aside in the Katikati-Te Puna purchase area were not conceived as conventional reserves, and this is confirmed when Crown grants are examined.

Data contained in the second volume of this report shows that the majority of the reserves were granted under the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863 and the New Zealand Settlements Amendment and Continuation Act 1865. Therefore the reserves were compensation and suggests that the purchased area operated as a de facto confiscated area.

2.3 Concluding comments

Like the purchase of the block itself, it is difficult for the historian to uncover the precise procedure employed by government officers to allocate reserves in the Katikati-Te Puna purchase area. The process was poorly recorded, so it is only by inference that the rationale behind the allocations can be discovered. While the reserves could have been awarded under the provisions of the Native Land Act 1866, the majority were granted under the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863 and the New Zealand Settlements Amendment and Continuation Act 1865. Here, as in the rest of the confiscated district, the Crown’s political motives over-rode any duty it had to actively protect the future well being of Maori.

³⁷ Evidence of H. T. Clarke, Le 1 1877/5, NA, pp. 4-5.

Figure 2 From Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 51.

Figure 3 From Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 195

Chapter 3 The Sale of Reserves, 1868 to the Early 1870s

3.1 Introduction

The reserves that were set aside for Maori in the Katikati-Te Puna block did not remain in Maori hands for long. In fact, it is evident that settler pressure was the primary cause for the execution of the reserves’ Grown grants. Given that the reserves were, in James Mackay’s words, ‘of great value mostly with harbour frontage’, it is not surprising that they were coveted by Pakeha buyers.¹ It could also be argued that the way that the government arranged the return of land outside the 50,000 acre confiscated block and the time it took to do this may have put additional pressure on the land in the Katikati-Te Puna block. Furthermore, the reserves’ lack of alienation restrictions, an absence of customary associations with many of the areas set aside, socio-economic uncertainty and, as we will see in more detail in Chapter 4, the ambivalence of government officials towards Maori trusteeship, contributed to this situation as well.

At least twenty-one reserves in the Katikati-Te Puna block – that is, just under 25 per cent of the total number set aside – were sold between September 1868 and December 1869. When translated into acres, this statistic is fairly alarming. In that short time, 2810 acres out of the 6909 acres said to have been set aside, that is, 40 per cent of the total reserved area, was alienated. In the Parish of Tahawai, for example, nine out of 19 allotments, or 1400 acres out of 2125, were sold. The rate of alienation was fairly similar throughout the purchased area; only reserves in the Parish of Katikati, proved to be the exception to this rule.

This chapter is divided into four parts. It opens with a brief sketch of Tauranga immediately after the war and up to the early 1870s. The aim of this section is to provide a socio-economic and political backdrop to purchasing activities in the area during this time and to chart the earliest documented land sales in the district. The

¹ James Mackay, ‘Report on the Katikati Purchase and other Questions Relating to the Tauranga District, 1867’ Le 1 1867/114, National Archives, Wellington (NA). See Evelyn Stokes, Te Raupatu o Tauranga Moana, Hamilton, 1990, vol. 2, p. 114.

second and third sections survey early sales generally and the early sales in the Katikati-Te Puna block in particular. Richard John Gill’s purchases are the focus of the fourth section, especially, although not exclusively, his purchases from Te Moananui and the consolidation of Gill’s interests at Rereatukahia.

3.1 Tauranga: 1866 to the early 1870s

The earliest officially recorded transaction involving Maori land in either the confiscated block or the purchased area was Tomika Te Mutu and Te Kuka Te Mea’s sale of two reserves at Otumoetai – Lot 34 and Lot 36 – to Edmund Foley on 21 December 1866, for which they received £300.² Foley had come to the district to take up a commissariat contract for troops and had been at Tauranga at the time of Gate Pa.³ Three days later these two sold a further 100 acres at Otumoetai (Lot 92) to John Chadwick for £80, who was farming in the district.⁴ These may have been the areas reserved by Whitaker in March 1866 ‘for natives … to enable them to fulfil engagements entered into with Europeans for the sale of some of the land’, although the lack of documentary evidence means that this is mere speculation.⁵

In contrast to these seemingly mutually beneficial contracts between the two chiefs and two Pakeha, a week later, the recently-arrived District Surveyor, H. L. Skeet, notified Clarke that a survey party had been warned to stop its activities because ‘rebel Hauhaus were on their way to seize both surveyors and camp’.⁶ By 17 January 1867, troops were called out, implementing a scorched earth policy that continued through to March. During this campaign troops burned the villages occupied by Pirirakau and Ngati Ranginui from Whakamarama to Waoku. On the pretext that inland groups had stored enough food to supply the rebel force, crops

² Deed register K1 92, ref. 99^K, Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) Auckland. Jackson and Russell were the solicitors involved in this transaction. Stokes does not list any reserves with these numbers at Otumoetai. Refer to Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves for Maori in the Tauranga Confiscated Lands, Hamilton, 1997, vol. 2: index lists, passim.

³ Guy Scholefield, ed., Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Wellington, 1940, vol. 1, p. 268.

⁴ Deed register K1 25, ref. 92^K, LINZ, Auckland.

⁵ Mackay, Le 1 1867/114, NA, cited in Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 40.

⁶ Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (AJHR) 1867, A-20, p. 39.

were also destroyed.⁷ By June 1867, after an inland reconnaissance, Captain Goldsmith of the First Waikato Regiment reported that ‘not one openly hostile is on our Frontier’.⁸ The immediate threat posed by the Hauhaus had been diffused.

Many of the military settlers from the First Waikato Regiment, to whom 12 months’ worth of free rations and an allotment of land in the district had been given in return for their services, had left by the end of 1867. Their lots were sold, according to the Tauranga Record in November 1867, at ‘fabulously low prices’. This, of course, affected the local economy. It was reported that ‘the stores are without purchasers, some are abandoned and the beach is deserted’.⁹ There were a number of reasons for the abandonment of the district by the military settlers. The military settlement scheme itself was badly conceived. Insufficient amounts of land were allocated, more often than not, to men without enough capital or the appropriate experience to make a living from their holdings.

The unsettled state of the district and the fear of ‘Hauhauism’ would have merely highlighted the failure of the settlement scheme. As a result, there was minimal growth in the population, as without the protection that a military settlement afforded, there could be little hope of attracting settlers to the district.¹⁰ Indeed, in 1870, out of 257 settlers in the Tauranga district, 246 were military settlers.¹¹ It was around this that A. F. Halcombe declared that the military settlements were ‘entire failures’. This was Halcombe’s conclusion after producing a report for the government in 1871 on the viability of opening up the district. In this report, Halcombe reviewed the current situation and identified deterrents to settlement:

The causes of such failure are not far to seek. Primarily, the original grantees were not, as a whole, men likely to succeed as farmers. In the next place, they never had a chance of occupying their lands, Maori hostility and the want of inland communication being quite sufficient to prevent successful settlement. As the natural

⁷ Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, ch. 6. A map of engagements in the Tauranga Bush Campaign may be found in Stokes, Te Raupatu, vol. 1, p. 122.

⁸ Captain Goldsmith to Defence Minister Haultain, 20 June 1867, Le 1 1867/120, NA, cited in Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 84.

⁹ W. H. Gifford and H. B. Williams, A Centennial History of Tauranga, Tauranga, 1940, cited in Stokes, Te Raupatu, vol. 1, p. 177.

¹⁰ Stokes, Te Raupatu, vol. 1, p. 179.

¹¹ Stokes, Te Raupatu, vol. 1, p. 178.

result of the operations of these causes, we find only a few hundred acres immediately round Te Papa in actual occupation.¹²

Nevertheless, while military settlement at Tauranga failed, Stokes writes that ‘it did bring in a small nucleus of Europeans who had established a precarious toe hold in the region and formed the basis for further European colonisation during the 1870s’.¹³

The purchase of land was one activity that occupied some of this small nucleus of settlers and inevitably, Maori land that was either Crown granted, or about to be, gained the attention of local buyers and occasionally, those from Auckland. The choice and availability of land, however, was governed by the progress made in the government’s return of land by the Commissioner of Tauranga Lands, whose main task was to award land to Maori after ‘due enquiry’. H. T. Clarke held this office of Commissioner from July 1868 until December 1869 and reappointed in January 1871. By the late 1860s, barely any titles to ‘returned’ lands had been investigated and awarded, thus putting pressure on the reserves set aside for Maori in the Confiscated and Katikati-Te Puna blocks (figure 4).¹⁴

Clarke often complained that overwork interfered with the return of land.¹⁵ In his examination of the Commissioners’ activities, the historian Tony Nightingale has also suggested that the Commission’s progress was influenced by the degree of support given by the government to the Commissioners.¹⁶ There were, however, other causes for the delay. It seems that title investigations were deliberately postponed by Clarke during his second stint as Commissioner. In July 1871, Clarke mentioned in a letter to Sir Donald McLean his reasons for postponing his enquiry: ‘I am going to open my commission on the 17^th July under Tauranga District Lands Act. I have delayed [it] to

¹² AJHR 1872, D-6, p. 2.

¹³ Stokes, Te Raupatu, vol. 1, p. 179.

¹⁴ Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, figure 12, p. 88. Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, figure 14, p. 102.

¹⁵ In March 1868, for example, when asked furnish information about the district for the new Governor, George Ferguson Bowen, Clarke could provide only an interim report because the ‘present numerous and pressing engagements prevent my giving that time and proper attention to the subject which it demands’. ‘Reports on the State of the Natives at the Time of Sir G. F. Bowen’s Arrival’, Report from H. T. Clarke, Civil Commissioner, Tauranga, 7 March 1868, AJHR 1868, A-4, p. 9.

¹⁶ Tony Nightingale, ‘The Commissioners of Tauranga Lands 1868-1886’, Waitangi Tribunal, November 1996, Wai 215 #A4, p. 41.

the present as it would interfere with the Public Works’.¹⁷ Work on the telegraph line between Auckland and Tauranga had been progressing slowly through 1870, but Clarke was prepared to sacrifice his enquiry and tenurial certainty for Tauranga Moana Maori so that this and other projects could be completed. There were, of course, short term financial benefits to be gained by those Maori who were engaged in public works, but in the long term, this delay effectively prolonged, in Halcombe’s words, the ‘locking up of the whole of the Government lands’.¹⁸

Contemporary official accounts of the district published state that at this time, Tauranga Maori were adapting well to post-raupatu circumstances. In March 1868, Clarke reported that ‘[t]he majority of the Tauranga Natives are peaceably disposed towards the Europeans … and are making an effort to live like their white neighbours’. By the early 1870s, the local newspaper reported on economic interaction between settlers and Maori, and there was, according to Stokes, a revival of pre-war Maori trade and agriculture.¹⁹ However, in his 1868 report, Clarke also noted the prevalence of disease amongst Maori and a low birth rate. Population figures that Clarke had taken towards the end of 1866 recorded 468 men, 419 women and 311 children in the district. By 1874, it had increased to 1245, but by 1878, it had dropped to 1086.²⁰ The change could be attributed to different enumeration methods.

In the meantime, Foley and Chadwick, who had bought land from Maori in 1866, continued to purchase reserves in the confiscated block. After his purchase from Tomika Te Mutu and Te Kuka Te Mea, John Chadwick went on to buy 196 acres – Lot 20, Parish of Te Papa – from Hamiora Tu and Te Retimana Te Ao, for £200.²¹ Thomas Craig, an Auckland timber merchant, bought land next, again from Hamiora

¹⁷H. T. Clarke to Donald McLean, 1 July 1871, MS Copy Micro 0535, reel 45, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington (ATL).

¹⁸AJHR 1872, D-6, p. 4.

¹⁹Stokes, Te Raupatu, vol. 1, pp. 179-80. See also Kathryn Rose, ‘The Impact of Confiscation: Socio-economic Conditions of Tauranga Maori, 1865-1965’, Wai 215 #A38, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, January 1997, ch. 1-2.

²⁰Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 214.

²¹Deed register K1 26, ref. 108^K, LINZ, Auckland. Whitaker and Russell were the solicitors involved.

Tu and Te Retimana Te Ao, in July and August, 1867. These were Lots 111 and 112, Te Papa which, combined, had an area of 200 acres.²²

No more Maori reserves appear to have been sold until after Governor Bowen visited the district in June 1868 when Chadwick bought another reserve from Te Kuka Te Mea. This was Lot 9, Parish of Te Puna on 18 June 1868.²³ Around this time Craig also purchased Lot 6, Te Papa for £20 from Mika and Hohi.²⁴ Given that Bowen was asked that the Crown grants for the Katikati-Te Puna reserves be executed as quickly as possible, it is not surprising that the next spate of transactions recorded in deed registers are for Katikati-Te Puna reserves.

3.3 Early sales: motives for buying and selling reserves

There is no doubt that it was very easy for individual Maori to alienate the reserves. They were granted, for the most part without any alienation restrictions, to individuals who took part in, and sought to control, the local economy and politics. For example, as we have seen, some rangatira, such as Te Kuka Te Mea, had, by 1868, established working relations with local Pakeha, partly through the sale of land.

Te Kuka held four adjacent reserves in the Katikati-Te Puna block with a total area of 500 acres vested in trust with Te Puru on behalf of Ngati Tuwhiwhia. This land was leased to Thomas Craig in December 1869. Craig had also acquired nearby Lot 28, Te Mania, from Hohepa Tangatahou in October 1869.²⁶ Chadwick and Foley, who had already bought land in the confiscated block, eventually acquired interests in the Katikati-Te Puna block as well. Foley began leasing Lot 41, Te Mania, in April 1870, while Chadwick bought Lot 27, Te Mania, from Pane Titipa in January 1871.²⁷

As Clarke pointed out, rather than legally conferring title to grantees, Crown grants were executed in order to formalise purchase agreements. Stokes, too, has

²² Deed register K1 92, ref. 161^K, LINZ, Auckland. Lot 112 was sold on 10 July 1867; Lot 111 on 19 August 1867. Jackson and Russell were the solicitors involved.

²³ Deed register K1 178, ref. 318^K, LINZ, Auckland. Jackson and Russell were the solicitors.

²⁴ Deed register K1 190, ref. 364^K, LINZ, Auckland.

²⁵ Deed register K1 289, ref. 583^K, LINZ, Auckland.

²⁶ Deed register K1 283, ref. 578^K, LINZ, Auckland.

noted the occurrence of ‘would-be purchasers … negotiating deals with local Maori’ well before titles to their land were confirmed in a Crown grant. Te Kuka Te Mea, with Te Puru, had entered such an agreement with James Bannatyne Graham for a large area in the Kaimai district. The land in question was promised to Graham on the issue of the Crown Grant.²⁸ There is, however, no evidence that Te Kuka arranged the alienation of other land in this manner.

The underlying motivation for Te Kuka’s alienations was suggested when he spoke about the local economy at a meeting held at Whareroa in 1873. At the meeting, Te Kuka Te Mea spoke to their guest, Mr Morris, who was canvassing for Maori support in the forthcoming provincial elections:

Your election is secured. We don’t want strangers to represent us. We want a man like you, who has invested capital and is employing labour, and not men who are fickle, here today and away tomorrow. Indeed no. You are our choice and the choice of all natives.²⁹

It is plausible that the sale of certain reserves occurred in order to enlarge the economy and bring prosperity to the district.

There several other transactions that might also be thought of as strategic. These were involved Pakeha men who had been in the district before the 1860s. For example, Daniel Sellars had lived in the district for some years and had married Jane Faulkner, daughter of the Pakeha trader John Lees Faulkner and local woman, Rihipete Puhi. Sellars was also in business with his father-in-law and acquired Lot 29, Parish of Te Mania, from Kiepa Te Amohau on 20 October 1869.³⁰ Another individual who had married locally, Finlay McMillan, purchased land in the Parish of Te Mania at low prices which had been allocated to his wife, Meriana Te Rangihau.³¹

Lots 52 and 53, Parish of Te Puna were actually the first reserves in the Katikati-te Puna block to be alienated. Richard John Gill bought them for £83.5.0 on 1 September 1868. The two reserves had an area of 333 acres, but had originally been part of 400 acres set aside at Omokoroa for ‘Ngawaka Patuhoe and others of

²⁷ Deed register K1 336, ref. 685^K, LINZ, Auckland; deed register K1 390, ref. 813^K, LINZ, Auckland.

²⁸ Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 221.

²⁹ Bay of Plenty Times, 13 September 1873, np.

³⁰ Deed register K1 260, ref. 545^K, LINZ, Auckland.

Ngatitokotoko’.³² Mackay’s rough allocation notes from July 1866 had also listed that 400 acres at Omokoroa were assigned to ‘Ngatitokotoko hapu – Rangiwaka and others (Wiremu Bryan, Richard, Edward John to have land with Rangiwaka ima [sic], not to have land elsewhere)’.³³ These were surveyed as Lots 52, 53, 187 and 188, although on the survey plan, none of the reserves are labelled ‘Ngati Tokotoko’.³⁴ Crown grant information for the two reserves purchased by Gill reveals that they were Crown granted to three individuals, Te Makaka, Te Puru and Patuhoe, whereas the remaining 67 acres – Lots 187 and 188, Parish of Te Puna – were Crown granted to ‘Te Makaka and Patuhoe in trust for Ngatitokotoko’. Furthermore, the latter two reserves had an alienation restriction clause inserted in the Crown grant:

‘provided always that the said Land hereby granted shall be inalienable by sale of lease for a longer period than 21 years or by mortgage except with consent of the Governor being previously obtained to any such sale, lease, or mortgage.³⁶

This restriction appears to comply with the requirement of section 5 of the Native Lands Act 1866, but proves that it had little effect on stopping the sale.³⁷

Why restrictions were placed on only one-sixth of the total area initially allocated to Ngati Tokotoko is impossible to answer with any certainty. So too is how over 80 per cent of the reserved area supposedly vested in trust for Ngati Tokotoko was sold without question. One answer might be that an arrangement had already been entered into between Gill, Te Makaka, Te Puru and Patuhoe, before the Crown grant was awarded. Therefore, only Lots 187 and 188 could be granted in the manner originally intended.

Gill, along with W. G. Mair, Auckland solicitor William Henry Kissling, and surveyor, Archibald Turner, participated in the next three transactions. One of these involved a Katikati-Te Puna reserve. Mair was the interpreter in each of the three purchases. Turner purchased Lots 17 and 113, Parish of Te Papa.³⁸ Gill acquired Lot

³¹ Deed register K2 81, ref. 1957^K, LINZ, Auckland.

³² H. H. Turton, ed., Maori Deeds of Land Purchases in the North Island of New Zealand: Copied From Originals, vol. 1, Wellington, 1877-1878, p. 638.

³³ DOSLI files, box 1, folder 5. See Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 104.

³⁴ SO 421, LINZ, Hamilton.

³⁵ Deed register K1 199, ref. 379^K, LINZ, Auckland.

³⁶ Crown Grant 3GK, 157, LINZ, Auckland.

³⁷ New Zealand Statutes, 1866, no. 28, p. 142.

³⁸ Deed register K1 196, ref. 375^K; LINZ, Auckland.

⁴⁵ in the Parish of Te Mania from Te Puru, who had also been one of the parties who had recently alienated the majority of Ngati Tokotoko’s land at Omokoroa, also to Gill. The purchase was 100 acres for £25 or two shillings an acre. Turner and Gill were witnesses for each other’s purchases.³⁹

Deed Registers held at Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), Auckland, are obviously an important source for constructing a chronology of the alienations and identifying the individuals who participated in the transactions that have been discussed. These records, for example, inform us that, in the case of the Katikati Te Puna reserves, Abraham Warbrick was the interpreter who was most often employed. Warbrick was involved in nine transactions, although William Mair also interpreted a number of transactions as well. Many of the witnesses were also purchasers themselves. As the transactions were not required by law to be scrutinised by an independent officer, concerns might be raised as to whether this situation exposed the reserves to unscrupulous buyers.

The Auckland solicitor William Henry Kissling was by far the most prominent solicitor in the Katikati-Te Puna alienations, unlike the initial transactions in the confiscated block, which were conveyed by Whitaker and Russell, or Jackson and Russell. Kissling participated in 14 of the 19 conveyances of Katikati-Te Puna reserves that occurred up to December 1869. Details of Kissling’s professional life are limited to brief biographical details gleaned from directories or books about his father, the Anglican Archdeacon, George Adam Kissling.⁴⁰ Kissling bought one or two reserves and in the latter part of 1873, he advertised that he had ‘Money to lend’ on the front page of the Bay of Plenty Times. No other evidence of business connections with the district have been discovered by this author.⁴¹

The size, location, quality, and relative proximity to other reserves may have made some reserves more appealing than others to potential buyers. The tendency in the confiscated block, was to buy the larger reserves with the least number of owners

³⁹ Deed register K1 193, ref. 372^K; deed register K1 194, ref. 373^K, LINZ, Auckland.

⁴⁰ Trevor G. Kissling, The Venerable George Adam Kissling: A Memoir and a Family Tree of Descendents in New Zealand 1842-1972, Auckland 1972; Auckland Waikato Historical Journal, no. 68, pp. 31-33.

⁴¹ Bay of Plenty Times, 27 August 1873 to 6 December 1873.

with whom to deal. As the reserves were concentrated around Omokoroa, Te Apata, Matapuhi, Ongare, and Tuapiro, buying as large an area as possible – often a group of reserves – from one or two individuals was a trend that continued in some parishes in the Katikati-Te Puna block. In the Parish of Tahawai, for example, the majority of the reserves were clustered together, which created larger contiguous areas. The size of Lot 9, Parish of Tahawai, which was 500 acres with only two owners, in theory, acting as trustees for Ngaitamawhariua, may have been a drawcard for prospective buyers. Indeed, Thomas L. Macky bought it from Timi te Rua and Rotoehu on 1 January 1869 for £92.⁴² Macky, or Mackee, was a shipping agent for the S.S. Tauranga, which at this time was running between Auckland and Thames, and had previously purchased Lot 208, Parish of Apata, on 4 December 1868.⁴³

R. J. Gill was the active buyer in the block. His third purchase of land there was at Tahawai: Lot 11, which was sold by Hohepa Te Kai, on 4 December 1868. Gill paid £40 for the 200-acre reserve.⁴⁴ Gill soon acquired other reserves at Rereatukahia that were adjacent to Lot 11. The next to be sold out of this group was Lot 12, a block of 250 acres that had been granted to Te Moananui on 5 January 1869, but remained unregistered until 4 November 1869.⁴⁵ By this time, the reserve had changed hands twice. On 12 February 1869, it was sold to the District Surveyor, Skeet, for £37.10.0 ⁴⁶ The transaction was approved by T. H. Smith, J. P., under the provisions of the Justices of the Peace Act, 1866. Skeet smartly onsold the allotment at the higher price of £80 to to R. J. Gill on 10 March 1869.⁴⁷ Three hundred acres nearby – Lots 13 and 14 – were also soon bought by Gill from Te Moananui on 25 March 1869, for £45, equivalent to three shillings an acre. Smith also approved this transaction.⁴⁸

These conveyances took place just months before Te Moananui’s death, said, by his daughter, to have been on 29 July 1869.⁴⁹ By that date Te Moananui had actually

⁴² Deed register K1 218, ref. 432^K, LINZ, Auckland.

⁴³ Deed register K1 206, ref. 396^K, LINZ, Auckland.

⁴⁴ Deed register K1 208, ref. 399^K, LINZ, Auckland.

⁴⁵ Crown grant book 2GK ref, 136, LINZ, Auckland.

⁴⁶ Deed register K1 224, ref. 446^K, LINZ, Auckland.

⁴⁷ Deed register K1 225, ref. 447^K, LINZ, Auckland.

⁴⁸ Deed register K1 247, ref. 509^K, LINZ, Auckland.

⁴⁹ Ngapiri Marata Moananui, 15 August 1878, Tauranga Minute Book (TMB) 1, p. 15.

alienated all but one of the reserves Crown granted to him.⁵⁰ In addition to Lots 12, 13 & 14, at Rereatukahia, Te Moananui had disposed of Lot 49, 100 acres, in the Parish of Te Mania on 27 October 1868 for £10, to the solicitor Kissling.⁵¹ Records also show that Te Moananui had alienated a reserve that had been granted to Harawira. On 13 October 1868, Te Moananui sold Lot 165, Parish of Te Puna, comprising of 47 acres for £12.15.0, to Abraham Warbrick.⁵² In total, Te Moananui exchanged 697 acres for £105.5.0 in six months. Of these, only Lot 49, Parish of Te Mania had actually been granted to Te Moananui individually. Grievances that arose from the way these alienations were conducted are the subject of Chapter 4.

Gill also entered into an agreement with Hamiora Tu to lease Lot 15, Parish of Tahawai, which, in April 1870, was the last reserve at Rereatukahia still in Maori hands. The agreement was for 25 years at a rate of £5.10.0 per annum.⁵³ The length of this arrangement varied from the standard of 21 years, which had been the usual restriction on leasing imposed by the Native Lands Act, 1866. The length of the lease suggests that this was a private arrangement without recourse to statutory or legal constraints.

Between September 1868 and March 1871, in addition to the transactions already described, Gill bought 100 acres in the Parish of Apata, and leased four other reserves in the Parish of Te Puna, so that most of his properties were concentrated conspicuously in the Parishes of Te Puna and Tahawai. Gill’s involvement in the alienation of reserves at Omokoroa in the Parish of Te Puna has been touched on by Evelyn Stokes and his purchases at Rereatukahia in the Parish of Tahawai are surveyed more closely in the following chapter.⁵⁴ However, because Gill was a government employee at the time of these acquisitions, it is worth devoting the rest of

⁵⁰ Te Moananui and Hori Tupaea were granted Lot 2 (Ahipatiki), 50 acres in the Parish of Katikati.

⁵¹ Deed register K1 197, ref. 376^K, LINZ, Auckland.

⁵² Deed register K1 189, ref. 377^K, LINZ, Auckland. Participants were W. H. Kissling, solicitor, William Gundry, surveyor, interpreter, and Thomas Wrigley, Storekeeper, witness. There is an error in the register entry: while the sketch of the reserve is labelled ‘165’, the transaction is recorded as ‘lot 15’. It is worth noting that Warbrick brought the nearby Lot 160 (40 acres) on the same day, from Te Ipu and Riria, for which £40 was paid. Kissling, Gundry and Jonathon Brown (witness) were present.

⁵³ Deed register K1 383, ref. 723^K, LINZ, Auckland.

⁵⁴ Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, pp. 266-275.

this chapter to see whether his purchasing activities were at odds with his official position.

3.1 Richard Gill’s career

Richard John Gill appears to have left very little in the way of personal papers. There is also very little archival material where Gill or others directly discuss his purchasing activities or the circumstances surrounding them. This makes any commentary on Gill’s actions and intentions speculative rather than conclusive. However, the bare facts of his career, which are outlined in this section, give a rough indication of Gill’s modus operandi.

Gill was a government employee from December 1864 and remained so for most of his life.⁵⁵ There is, therefore, a question of a conflict of interest arising from Gill’s purchasing activities. As Clerk to the Resident Magistrate, Gill had only a minor role in Crown affairs, but nonetheless, the legitimacy of the transactions he was involved in is called into question, especially where he purchased reserves from individuals that had been granted in trust for hapu. As Gill had witnessed the Ngai Te Rangi deed, it is reasonable to expect that he would have been familiar with the Katikati-Te Puna reserves and the details of their allocation.

H. T. Clarke was the senior Crown official in the district, but it seems that Gill was closely involved in official business there as well.⁵⁶ On at least one known occasion, Gill deputised for Clarke.⁵⁷ Clarke, it seems, had a high opinion of Gill. In a letter written in August 1865 to T. H. Smith, Civil Commissioner for the Bay of Plenty, Clarke reported that ‘I have a capital fellow in Gill who is as much interested in matters as we are’.⁵⁸ By this, it is assumed that Gill was concerned with local affairs. Gill was certainly well-known in the district as a business man. Even in his spare time his administrative and accounting skills were called upon: in December

⁵⁵ ‘Return of Officers in the Employ of the Government’, AJHR 1866, D-3, p. 65; New Zealand Herald, 24 December 1910, p. 8.

⁵⁶ One of the tasks Gill carried out was copying incoming and outgoing correspondence. See H. T. Clarke to T. H. Smith, Letters to T. H. Smith (typescript), Tauranga District Library (TDL).

⁵⁷ Gill to Agent for General Government, 20 May 1869, AGG-A 1 69/373 box 4, NA.

⁵⁸ H. T. Clarke to T. H. Smith, 5 August 1865, Letters to T. H. Smith (typescript), TDL.

¹⁸⁶⁸ at the inaugural meeting of the Tauranga Cricket Club, Gill was appointed the treasurer.⁵⁹ When he left Tauranga in 1873, the Bay of Plenty Times lamented his departure from the district and recalled that in the early days of the district, ‘Mr Gill was so confident of the future Tauranga that he invested largely in landed property’.⁶⁰ This appraisal of Gill suggests that his land purchasing activities were speculative rather than civic-minded.

Clarke, who was Gill’s superior, later stated that at the time Gill acquired the reserves in the Katikati-Te Puna blocks, he had no knowledge of the transactions. In 1877 Clarke told the Native Affairs Committee:

Mr Gill purchased some sections within the purchased block – they were purchased by Private Contract in the same manner as all the other sections that had been purchased by the Europeans in that Block – I am not aware that the government were [sic] made aware of the purchases being made by Government officers – I was not aware of it myself at the time it was done.⁶¹

As Clarke was stretched with other business in the district, it is entirely plausible that he was unaware of Gill’s private business. However, this does not excuse irregular purchasing activities carried out by a government employee.

Gill left Tauranga to work in Wellington, where he continued to provide clerical support for Clarke in the Native Department.⁶² Gill sometimes reported general office business to Native Minister, Sir Donald McLean. Usually things were in order and going smoothly. It seems that the two men were on good terms. They discussed local politics in their correspondences and Gill even arranged for alterations to be carried out on McLean’s Wellington house.⁶⁴ Overall, it appears that Gill fitted into the culture of the Native Department and that he was a methodical and diligent worker.

⁵⁹ Daily Southern Cross, 8 December 1868, p.3.

⁶⁰ Bay of Plenty Times, 26 November 1873, np.

⁶¹ Evidence of H. T. Clarke, Le 1 1877/5, NA, np.

⁶² On Clarke’s move to Wellington, which coincided with McLean’s reorganisation of the Native Department, see Alan Ward, A Show of Justice: Racial Amalgamation in Nineteenth Century New Zealand, Auckland, rep. 1995, p. 260.

⁶³ R. J. Gill to D. McLean, 20 May 1874; 29 January 1875; 31 January 1876, MS Copy Micro 0535, reel 55, ATL. Gill also noted that ‘extra care’ was needed when dealing with land purchases, compared with ‘ordinary contingent expenses’. R. J. Gill to D. McLean, 23 January 1875. MS Copy Micro 0535, reel 55, ATL.

⁶⁴ R. J. Gill to D. McLean, 23 January 1875. MS Copy Micro 0535, reel 55, ATL.

In 1879 John Sheehan appointed Gill as Under Secretary in charge of the Land Purchase Department. It is evident from Sheehan’s comments that Gill possessed valuable skills that were needed in the Department. In his letter of appointment, Gill was told by Sheehan that:

The experience you have gained and the energy and ability you have always displayed in connection with land purchasing administration ensures the Government that every effort will be used [by yourself] to bring outstanding negotiations to a successful issue and to maintain the efficiency of the Department.⁶⁵

Historian Alan Ward has commented on the creation of this sub-department of the Native Department in March 1879, ‘with R. J. Gill its de facto head since 1873, as first Under-Secretary’.⁶⁶ Ward observes that:

this meant that land-purchase operations were once again not within the regular purview of the Under-Secretary of the Native Department and no longer so closely related to Maori policy as a whole. At the same time private buyers stepped up their activities.⁶⁷

When Gill died in 1910, having been appointed a Native Land Court Judge in the 1880s, the New Zealand Herald expressed a sentiment similar to that of Sheehan: ‘Judge Gill, in his connection with the Native Land Purchase Office, which extended over many years, was a very successful purchaser of Maori land’.⁶⁸

As an employee of the Native Land Purchase Department in Wellington, Gill’s official and private connections with Tauranga were not severed. Roimata Minhinnick has noted Gill’s involvement in the removal of restrictions placed on Mauao in 1880.⁶⁹ Robyn Anderson has also shown that Gill was instrumental in the piecemeal extinguishment of freehold interests in the nearby Ohinemuri block.⁷⁰ Initially Gill also kept many of his Tauranga properties. However, at the end of December 1876 he sold some of his land at Te Puna, and assigned the leases to Tice

⁶⁵ J M Sheehan to R. J. Gill, 10 March 1879, MS 61, TDL.

⁶⁶ Ward, p. 279.

⁶⁷ Ward, p. 279.

⁶⁸ New Zealand Herald, 24 December 1910, p. 8.

⁶⁹ Roimata Minhinnick, ‘A Report on Mauao / Mount Maunganui’, Wai 215 #A49, Waitangi Tribunal, no date, pp. 61-8.

⁷⁰ Robyn Anderson, The Crown, the Treaty and the Hauraki Tribes, vol. 4, Paeroa, 1997, pp. 266-272

Gellibrand.⁷¹ He also relinquished the lease of Lot 15, Parish of Tahawai. Hamiora Tu subsequently sold it to the ubiquitous Auckland solicitor, Henry Kissling.⁷²

Gill was quite shrewd with the others properties that he retained. In March 1870, Lots 13 and 14, Parish of Tahawai were transferred by way of a marriage settlement to W. H. Kissling and H. T. Clarke, to be held in trust for the future benefit of William George Sealy, of Nelson, and Gill’s daughter Mary Ann, soon to become Mrs William George Sealy.⁷³ In March 1878, Gill repeated this display of patriarchal benevolence and conveyed another property, Lot 12 Parish of Tahawai, to trustees Kissling and G H Davies, of Wellington.⁷⁴ The beneficiaries of the trust were Gill’s daughter, Emily, and Gill’s colleague, H. T. Clarke, to whom Miss Gill was engaged to be married.

3.5 Concluding comments

In 1871, government official, A. F. Halcombe, commented on the ‘facility with which’ the Maori owners of land in the district ‘part[ed] with the bulk of their lands’ soon after an individualised title was granted.⁷⁵ This comment could apply to a number of the reserves in the Katikati-Te Puna block. In hindsight, the quick onsale of the Katikati-Te Puna reserves was perhaps a prelude to the often unscrupulous private land speculation that was to become rife in the district in the 1870s.

It is impossible to discover whether or not underhand purchasing methods were used to buy the reserves in the Katikati-Te Puna block, as they later were in the rest of the confiscated district, because of a limited archive. It is also impossible to state whether a small group of individuals, such as R. J. Gill, W. H. Kissling, and Abraham Warbrick, who participated in a large number of transactions, were in collusion with one another. The only assertion that can be made with any confidence about the

⁷¹ Gill sold Lots 49 and 50, Parish of Te Puna to Gellibrand for £350, and assigned the leases of Lots 187, 188, 49 and 50, Parish of Te Puna to him as well.

⁷² Deed register K1 913, ref. 1835^K, LINZ, Auckland

⁷³ Deed register K1 373, ref. 773^K, LINZ, Auckland.

⁷⁴ Deed register K2 177, ref. 2042^K, LINZ, Auckland.

⁷⁵ ‘Report Upon Lands Suitable for the Settlement of Immigrants at Tauranga’, AJHR 1872, D-6, p. 2.

purchasing methods of these men is that they took full advantage of the reserves’ lack of alienation restrictions and tended to disregard them even when they were in place. In fact, a variation of Halcombe’s observation might be a more useful reading of the transactions in the purchased block from 1868 to the early 1870s – that is, the facility with which Pakeha settlers managed to acquire so many reserves in such a short space of time.

Figure 4

From Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 88.

Chapter 4 Disputes over Land Sales at Rereatukahia

4.1 Introduction

In August 1878, a succession case was brought before the Native Land Court in Tauranga to appoint successors to Te Moananui Tukaki’s interests in land granted to him by the Crown.¹ The reserves in question were Lot 49, Parish of Te Mania; Lot 2, known as Ahipatiki, in the Parish of Katikati; and Lots 12, 13 and 14 at Rereatukahia. The sales of Lots 12, 13, and 14 by Te Moananui to Gill were vigorously disputed by Te Moananui’s relatives during the hearing and the minutes taken during these succession cases bring to light the purchases’ dubious circumstances. Lots 12, 13 and 14 had been granted to a hapu described as ‘Ngatimura’ and Te Moananui and Ngarae had been nominated as the hapu’s trustees.² The issues that relatives of Te Moananui sought to resolve through the Court were the alleged breach to the guarantee that they held the land collectively and the repudiation of the sales that had occurred because of this breach.

The general aim of this chapter is to review what seems to be official ambivalence towards the status of these Katikati-Te Puna reserves asked to be held in trust. Given that the vesting of lands in trust to hapu was perhaps the only ‘legal’ protection the reserves had, this chapter considers whether or not the Crown, or its officials, paid due attention to collective ownership when it was specifically requested. Two points need to be made about the choice of material in this chapter. Firstly, although the succession case looked at a number of reserves, they were not as fully covered as Lots 12, 13, and 14. Secondly, because they have common features and participants, the separate cases for Lot 12 and Lots 13 and 14 are discussed together.

¹ Evelyn Stokes does not include a person named Te Moananui Tukaki in her index of Maori who

were awarded land in the Tauranga Confiscated District. The reserves in question are listed as being granted to Te Moananui Maraki, so it is assumed that Te Moananui Tukaki also used the name Te Moananui Maraki. Evelyn Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves to Maori in the Tauranga Confiscated Lands, Hamilton, 1997, vol. 2, pp. 190, 275.

The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section outlines the initial endeavours of Te Moananui’s relatives to have the sales of Lots 12, 13 and 14 reconsidered by the government. The evidence from the hearing, is, for the most part, presented verbatim in the second part of the chapter. The final section considers the issues arising from the hearing.

4.2 The succession case: general background

The appointment of successors to Te Moananui Maraki was one of the earliest tasks taken up by the Native Land Court at Tauranga, which began operating in a limited fashion in the district. On the surface, there seemed to be no need for a succession hearing, as Te Moananui, before his death, had sold all the reserves he had been allocated apart from Ahipatiki. However, the hearing was not the first attempt redress had been sought by the relatives of Te Moananui. Before applying for the hearing, Gill’s purchases had been contested by Te Moananui’s relatives in several petitions for a number of reasons. Ngarae’s daughter, Ani Ngarae, had presented two petitions to Parliament – one in 1876, the other in 1878 – and while the Native Affairs Committee, which heard the petition, responded positively, its recommendations were not carried out.³

The government was petitioned for two reasons. Firstly, Te Moananui did not have the right to part with the lands by himself. In the opinion of the petitioners, the lands had been awarded to Te Moananui and his sister Ngarae, on behalf of their hapu. Te Moananui, therefore, ought to have consulted with members of the hapu before selling the land. Secondly, Ngarae had died before Gill had purchased the reserves, but her successors were neither appointed nor, like the rest of the hapu, consulted about the purchase.

² This author has been unable ascertain whether this Ngatimura is a hapu name no longer in use, or a mishearing of Ngati Manx. For this reason, ‘Ngatimura’ or, alternatively, ‘Ngati Mura’, have been cited, just as they appear in the Court minutes.

³ See Vincent O’Malley, ‘The Aftermath of the Tauranga Raupatu, 1864-1981’, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, June 1995, Appendix 1, pp. 204, 205 and ‘Reports of the Native Affairs Committee’, Appendices to the Journal of the House of Representatives (AJHR) 1878, 1-3, p. 6.

As fifty acres of the reserve were not Te Moananui’s to sell, the sale of Lot 12 resulted in a third grievance. The 50-acre portion had been given to Hohepa Te Kai by Hohepa Te Winika. Hohepa Te Kai subsequently had the area included with the land granted to Te Moananui and others. It seems plausible that Lot 12’s collective ownership was being utilised to protect Te Winika’s gift. Hohepa Te Kai’s decision to transfer the gift from Lot 11 to Lot 12 suggests that he, and the hapu, believed that their Crown grant would protect their reserve.

Native Affairs Committee evidence generated by Ani Ngarae’s petitions has not been sighted. There are, however, minutes from the Committee’s hearing of the Hohepa Te Kai’s petition, although it was sent to the government and duly rejected.⁴ H. T. Clarke had presented evidence during the Committee hearing (on 1 November 1878) but for some reason, the petition was heard after the same grievance was presented in the succession case in August 1878. Clarke stated:

When that land was sold, Te Moananui, I stated on a previous occasion, asked for a reserve of 500 acres for himself and his family. Hohepa Te Kai, another Chief of the same tribe, asked for a reserve of 250 acres adjoining this reserve. This land was granted to Hohepa Te Kai individually. No one else was interested in it at all. When the land was being surveyed Hohepa te Kai and Moananui came before me and Hohepa Te Kai voluntarily stated that he gave up 50 acres that he had got himself to Moananui. That gave Moananui 550 acres and Hohepa Te Kai 200 acres. You will find that the Crown grants are made out that way. I took a memorandum of it, and [--] the survey to be made out according to this arrangement. Both are now dead, and that is the reason why these different applications have come in. That is the whole story of the reserve.⁵

Clarke was also asked about the reserve’s purchase. Clarke’s reply was brief: ‘It is alleged to have been sold to Mr Gill. I believe he bought part of Moananui’s reserve. It was a matter of a petition two years ago’.⁶ Clarke, if he knew, did not volunteer anything else about the ownership of the reserve, nor why the 50 acres were added to Lot 12. In Clarke’s opinion, Hohepa Te Kai had a ‘perfect right’ to dispose of the land, given that the land was granted absolutely to him and not as a-trustee.⁷ Clarke’s final word was that his former clerk and associate Gill bought the 50 acres ‘from the right party, Moananui. The survey was made accordingly after it was made over to Moananui’.⁸ Clarke omitted to tell the Committee that earlier in the year the owner of Lot 12, Gill, had conveyed Lot 12 to trustees Kissling and G. H. Davies, of Wellington.⁹ The beneficiaries of the trust were Gill’s daughter, Emily, and Gill’s colleague, H. T. Clarke, to whom Miss Gill was, at that date, engaged to be married.

⁴ ‘Reports of the Natives Affairs Committee’, AJHR, 1878, 1-3, p. 12.

⁵ Le 1 1878/6, National Archives, Wellington (NA), pp.1-3. See Raupatu Document Bank (RDB), vol. 1, pp. 311-313.

⁶ Le 1 1878/6, NA, pp. 3-4. See RDB, vol. 1, pp. 313-4.

⁷ Le 1 1878/6, NA, pp. 4-5. See RDB 1, vol. 1, pp. 314-5.

over to Moananui’.⁸ Clarke omitted to tell the Committee that earlier in the year the owner of Lot 12, Gill, had conveyed Lot 12 to trustees Kissling and G. H. Davies, of Wellington.⁹ The beneficiaries of the trust were Gill’s daughter, Emily, and Gill’s colleague, H. T. Clarke, to whom Miss Gill was, at that date, engaged to be married.

The tables below clearly show both the collective ownership of the reserves and the transfer of 50 acres from the land allocated to Hohepa Te Kai, to Te Moananui and others. The area of Hohepa Te Kai’s reserve diminished by 50 acres and Lot 12 increased by the same amount between June 1866 when Mackay produced his first list of reserves and November 1866, when a subsequent list was attached to the Ngai Te Rangi deed. Mackay’s June 1866 list recorded these allocations of land at Rereatukahia in the Parish of Tahawai:¹⁰

The ‘Ngaiterangi’ deed, signed on 3 November 1866, included the following reserves and names. The reserves’ final position and name is listed beside each award.

⁸ Le 1 1878/6, NA, pp. 5-6. See RDB 1, vol. 1, pp. 315-6.

⁹ Deed register K2 177, ref. 2042^K, Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), Auckland.

¹⁰ DOSLI files, box 1, folder 5, cited in Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p.103.

Gill, who purchased Lots 12, 13 and 14, had signed the Ngai Te Rangi deed as a witness, and, as we have seen in chapter 2, was closely involved in the district’s affairs. It is perhaps unlikely, given the opinion that others had of Gill about his interest in local matters, that he would have been ignorant of these important details.

4.3 Native Land Court evidence

Judge J. A. Wilson presided over the succession cases, which were heard over several days. Hone Peeti was the Native Assessor. Te Moananui’s daughter, Ngapiri Marata Moananui, appeared as the claimant in the each of the succession cases. From the outset of the case for Lot 12, which was heard first, Ngapiri told the court that:

I should like to know who was the Interpreter who interpreted the Deed of Sale of this land – I believe that if he [Te Moananui] parted with the land he parted with it foolishly. I believe he did not get the [whole] of the money for this land – The Interpreter ought to know whether he was properly paid or not.¹¹

Ngapiri described her case more fully the next day in the succession case to Lots 13 and 14. After she was sworn, she stated that the land was ‘given to Te Moananui and Narai [sic] on behalf of the tribe’.¹² She told the court that ‘Te Moananui Tukaki’ and his sister Ngarae were ‘the trustees’.¹³ Ngarae was the younger sister of Te Moananui, who had died in 1868, but whose children had survived her. Ngapiri said:

I wish that myself and my cousins, that is my aunt’s children may succeed to this land – I mean Narai’s [sic] children – The children’s names are Ani, Mere, Hone, Paraone, and Nere – I have no children’.¹⁴

Ani Ngarae, daughter of Ngarae, appeared as the official counter-claimant. She lived at Motuhoa and identified herself as Ngati Maru. In her opening statement Ani Ngarae told the court that:

This 500 acres was claimed by my mother Narai – before Narai’s death this land was willed to me by Narai to me and my younger sisters and brothers. After her death this land was sold clandestinely (tahai [sic]) by Te Moananui – I wish to succeed our mother Narai to this land – This 300 acres was claimed by my mother only. Mr

¹¹ Ngapiri Marata Moananui, 15 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 15. Neither the adequacy of the purchase price, nor whether it was paid in full, were brought up again in the hearing.

12 Ngapiri Marata Moananui, 16 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 28. Ngarae is spelt ‘Narai’ throughout the minutes taken in 1878. This spelling is retained in direct quotations.

13 Ngapiri Marata Moananui, 16 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 29.

14 Ngapiri Marata Moananui, 16 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 29.

Mackay gave the land to Narai. I do not know how the land came into the lands of the Government – I wish [the] claimant only to succeed Te Moananui’s property – myself, my brothers to succeed to Narai’s property – that is to say this 300 acres.¹⁵

Te Moananui Wharenui supported the counter-claim and told the court in brief terms the substance of his objection to Ngapiri’s claim:

I object to the sale of this land because this land was given in Trust to Te Moananui for his tribe Ngati Mura [sic]. The map of this land is in the Survey Office – Te Moananui and others means the whole of his hapu – on the Crown Grant only Te Moananui’[s] name appears but on the map Te Moananui and others[.] ¹⁶

Te Moananui Wharenui was also affiliated to ‘Ngati Maru’ but was living at Matakana. He believed that:

it was Narai who got this land – Te Moananui came to be connected with the land because it was Narai and others – The tribe is connected with this land in the same way as mentioned yesterday – it was given in trust to Te Moananui and others – When the land was bought by Government certain portions were set apart at the request of certain natives and this is how Narai became possessed of the 300 acres – it was set aside as a reserve. The Government arranged that Europeans and Natives should live as neighbours and in consequence of which the Government made these reserves. Narai’s children were very young when Te Moananui sold this land.¹⁷

Answering a question posed by the assessor, Te Moananui Wharenui explained to the Court the reason behind the hapu’s request with this area:

The Native Reserve was arranged by the Government. We urged the Government on account of these [—] to give us back the land – This land was an ancestral claim.

When we sold the Kati Kati [sic] Block this one with many other smaller Blocks was made a Reserve. Mr Clarke and Mr Mackay were the agents – They arranged about the Reserve.¹⁸

This witness then went on to explain why the succession case had been brought before the Court:

We have heard of the sale by Te Moananui that is the reason we know it is not in our hands and we wish it returned – I am certain the sale was effected after the reserves were made. Ngatimura occupy the land – Te Moananui I believe sold it to Mr Gill – Mr Gill has claimed the land. All I say is this land shall never go [and] we intend to keep it.¹⁹

¹⁵ Ani Ngarae, 16 August 1878, TMB 1, pp. 29-30.

¹⁶ Te Moananui Wharenui, 15 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 16.

¹⁷ Te Moananui Wharenui, 16 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 31.

¹⁸ Te Moananui Wharenui, 16 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 31.

¹⁹ Te Moananui Wharenui, 16 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 32.

Te Moananui Wharenui continued to comment on the hapu’s disapproval of Gill’s purchase of the reserve, and, in doing so, also hinted that economic factors had contributed to the sale, not only of this reserve, but others as well:

We have been repeatedly warned by Mr Gill and other Europeans to leave this land[.] [A]s soon as Ngatimura heard of this sale of this land to Mr Gill they immediately occupied it, it has been occupied 7 years by Ngatimura. After the money of the large block was spent Te Moananui commenced to sell reserves.²⁰

Ani Ngarae also spoke about the will that her mother had allegedly left. Ani Ngarae said that Daniel Farrow delivered the will into the ‘hands of Mr Clarke and Mr Gill’.²¹ These two officials therefore seemingly knew that one of the two trustees of the reserves at Rereatukahia had died and that there was a need to appoint successors to Ngarae’s interests. Although Henry Skeet initially bought Lot 12 from Te Moananui, Gill’s purchase of it from Skeet occurred so soon after it that the two transactions were registered on the same day. Thus, even though technically Gill did not purchase the reserve directly from Te Moananui, the timing of the second transaction, combined with Gill’s knowledge of the will and local politics, places the transactions under suspicion.

Hohepa Te Winika, again, a member of ‘Ngati Mura’ and residing at Matakana, corroborated the statements of Ani and Te Moananui Wharenui. This witness said that the land:

solely belonged to Narai – she [Ngapiri] claims it had been set apart for herself and her children and others – Because the Government at the time was buying up a large portion of the Tauranga lands[,] in consequence of [sic] she applied to have this land set apart – This is only a small portion of our ancestral lands set apart for the same purposes – the larger portion of our lands was sold to the Government – this land was fraudulently sold by Te Moananui because the land belonged to Narai – Te Moananui and his sister announced their intention to a large meeting saying they intended to apply to cause lands to be set apart for themselves and others – this is the wish of Ngatimura that their lands should be returned to us on the grounds that this was a wrong doing.²²

Hohepa Te Winika subsequently appeared as a witness. He lived at Matakana, and stated that he had ‘Ngati Mura’ affiliations. Hohepa Te Winika endorsed Te Moananui Wharenui and his niece’s statements, because the land, that is the 200

²⁰ Te Moananui Wharenui, 16 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 32.

²¹ Ani Ngarae, 16 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 33.

²² Hohepa Te Winika, 16 August 1878, TMB 1, pp. 33-4.

acres, was meant for everyone and was sold ‘clandestinely by Te Moananui without the knowledge of his children or other relatives’. In fact, continued Hohepa Te Winika;

If we had heard of this transaction of his we should have objected at the time – this is why we have petitioned Parliament to have this land returned to us. This was the reason for the 3 petitions sent to Parliament under the understanding that this land was given to Te Moananui and other[s].²³

Winika was at a Native Land Court hearing in the Waikato, ‘watching his interest in Te Paia’ when the sale happened:

Te Moananui proposed to Hohepa Te Kai to include the 50 acres with the 200 – on my return to Tauranga I found it had been done. I thus came to Mr Clarke and asked him to exclude my 50 acres from the 200 – Mr Clarke blamed [me] for not coming with Te Moananui. I said I was away at Waikato – I still maintain my claim to this piece of land – Wira and Ngaitamawhariua were present when this land was given by Hohepa te Kai … my wish now is that this [grant] shall separate my 50 acres from the 250 acres.²⁴

Another witness was sworn in, Harawira, who lived at Opureora and was connected to ‘Ngati Mura’. Harawira corroborated the counter-claimant’s statements. He, too, disagreed with the Ngapiri’s statement and even suggested that the reserved land belonged to Ngarae:

Te Moananui and Narai were appointed by Ngatimura to apply for these lands to be set apart for themselves and the people[.] [A]fter this meeting Te Moananui applied and got 200 acres … Narai applied and got 300 acres … to be [ceded] to them, their descendants and others – after this she did and left the land to others mentioned in the application. After Narai’s death this 300 acres was sold by Te Moananui – when this land was given to Narai, she made a will. This will lies in the office of Mr Clarke. This will is in connection with this 300 acres – The European mentioned by [the] counter claimant [h]anded in [the] will to Mr Clarke.²⁵

Harawira verified the statements made about Ngarae’s will, and told the Native Assessor that:

I saw the will in Mr Clarke’s office a number of years ago. The counter claimant has asked for this will four times but was always told that the will was lying safe in the office – The will will prove the fraudulent sale.²⁶

²³ Hohepa Te Winika, 15 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 19.

²⁴ Hohepa Te Winika, 15 August, TMB 1, p [illegible]

²⁵ Harawira, 16 August 1878, TMB 1, pp. 34-5.

²⁶ Harawira, 16 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 35.

Harawira also objected to Ngapiri claiming that she was the ‘principal party’ in the reserves. He said that ‘[h]er proper place is to come in with the rest of the people – this land was a reserve – Mr Gill will never get this land’.²⁷

The issue of Te Moananui’s sale of the 50 acres sold with Lot 12 without the consent of Hohepa Te Winika was also presented. Apparently ‘[t]he gift of this land, ie the 50 acres, was witnessed by many persons. His [Winika’s] land was sold clandestinely’.²⁸ The problem was that the 50 acres were not Te Moananui’s to sell, and this was explained by Te Moananui Wharenui:

Hohepa was absent at Waikato when Hohepa Te Kai asked Mr Clarke to include the 50 acres and this land was sold … I blame Te Moananui for the selling of this land because this land was for the whole tribe – I [ignore] only Te Moananui’s name being on the Crown Grant as the land was for the whole tribe.²⁹

Harawira said that the 50 acres were ‘given by Hohepa Te Kai to Hohepa Te Winika in payment for an offence – This is one of a number of payments for [---] taua’. He also commented on how the absence of the Native Land Court in the district had affected the resolution of their grievances: ‘During Te Moananui’s life we were ignorant of the sale of this land – after his death we heard about it – and we raised our objections accordingly. We never had a Court before where we could make known our objection’.³⁰

Wi Kotai explained that after Gill had bought Lot 12:

Ngatimura took possession of this land. Mr. Gill proposed to build a house upon it[.] He sent timber onto this land – he sent timber onto this land for the purpose of building his house – we then threw the timber away and sent the carpenter back – subsequently Ngatimura wrote to the Government concerning this affair – asking for information how to deal with natives who dispose of land clandestinely (tahai [sic]).³¹

These initial and overt objections to Gill’s occupation of the land, followed by determined attempts at redress through official channels, suggests that right from the outset, the hapu was certain that it had been granted the reserves in trust.

²⁷ Harawira, 16 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 36.

²⁸ Te Moananui Wharenui, 15 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 17.

²⁹ Te Moananui Wharenui, 15 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 18.

³⁰ Hohepa Te Winika, 15 August 1878, TMB 1, p. illegible

³¹ Wi Kotai, TMB 1, 15 August 1878, p. illegible.

4.4 Gill’s defence case

While the witnesses cited in the preceding chapter explained the loss of their land in terms of Te Moananui’s secretive behaviour, it could also be argued that the conduct of a Crown official, R. J. Gill, had affected the retention of the reserves at Rereatukahia. Gill, however, did not appear in person at the hearing. W. H. Kissling, his lawyer, did not appear either. Instead Robert Campbell appeared to present Gill’s case. Campbell objected to the claim because ‘Te Moananui had no interest in the land at the time of his death, he having conveyed it to Mr Gill by way of sale’. Campbell had no witnesses to call and declared that the Deeds were his ‘only witnesses’.³² To support this statement, he produced the Crown grants for Lots 13 and 14 and Lot 12.³³ According to the Crown grant to Lot 12, Te Moananui was the sole grantee.³⁴ However, in the case of Lots 13 and 14, the district plan that was shown to the Court appeared to have Ngarae and others marked on it.³⁵ This is also the case on the earlier survey plans. Te Moananui’s name appears in upper case on the reserves and ‘Te Ngarae and others’ is written across them as well (Figure 5).

The Court tried to ascertain exactly how the discrepancy between the survey and deed occurred. A district map of Tauranga, submitted in 1869 was produced. In both cases, the lots in question were marked with the name: ‘Narai and other’. The surveyor Archibald Turner, who had subsequently become District Surveyor, was called to give evidence. Turner had been appointed in 1866 by Whitaker to ‘do these special surveys’, by which it is assumed he meant the surveys of the reserves.³⁸ He elaborated his activities:

This plan was compiled in Auckland. I furnished much of the information for this map. I provided the information whereby Rereatukahia lands were described on this plan – it is in accordance with the information I furnished that the Rereatukahia lands are described on this plan – the names on nos 12 and 13 and 14 are in accordance

³² R. E. M. Campbell, 15 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 18.

³³ 19 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 42.

³⁴ Crown Grant book 2GK 136, 532^K, LINZ, Auckland.

³⁵ 16 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 32.

³⁶ SO 414, LINZ, Hamilton.

³⁷16 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 32.

³⁸ Archibald Turner, 16 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 39.

with my information. During this time Captain Skeet was officer in charge. Mr Henry Clarke gave me the information probably in 1867 or 1868.³⁹

H. W. Brabant appeared at the hearing as well. Brabant had been appointed Commissioner of Tauranga Lands in April 1878.⁴⁰ After explaining his official position he said that his predecessor, H. T. Clarke, had not communicated anything about Lot 12, its sale or Ngarae’s will. Brabant believed that in the capacity of Commissioner of Tauranga Lands, he ‘would not have anything to do with’ a matter pertaining to the purchased block’. This also applied to Lots 13 and 14. He knew that they were ‘reserved out of the purchased block’, but in his opinion, ‘the affair was settled’ before he had arrived in Tauranga. He also said that he had no recollection of ‘having received any communication from the natives relative to these blocks’.⁴¹ To this, Te Moananui Wharenui said that communications were addressed to Mr Clarke. It is not known whether these letters reached Clarke.

The cases, however, were adjourned and the case was reconvened in November 1879 in order to hear Henry Clarke’s evidence. Clarke had a statement ready, which he presented to the Court:

Ngarae died in 1868. On the 16^th July 1868 Te Moananui came to me[.] [H]e stated that the person for whom the reserves were made was dead and he asked that he may be allowed to sell the land for food[.] [A]t the [sic] first I demurred on the ground[s] that Ngarae’s children would be deprived of their land and after arguing the matter for some time he left my office in a rage. In about 2 hours he came back to my Office[.] [H]e said that he was prepared to give me a written assurance that he should provide his children and Ngarae’s children with other lands. After considering the matter for some time and seeing he was the person who this made the reserve I agreed to his proposal. I then gave him a Certificate to the effect that he was the person entitled to the land. It was then [that] he gave me his written assurance that he would look after the children. The lands that he told me would be handed over to his Children were: Te Kutaroa, Te Waipuna, Te Awakokopu. That document was filed in the Commission[er’s] Court at Tauranga, December I think. I am not sure as to [the] date. I heard a rumour that Te Moananui was selling these lands to Mr Thomas Russell[.] [D]irectly I became aware of that I complained to Donald McLean who was then Native Minister and he decided to recoup the money Mr Thomas Russell had advanced on these lands. Mr Donald McLean did so[,] so the lands remain at present.⁴²

³⁹ Archibald Turner, 16 August 1878, TMB 1, p. 39.

⁴⁰ O’Malley, ‘Aftermath’, p. 218.

⁴¹ H. W. Brabant, 20 August 1878, TMB 1, pp. 56-7.

⁴² H. T. Clarke, 12 November 1879, TMB 1, pp. 225-6.

Clarke’s decision to officially certify Te Moananui’s sole ‘ownership’ of the reserves allowed Te Moananui to sell them ‘clandestinely’. Clarke’s concern for the welfare of Ngarae’s children was probably genuine, but unfortunately, some of the land that was supposed to be set aside for the children was on Matakana and was included in the 7919 acres sold to Whitaker and Russell between 30 October 1868 and 17 December 1869 for £389. Whitaker and Russell then sold the land to the Crown on 2 April 1874 for £857.⁴³

Ultimately, the Court decided that no blame could be apportioned onto government officials:

It appears to the Court that this Grant [to Lot 12] has been issued in the name of Te Moananui only through some misapprehension…. The Court considers that any error they may have happened has occurred simply as a matter of mistake in no way affecting the bona fide character of the transactions of the Government or the officer charged with Expectation.⁴⁴

The issue of Te Moananui’s sales was revisited when Balance, the Native Minister was in Tauranga in 1885. Te Winika, according to the notes taken at the meeting, referred to the land at Rereatukahia that was:

reserved by Te Moananui and his sister Ngari [sic], on the understanding that it was to be a reserve for a number of people. Te Moananui afterwards sold the whole of that land. The land was sold to provide food for the people who came to cry over the death of Ngari [sic].⁴⁵

It was also recorded that Te Winika was unhappy with the outcome of an inquiry into the matter of Te Moananui’s sales:

Ngari’s children should have succeeded her interest in that land; and the Government said that provision would be made for the children out of the Matakana land. An inquiry was made before the Commissioner, and the land at Matakana was awarded to Wineka [sic] and his people. The Commissioner asked them to set apart a portion of the land for Ngari’s children in place of that sold by Te Moananui. They agreed and gave seventy acres for those children, whose names had been placed in the certificate for that seventy acres. Wineka [sic] thought that the land which had been obtained by Mr. Gill should be cut in two, half to be retained by Mr. Gill, and half by him.⁴⁶

Ballance response to Te Winika’s request was mixed. He recalled that:

⁴³ Susan Woodley, Matakana Island, Wellington, 1993, pp. 14-17.

⁴⁴ Judgement, 25 November 1879, TMB 1, pp. 302-3.

⁴⁵ ‘Notes of a Meeting between the Hon. Mr. Ballance and Tauranga Natives, at Whareroa, Tauranga on the 21^st February 1885’, AJHR 1885, G-1, p. 64.

⁴⁶ ‘Notes of a Meeting’, AJHR 1885, G-1, p. 64.

Reference has been made to a sale of land to Mr. Gill. I do not see how the Government can interfere in this case. Reference has been made to the provision for the children of Ngari [sic]. It is quite clear that Te Moananui had a Crown grant, and therefore had a right to sell the land. He had a legal right to sell the land, and he sold it, and Mr. Gill got a title. I think that the act of Te Moananui was wrong; but who was responsible for that? If a chief sells land which he ought not to sell, and appropriates the money to himself, that is the fault of the chief. Therefore, no one is to blame in this case but Te Moananui. The one thing I have pleasure in hearing is, that the children have received their land; and I am afraid that nothing more can be done. If you are ready to sell your land, that is the fault of the people who sell it; but I hope that the law will be so amended as to give the people generally more control over their lands, in order that abuses of this kind may be prevented.⁴⁷

Ballance did not comment at all on Gill’s actions, while Te Moananui was chastised for being acting selfishly. The 70 acres referred to Balance was finally conveyed to Ngarae’s children – in 1901. According to the deed, the transfer arose from a:

promise made many years before by John Gill and Henry Tacy Clarke to the said natives or to some of them to convey to them the piece of land hereindescribed in order to effect a final settlement of all disputes in connection with the sale of a block of land of which the said land forms a portion – also payment of 10/-.⁴⁸

Through this belated gesture, Gill and Clarke were perhaps assuming some responsibility in the affair.

4.5 Concluding comments

Quite clearly, trusteeship was nominal in the eyes of some government officials at Tauranga. By 1888 this problem seemed to have reached epidemic proportions, and prompted local lawyer, E. G. B. Moss, to write:

[T]he cases in which land has been acquired by certain natives in trust for other natives or for tribes, and afterwards Crown granted to these natives without mention of the trust, are so numerous that it is extraordinary a Commissioner hasn’t long since been appointed to inquire into them.⁴⁹

The succession cases covered in this chapter have demonstrated one example of this trend. While the rationale behind granting the reserves in trust was questionable, at least this afforded a minimal protective devise for them. However, if Crown officials,

⁴⁷ ‘Notes of a Meeting’, AJHR 1885, G-1, p. 64.

⁴⁸ Deed register R96 236, LINZ, Auckland. This was known as Lot 12A, Parish of Tahawai.

⁴⁹ E. G. B. Moss, Native Lands and their Incidents, 1888, Auckland, p. 5, cited in Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 142.

like Gill and Clarke flaunted these or made exceptions to them, then there was little hope of the reserves remaining in the hands of their owners.

Figure 5

Detail from SO 414, LINZ, Hamilton.

Chapter 5 Transactions in 1870s and 1880s

1.1 Introduction

After 1869, the initial race to acquire the Katikati-Te Puna reserves seemed to lose momentum, albeit slightly. Between 1870 and 1879, 30 transactions in which 12 reserves were leased and 25 were permanently alienated were recorded.¹ Despite this deceleration, by 1880 over half of the reserves were no longer held by their original grantees. In the 1880s, the number of transactions decreased again. In this decade, only three reserves were sold and no new leases were taken out. There could be a number of explanations for this change, but the lack of directly relevant documentary evidence makes it difficult to explain. Perhaps the remaining reserves were less desirable than those sold before 1870, because of their location, the quality of the land, or because the individuals or groups who held them were either reluctant, or had no need, to dispose of them. It is also evident that, from the 1870s, the attention of speculators was directed away from the Katikati-Te Puna reserves and was turned towards the lands returned or about to be returned through the Commissioner’s Court.

While the owners of some of the remaining reserves may have had strong customary connections with their allocated lands, another possible explanation for the slower rate of alienation is the effectiveness of policies that were implemented by the government in the 1870s to protect Maori land from the pressure of private speculation. The Crown, as the preceding chapters clearly demonstrated, did little to restrict the of sale reserves allocated to Maori in the Katikati-Te Puna block. Although changes in Crown philosophy and policy – occurring as it did, too late to protect many of the Katikati-Te Puna reserves – made more impact on returned lands, in theory, these changes ought to have put a brake on the rate at which the remaining Katikati-Te Puna reserves were alienated. The aim of this chapter is to examine whether the introduction of legal constraints on alienation contributed to the rate at which the Katikati-Te Puna reserves were alienated in the 1870s and 1880s.

¹ The multiple leases of Lot 1, Parish of Katikati, have not been included in this figure.

This chapter is divided into three parts. The first section is a general description of the policies and practices designed to protect Maori land from speculation, while the second section charts the removal of alienation restrictions placed on Lot 5, Parish of Tahawai, which had been leased by George Vesey Stewart, the founder of the Katikati Special Settlement. This section is particularly concerned with how government officials dealt with pressure exerted by the lessee to remove the restrictions. As there are no other fully documented examples of policies operating in the Katikati-Te Puna block, the choice of material in this chapter has once again been guided by the availability of documentary evidence. The final section discusses the issues raised in this chapter.

5.2 Legislation and administration: general comments

The Native Lands Prevention Act, passed in 1870, provided for the appointment of part-time Trust Commissioners who were instructed to investigate direct purchases of Maori land to ensure that they were not ‘contrary to equity and good conscience’. The Commissioners were also required to satisfy themselves that a cash payment had been made and that there were sufficient lands left for those alienating their land.³ Theoretically, no sales of land to private purchasers could be approved unless they complied with these criteria, but in reality, because of procedural indifference, Maori land was still vulnerable to unscrupulous speculation. In the Province of Auckland, former Defence Minister T. M. Haultain was appointed the Commissioner, and approved of the bulk of the Katikati-Te Puna transactions in the 1870s. As no documents from Haultain’s investigations in Tauranga appear to have survived it is impossible to know how he conducted his enquiries or what influenced his decisions.⁴ There are passing references that suggest that the duties of Commissioners were to be carried out in a cursory manner. For example, in their examination of Muriwhenua land and politics, Vincent O’Malley and Stephen Robertson have noted that

² New Zealand Statutes, 1870, no. 75, section 4, p. 306.

³ New Zealand Statutes, 1870, no. 75, section 4, section 5, p. 306.

⁴ Judging by the negligible amount of material that was has left from Haultain’s investigations elsewhere in the Province, the apparent absence of documents is not surprising. See Vincent O’Malley and Stephen Robertson, ‘Muriwhenua Land and Politics, 1862-1909’, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, September 1997, pp. 78-9.

instructions to Trust Commissioners made it clear that their ‘inquiries need not, in ordinary cases, be too minute’.⁵ Furthermore, bona fide purchasers were not to be obstructed, and unless illegality was suspected, transactions were to be approved ‘as a matter of course’.⁶

In 1885, the Native Minister John Balance commented in Parliament that ‘it is notorious that the Frauds Commissioners in the past had performed their duties in a most perfunctory manner, and passed transactions when the consideration was a mere bagatelle’.⁷ Historian, Alan Ward, has also observed that some of the Trust Commissioners worked in an entirely uneven manner.⁸

Besides the overarching legislation, the need for alienation restrictions had intensified in the Tauranga District during the 1870s and culminated in a blanket restriction being placed on all Tauranga lands in November 1878, modelled on section 13 of the Native Land Act 1867 that allowed the Native Land Court to issue Crown grants in which the grantees could not sell, mortgage or lease land for longer than 21 years except with the consent of the Governor.⁹ This regulation proved to be a feeble impediment. When the Commissioner of Tauranga Lands, J. A. Wilson, published figures of lands returned in 1879, the title to 19,734 acres had been investigated, 16,825 acres of which were returned with no alienation restrictions, out of which 14,623 acres had been sold.¹⁰

H. W. Brabant replaced Wilson as Commissioner of Tauranga Lands in 1880. Although Brabant knew what the restrictions entailed, it seems that he had difficulty

⁵ ‘Instructions to Trust Commissioners under the Native Lands Frauds Prevention Act 1870’, Appendices to the Journals of the Legislative Council (AJLC), 1871, no. 97, p. 162, cited in O’Malley and Robertson, p. 70.

⁶ ‘Instructions to Trust Commissioners under the Native Lands Frauds Prevention Act 1870’, AJLC, 1871, no. 97, p. 162, cited in O’Malley and Robertson, p. 70.

⁷ Ballance, New Zealand Parliamentary Debates (NZPD), 1886, vol. 54, p. 463, cited in Alan Ward, A Show of Justice: Racial ‘Amalgamation' in Nineteenth Century New Zealand, Auckland, rep. 1995, p. 252,

⁸ Ward, p. 252.

⁹ Appendices to the Journal of the House of Representatives (AJHR) 1879, Session 1, 1-4, p. 1, cited by Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves. See Stokes’ discussion, pp. 129-31 and O’Malley, ‘Aftermath’ p. 68.

¹⁰ ‘Tauranga District Lands Acts’, AJHR 1879, G-8, p. 1.

getting a clear direction on how and when they ought to be implemented. In March 1881, he asked the Under Secretary of the Native Department for clarity in this area:

You are aware that the alienability or otherwise by the natives of the Tauranga lands dealt with by the Commissioners has long been a vexed question. The instructions given to me when I formerly held office as Commissioner were that I was to use my discretion in regard to lands not actually in use by the natives but some time ago, while Mr Wilson was Commissioner Government issued instructions that all Tauranga lands were to be made inalienable (except by leave of the Governor first obtained).

I found that speculators continued dealing with these lands & assumed that these instructions which I have referred to have been revised.

I have the honour to request that I may be definitely instructed on this matter as soon as convenient to the Hon. Native Minister.¹¹

In December 1882, Brabant needed more advice from the Under Secretary, paradoxically, on how to deal with applications asking for the removal of alienation restrictions. Brabant was informed that:

The points upon which you require to be satisfied before advising His Excellency to consent to alienations are generally these.

1. That the natives have amply sufficient other land for their maintenance or that from the unsuitability of the land to be alienated for native occupation or other considerations it is to their interests to dispose of it.

2. That the owners of the land proposed to be alienated are unanimous in their desire to sell.

3. That the price proposed is prima facie fair and reasonable.

It has always, and I think fairly, been presumed by the Native Department that when restrictions are imposed it is not intended that the land should be alienated unless very good reasons is shewn. It is difficult to make the purchasers and even the natives see the question from this point of view; the former simply looking at it from the stand point that they desire to obtain the land, and the natives that they wish to satisfy their present desire for money or what it will procure. The latter never I think considering the requirements of succeeding generations in view of which the restrictions are no doubt specially imposed.¹²

¹¹ Brabant to Lewis, 16 March 1881, DOSLI files, box 4, folder 25, cited in O’Malley, ‘Aftermath’, pp. 68-9.

¹² Brabant to Lewis, 9 December 1882 (draft), DOSLI files, box 4, folder 25, cited in O’Malley, ‘Aftermath’, p. 70.

Unlike the lack of directions given to H. T. Clarke and James Mackay for allocating land at Tauranga, Brabant was given fairly clear criteria for determining whether or not alienation restrictions should be removed.

5. 3 The extension of Stewart’s lease

Lot 5, Parish of Tahawai, also known as Ongare, was leased to Stewart, founder of the Katikati Special Settlement, by Enoka Te Whanake on 25 October 1875 for a period of 21 years at the rate of £6 per annum.¹³ The settlers had recently arrived from Ulster and were greeted enthusiastically by local settlers and Maori. They occupied a large portion of the Katikati-Te Puna purchase area and Stewart, who was the founder of the settlement scheme, had an especially generous allocation of land.¹⁴ Stewart took out the lease on Lot 5 soon after the party had arrived at Tauranga.

Stewart negotiated an extension to the lease with Enoka in March 1876. By June, Stewart was agitating for the lease to be officially recognised.¹⁵ To comply with alienation restrictions placed on the reserve, the length of the first lease had been restricted to 21 years, but Stewart explained in a letter to the Native Minister why he needed these restrictions removed and the lease extended to 99 years:

As I was about to erect substantial buildings and expend a very considerable sum of money upon this lease I made further arrangements with Enoka in the month of March last, under which for a money consideration paid on the spot, to Enoka, he granted to me a further extension for the term of one hundred years.¹⁶

Furthermore, Stewart believed that Enoka had ‘power to sell absolutely but declines from doing so from superstitious feelings as his Father was killed at the place’.¹⁷

Stewart applied to the Trust Commissioner (presumably Haultain) in Auckland to

¹³ Deed Register K1 774, 1639^K, Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), Auckland.

¹⁴ The history of the Katikati settlement scheme has been covered by a number of writers including Arthur J. Gray, An Ulster Plantation, 2nd edn, Wellington, 1950; Ernest E Bush, ed., ‘The Katikati Story’, Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society, no. 23, March 1875. See also Adela Stewart, My Simple Life in New Zealand, London, 1908.

¹⁵ Copies of the original correspondence concerning the removal of alienation restrictions on Enoka’s reserve are located in Le 1 1884/108, box 196, National Archives, Wellington (NA). There is some inconsistency with the length of the extension in primary sources. Both 99 and 100 years appear to have been used interchangeably. These anomalies have been retained in the text.

¹⁶ G. V. Stewart to [Native Minister], 28 June 1876, Le 1 1884/108, box 196, NA.

¹⁷ G. V. Stewart to [Native Minister], 28 June 1876, Le 1 1884/108, box 196, NA.

register the transaction, but the new lease was rejected as the removal of alienation restrictions could not be done unless consented to by the Governor.

H. T. Clarke informed Stewart of the appropriate procedure required to lift the restrictions on the reserve. Soon after Stewart received this advice, a memorial, written by Enoka, was sent to the Governor. Unfortunately it is impossible to know under what circumstances Enoka wrote the memorial, as no other documents allude to its production. Furthermore, the archived material has been copied from the original documents, so it is impossible to know who actually wrote the document.

H. W. Brabant, then Resident Magistrate at Tauranga, stepped in and clarified the events up to this point in a memo. Stewart, it seems, had paid Enoka £20 to extend the lease in March 1876 from 21 to 100 years, although there appeared to be no change to the annual rent. Brabant’s opinion of this arrangement was thus:

I believe that £6 to have been a fair ground rent for 21 years but it would appear reasonable that for an extension of term the rent should be raised. Enoka, now, (having spent the £20) appears lukewarm on the subject; indeed would prefer to let the matter drop, but is not prepared to refund the £20 immediately – He is willing however to endorse any arrangement approved by Government.¹⁸

Brabant was unperturbed by the change in the length of the lease. His primary concern was that Enoka received an equitable rent.

On 6 November 1876, however, H. T. Clarke asked Brabant to tell Enoka that ‘his’ application could not be granted, and that ‘the course was adopted entirely in his [Enoka’s] interests’.¹⁹ As yet, no documents have been sighted that explain, in more specific terms, how this decision was reached.

After the memorial was rejected, a gap of almost two years appears in this sequence of documents. The matter was not taken up again until October 1878. That month, Stewart wrote to Sheehan, then Native Minister, and retold the tale. In this letter it came out that Stewart had also, in the previous year, appealed to Dr Daniel Pollen, the Superintendent of Auckland, for support. It seems that Stewart believed that the influence of politicians might help his case.

¹⁸ Memorandum, 16 October 1876, H. W. Brabant, Resident Magistrate, Tauranga, Le 1 1884/108, box 196, NA.

¹⁹ [H.] T. Clarke, Under Secretary, Native Department to H. W. Brabant, 6 November 1876, Le 1 1884/108, box 196, NA.

A year later Stewart used another official avenue to obtain the approval of his lease, when he presented a petition to the general assembly in October 1879. In his petition, Stewart described Enoka as ‘a chief of great intelligence … a native assessor, and holds large and valuable landed possessions in the Bay of Plenty’.²⁰ Stewart was, consciously or not, alluding to criteria used to decide whether or not alienation restrictions should be removed. Stewart was in Wellington at the time and met with Sheehan, then Native Minister, on the matter. It is, however, impossible to know if this meeting had any effect on the Native Affairs Committee’s decision. On 23 October 1879, the Native Affairs Committee reported that it would recommend the matter to the Government, ‘the Committee being of opinion that if the transaction is not in violation of law and is equitable in itself, it should be given effect to’.²¹

A month later, documents relating to the matter were sent to J. A. Wilson, who was at this time the Commissioner of Tauranga District Lands and a Native Land Court Judge. Native Under Secretary, T. W. Lewis directed Wilson to see the matter concluded. Stewart was also instructed to arrange with Enoka Te Whanake ‘such terms as may be mutually agreed upon and equitable and to report the result to this office with as little delay as possible’.²² In a separate letter, Brabant was asked by Lewis to inform Enoka of the proposal and advised that Wilson would arbitrate.

Wilson returned the relevant papers to Lewis in February 1880 and reported very briefly on the meeting between Stewart and Enoka and without any description of the meeting itself Wilson observed that ‘the matter has now been settled. A new lease will be made between the parties which when completed and signed will be forwarded and signed by myself for the approval of the Governor’.²³ Lewis thanked Wilson for his help in a letter dated 31 March 1880. Four years after the extension to the lease had been proposed, the matter seemed to be closed.

²⁰ Stewart, 10 October 1879, Le 1 1884/108, box 196, NA.

²¹ Native Affairs Committee, Report on the Petition of George Vesey Stewart, Le 1 1884/108, box 196, NA.

²² T. W. Lewis, Under Secretary, Native Department to George Vesey Stewart, 17 November 1879, Le 1 1884/108, box 196, NA.

²³ J. A. Wilson, Commissioner of Tauranga District Lands to T. W. Lewis, 3 February 1880, Le 1 1884/108, box 196, NA.

But this was far from so. A letter sent by Stewart to the Native Minister on 6 July 1881 indicated otherwise:

I should be obliged by your recommending His Excellency the Governor to remove the entailing clause upon Lot 5, Parish of Tahawai, Katikati containing one hundred acres subject to an annual rent of six pounds.

The native owner’s name is Enoka te Whanake from who I hold a lease of the lands for 21 years from 1^st August 1875.

However having erected my homestead thereon in the year of 1876 I made arrangements with Enoka and paid him a money consideration as mutually agreed on in return for which Enoka gave me an extended lease for 99 years.

This lease was signed by Enoka in the presence of the Tauranga R.M. [Resident Magistrate – Roberts] who stated at time of execution he was fully conversant with the contents and it was then his desire that I should obtain his lease for 99 years.

However, as the land could not be leased longer than 21 years, unless with the consent of the Governor, the Commissioner Col. Haultain declined to have same registered in the absence of such endorsement.

Subsequently however after Enoka had received my money (which he still retains) he changed his mind and I have been informed he now objects to have this alienation clause removed.

Mr Sheehan as Native Minister in 1879 gave me a distinct pledge that he would recommend the Governor to meet my request and by his advice I sent in my petition to the Native Affairs Committee in the session of 1879, the matter was referred to Mr Bryce as Native Minister.

Nothing has since been done in the matter and shortly afterwards I returned to England to form No. 3 special settlement.

As I fully believed that my lease would be duly perfected, I have spent a large sum of money on this land in the erection of my homestead and in other improvements.

The Lease for 99 years was produced before the Native Affairs Committee and all the members were satisfied with the attestation clause.

Enoka is a chief of great intelligence, is a native assessor and the holder of extensive estates in the neighbourhood, and I am entitled to my rights by every principle of law and honest dealing between man and man, I have every confidence that you will see justice done to me and allow the required endorsement to be made upon my lease.²⁴

In the same month as Stewart sent this letter, Brabant, now Commissioner of Tauranga Lands, was directed by Lewis to arrange an ‘equitable settlement’ between Enoka and Stewart.²⁵ Brabant duly reported back on 12 October 1881 and alluded to the past meeting overseen by Wilson: ‘as to the statement in Mr Wilson’s letter therein referred to that the matter had been settled. I find that the parties had agreed to

²⁴ G. V. Stewart to the Native Minister, 6 July 1881, Le 1 1884/108, box 196, NA.

²⁵ T. W. Lewis to G. V. Stewart, 18 July 1881, Le 1 1884/108, box 196, NA.

leave it to Mr Wilson to settle; but neither appear now to know what terms be fixed’. This contradicted Wilson’s version of his meeting with Stewart and Enoka. While it can not be said with any certainty whether or not Wilson deliberately misrepresented the situation to Lewis, he was, at the time it took place, extremely overworked. Moreover, poor relations existed between Wilson and the Native Department, therefore this matter may not have received Wilson’s fullest attention.

In the meantime, both parties had agreed to the terms of the new lease, and to a rental of £10 per annum.²⁷ Brabant, however, after a consultation with former surveyor turned land agent, Captain Turner, decided that the proposed rental should be raised to the ‘fair value’ of £12 a year.²⁸ Brabant wrote: ‘to this Mr Stewart refuses to agree, and he has asked me to return all the papers to you, with his remarks … as he is confident the Honorable the Native Minister will support his view of the case’.²⁹ Stewart had communicated with Brabant and made it clear that he did not appreciate his input:

I regret that you should not concur in the arrangement made with Enoka, who, as you [are] aware, is a most intelligent Native and was perfectly satisfied with the arrangements mutually agreed on.

I should observe that pending the settlement of this question I ceased all permanent improvements on the land and any buildings erected thereon could be allowed to fall into decay by the time my lease expires.

I therefore consider that Enoka and I (who are both familiar with such matters) should be left to decide business arrangements without a “quasi-judicial opinion” and which was not intended at the interview I had with Mr Rolleston on the subject.³⁰

²⁶ Brabant to Lewis, 12 October 1881, Le 1 1884/108, box 196, NA.

²⁷ Brabant to Lewis, 12 October 1881, Le 1 1884/108, box 196, NA.

²⁸ See Brabant’s memorandum, 14 September 1881, which explains how this ‘fair value’ was calculated, Le 1 1884/108 box 196, NA. Brabant also commented in this memo that ‘the proposed extension [to the lease] appears to me to be for the benefit of the Lessee’.

²⁹ Brabant to Lewis, 12 October 1881, Le 1 1884/108 box 196, NA.

³⁰ G. V. Stewart to Brabant, 30 September 1881, Le 1 1884/108 box 196, NA.

Nevertheless, a lease that contained the terms recommended by Brabant gained the approval of the Governor. On 4 August 1882, the alienation restrictions were consequently removed.³¹

5.4 Concluding comments

It is evident from this protracted transaction that Stewart believed that, he had a right to define the terms of the lease without any interference from officials who adhered to practices that threatened to obstruct his goals. O’Malley has observed: ‘that the alienation restrictions were regarded by settlers, speculators and Crown officials alike as little more than formalities to be completed before land transactions were confirmed is all too clear’.³² Moreover, Stewart seemed to think that by soliciting the sympathy of senior politicians, he could be exempt from such regulations.

The transaction also shows the concerns that guided government officials when requests were made to remove alienation restrictions might have been shortsighted. While Brabant, by seeking the most equitable terms for the lease, acted quite properly, it is questionable whether this would always be in the best interests of the owners, especially in cases in which a permanent alienation was requested.

Enoka seems to have been ambivalent about the transaction. There is a possibility that the immediate cash payment was the incentive for the agreement, although he had several other reserves in the Katikati-Te Puna and confiscated blocks and numerous interests amongst the returned lands. There is, however, a somewhat ironic postscript to this story: because of the length of the lease, the reserve was protected from permanent alienation and after the lease expired in the 1980s, remains in Maori hands today.

³¹ AJHR 1884, Session II, G-5, p. 4.

³² O’Malley, ‘Aftermath’, p. 74.

Chapter 6 The Katikati-Te Puna Reserves from 1900

6.1 Introduction

By 1900, only a minority of Katikati-Te Puna reserves were still in the hands of either their original owners or their successors. The impact of questionable allocation procedure and the immediate post-raupatu context decreased, while other policies or practices affected tenure patterns in the twentieth century.¹ The organisation of this chapter differs from the others in this report. It contains samples of transactions, such as partitions, succession, and public works takings, which affected the outright ownership or physical integrity of the reserves.

6.2 Parish of Katikati

The retention of land in this Parish contradicts the general trend elsewhere in the Katikati-Te Puna block. A possible explanation for this could be the customary connections that the owners had with the reserves. Moreover, this parish was furthest away from Tauranga, which may have affected its initial appeal to settlers.

Lot 1: Richard Kay and Heather Bassett have produced a report on this reserve, known as Otawhiwhi. Readers should refer to this research. This area is still in Maori ownership today.²

Lot 23: An application for confirmation of transfer was lodged with the Waiariki Maori Land Board by George Mudgway the younger on 1 April 1920. This reserve was sold for £12 per acre. Maraea Faulkner, alias Maraea Whakana and Elizabeth

¹ This has been covered in a number of reports. See for example, Donald Loveridge, Rangahaua Whanui National Theme K. Maori Land Councils and Maori Land Boards: A Historical Overview, 1900 to 1952, Wellington, 1996 and Willan, Rachael. ‘Maori Land Sales, 1900-1930’, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, Twentieth Century Maori Land Administration Research Programme, Wellington, 1996, revised 1998.

² Richard Kay and Heather Bassett, ‘Otawhiwhi and Bowentown Domain’, Waitangi Tribunal, Wai 215 #A46, December 1996

Faulkner alias Riripeti Whakana were the vendors. The application was confirmed on 28 September 1920.³

6.3 Parish of Tahawai

Lot 21: The Waiariki Maori Land Board received an application for a confirmation of transfer from George Alley on 18 July 1920. Alley’s application was confirmed on 25 August 1920. As a consequence, Alley acquired the interest of H. Tutengaehe in the reserve for £23.12.6.⁴

Lot 20 ‘NR’: An undated sketch entitled ‘Subdivision of Native Reserve’, shows the subdivision of Lot 20 because the route chosen for the East Coast Main Trunk Railway passed through this reserve.⁵

Lot 22: This 50-acre reserve, known as Papakura, was partitioned on 1 April 1891. The five owners were shown to have sufficient land elsewhere; it was also noted that ‘the land the subject of the transfer has never been in any way utilised or cultivated by the Vendors’.⁶ However, the Waiariki Maori land Board received a letter from Buddie, Button, and Co., Soliciots, on behalf of Noble A. Johnston on 21 May 1910. This was an application for confirmation of transfer of lot 22B. There is no explanation for the second transaction.

Lot 75 ‘NR’: A land transfer record for both Lots 75 and 20 specifies ‘no alienations’.⁷ Lot 75 was set aside as a timber reserve. In May 1927, it seems that Sir W. G. Arstrong Whitworth & Co. Ltd had been buying timber from Meta [sic, Mita] Titipa for at least ten months. However, there was some question as to who exactly had an interest in the area⁸

³ BACS A187 box 217/2893, National Archives, Auckland (NAA). See also record no. 2893, BAHX 10204 4a, NAA.

⁴ Record no. 2705, BAHX 10204 4a, NAA.

⁵ BACS A187 box 221/4626, NAA.

⁶ BACS A622 206c T860, NAA.

⁷ BACS A187 box 225 5920, NAA.

⁸ BACS A187 box 221 4626, NAA.

Lot 75 was partitioned in September 1927.⁹ Leonard Gordon, farmer, applied to lease Lot 75^A from Heketoto te Ariki in May 1935 for £8 per annum. The Government valuation of the 20-acre section was £120. The agreement, which was for 42 years, was confirmed in August 1935.

Lot 23: The circumstances surrounding the alienation of this reserve, which was purchased by Reverend William Katterns in 1916, can not be considered in full here.¹⁰ In 1909 Katterns, an Anglican vicar for the Katikati special settlement, became embroiled in a long dispute over the lease of this reserve. It appears that Jane Foley and her sons had arranged an informal lease with some of the owners many years ago, while Katterns had recently negotiated another lease with just one other owner.¹¹ The Foley’s refused to move off the land, and the case was eventually brought before the Waiariki Maori Land Board. The Foley’s and Katterns were both intractable and attempted to subvert proceedings. Letters written by Katterns – there is a large number of them – are filled with accusations of treachery and bigotry. Katterns harboured strong anti-Irish sentiments. Katterns’ attitude towards lawyers and the bureaucratic and legal requirements of the Land Board did not promote a speedy resolution either. Ann enforced partition of the reserve by Judge Browne to resolve the dispute may have precipitated the permanent alienation of the reserve in 1916.¹²

6.5 Parish of Apata

Lot 211: Lot 211^B Parish of Apata was purchased by Robert Rutherford Turner and Hilda Marie Turner in 1919.¹³ One of the reasons for the transaction’s approval was because ‘each of the said owners is entitled to only about nine acres and that the cost

⁹ BACS A187 box 221 4626, NAA.

¹⁰ A voluminous amount of material relating to this purchase is scattered amongst a number of files. To start with, see BACS A187 box 216/1914-288, NAA; BACS A187 box 216/1914-189, NAA.

¹¹ Heni Pore, or Jane Foley, who was famous from her deeds at Gate Pa and later became a licensed interpreter, was personally involved in this case.

¹² Judge [Browne] to Under Secretary, Native Department, 9 August 1912, BACS A187 box 216/1914-189, NAA.

of partitioning and surveying same would be out of all proportion to the value of the land’. The land was also said to be becoming infested with noxious weeds, had never been occupied by the owners and was ‘not likely to be a material means of support to any of the said owners’.¹⁴ This was necessary to complete a private alienation of Maori land by the owners of Maori land under Part XIII, section 220 of the Native Land Act 1909. They were, in part, to prove that ‘[t]hat no Native will be reasons of the alienation become landless within the meaning of this Act’.¹⁵ However, Tom Bennion has noted that ‘in practice’ the safeguards created by this process ‘often did not apply or were poorly applied’.¹⁶

Turner applied for a confirmation of transfer for Lot 211^C on 20 January 1920. The sale was confirmed 21 February 1921. The vendors were Tawhia Maiora and Pioiroa Tawhio, for a consideration of £4.12.6 per acre.¹⁷

Lot 212: The Waiariki Maori Land Board received an application for confirmation of transfer from H. H. Sharplin on 14 July 1920. The sale was finally confirmed on 20 May 1921. N. Wahia and others received £400 for the 200 acres.¹⁸

6.6 Parish of Te Puna

Lots 132 and 133: In 1931 plans were drawn up with the intention of taking land from Lots 132 and 133, Parish of Te Puna to accommodate a highway deviation.¹⁹

b. Lot 210: This reserve, known today as Plummer’s Point, has been covered in full by Bassett and Kay.²⁰

¹³ BACS A187 box 216/2273, NAA. It appears that Turner also purchased Lot 211^C Parish of Apata, in 1919, and payments for that section were delayed by the Waiariki Maori Land Board. See Te Amohua Pumanuka and others to Dr Pomare, 31 August 1920, BACS A187 box 217/2409, NAA.

¹⁴ Declaration dated 11 November 1920, BAC A187 box 216/2273, NAA.

¹⁵ John Hutton, ‘“A Quick and Ready Method”: The Alienation of Maori Land by Sales to the Crown and Private Individuals, 1905-1930’, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, Twentieth Century Land Administration Research Programme, May 1996, p. 31.

¹⁶ Tom Bennion, The Maori Land Court and Land Boards, 1909 to 1952, Rangahaua Whanui National Theme P, Wellington, 1997, p. 28.

¹⁷ Record no. 2409, BAHX 10204 4a, NAA.

¹⁸ Record no. 2711, BAHX 10204 4a, NAA.

¹⁹ Plan of road to be taken through Allotments 132 and 33, Te Puna Parish, 1931, BACS A622/204a T66, NAA. Notice of Intention, New Zealand Gazette, No. 75, 15 October 1931, p. 2967. See also BACS A187 box 225/5731, NAA.

c. Lot 211: On 17 August 1920, the Waiariki Maori Land Board received a letter form W. J. Francis’ solicitors. It was an application ‘to summon Maori owners to consider the proposed resolution: ‘That the said land be sold to W. J. Francis at the price of £7 per acre’.²¹ A meeting was duly held and the 46 acre reserve appears to have been disposed and exectued in in terms of Part XVIII of the 1909 Act on 11 April 1921.²² This area is also covered by Bassett and Kay.²³

²⁰ Heather Bassett and Richard Kay, ‘Huharua, Pukewhanake, and Nga Kuri a Wharei’, Wai 215 #A45, December 1996, pp. 111-115.

²¹ Record no. 2754, BAHX 10204 4a, NAA.

²² Record no. 2754, BAHX 10204 4a, NAA.

²³ Heather Bassett and Richard Kay, ‘Huharua, Pukewhanake, and Nga Kuri a Wharei’, Wai 215 #A45, December 1996, pp. 15-6.

Conclusion

Most of the reserves in the Katikati-Te Puna block were identified and mapped in July 1867, surveyed in the first half of 1868, then Crown granted soon after Governor Bowen’s visit to the district in June 1868. By the end of 1869, one-quarter of the reserves had been alienated; by 1886, when the ‘Return of Lands’ was concluded, less than half were still held by Maori. The object of this overview report has been to consider the alienation of the Katikati-Te Puna reserves, especially whether or not Crown policies and practices made the reserves more vulnerable to alienation. The Crown’s administration of its raupatu policy between 1864 and 1886 has received particular attention, as the Katikati-Te Puna purchase, the allocation of reserves, and, arguably, their rapid alienation, occurred because of raupatu or during its immediate aftermath.

The purchase of the Katikati-Te Puna block was depicted by some contemporary observers as a solution to the long-standing customary conflict between Ngai Te Rangi and Hauraki groups. This was certainly a plausible explanation but, as Colonial Secretary Fox and Premier and Attorney General Whitaker had both been pushing for the confiscation of the entire district, the purchase was perhaps more akin to a de facto confiscation, disguised by this seemingly pragmatic political gesture. Comments made by H. T. Clarke and Fox suggest this alternative and less benign interpretation of the purchase. Clarke asserted, on two occasions, that there was no dialogue between government officials and Maori about the sale of the area while Fox simply saw it as a ‘forced acquisition of Native Lands under colour of a voluntary purchase’.

It is hard to pin down the precise criteria used by Mackay to allocate reserves in the Katikati-Te Puna block. This is due to a lack of records and inconsistencies in the archival material that is available. In one report Mackay stated explicitly that he and Clarke ‘endeavoured to adjust any outstanding claims by making reserves for some of the loyal persons who had received but little before on account of their lands being within the Military Settlement Block of 50,000 acres, although they had very small right to land otherwise within the Katikati and [Te] Puna blocks’. Therefore, the granting of many reserves under the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863 and the New

Zealand Settlements Amendment and Continuations Act 1865 is not surprising. However, while the reserves were compensation for individuals who had either lost land in the confiscated block or rewarding others for their loyalty, it also seems that some were set aside because of requests from local Maori, some of whom had had customary associations with their chosen areas.

While many military settlers abandoned the district – and the land allocated to them – from the late 1860s there was a group of settlers in the district who were active purchasers and had their sights on Maori land that was, or was about to be, Crown granted. The choice and availability of land, however, was governed by the progress made in the government’s return of land. By the late 1860s, barely any titles to ‘returned’ lands had been investigated and awarded, thus placing pressure on the reserves set aside for Maori in the confiscated and Katikati-Te Puna blocks. The pressure was most evident in the late, 1860s when Crown grants were quickly executed to enable agreements between owners and settlers to be completed. It is arguable that if the return of lands had have happened more speedily, this early speculation may have at least been spread more evenly throughout the confiscated district.

The payment to Ngai Te Rangi was not completed because of a combination of Maori wariness and administrative uncertainty. However, by May 1867, Clarke noted that the signatories were ‘clamorous’ for their money, without explaining why the money was needed. There are hints that a few alienations were motivated by a need for cash, but there is no concrete evidence that indebtedness motivated sales. It seems that Te Moananui alienated land in order to pay for food for his sister’s tangi, but it is not clear whether his situation was exploited by speculators. However, there is also evidence that suggests that land was being sold to settlers to encourage development and economic growth and security in the district.

The attitude of Crown officials towards ownership and trusteeship also jeopardised the maintenance of Maori possession of the reserves. Only a handful of the reserves were granted with any alienation restrictions, with a few more granted in trust to hapu. The protection that the latter restriction afforded the reserves was seemingly negligible, as reserves vested in trust for Ngati Tokotoko at Omokoroa,

and for Ngai Tamawhariua in the Parish of Tahawai, were among the first reserves to be sold. In the first case, the purchaser was R. J. Gill, a government employee who probably had prior knowledge of the conditions under which the reserves had been set aside. This was not an isolated incident. Gill also purchased Lots 12, 13 and 14 at Rereatukahia, Parish of Tahawai, in spite of these reserves being set aside in trust for a hapu. This resulted in numerous petitions and a Native Land Court hearing in 1878, although the blame was shifted away from Gill and onto the vendor himself.

Before 1870, transactions were signed in the presence of a Justice of the Peace but this procedural requirement had no protective function. In 1870, Trust Commissioners were appointed under the Native Frauds Prevention Act. The transactions involving reserves that went past the Trust Commissioner generally seemed to do so with no problem. There is only one example of an application to have alienation restrictions removed. This was to extend the lease to Lot 5, Parish of Tahawai, from 21 years to 99. The lessee was tenacious and disapproved of the need for official consent. The Crown official who eventually completed the application was careful, although the equity of price was the main point of contention.

The arrangement of the Katikati-Te Puna purchase, the allocation of the reserves, and the attitudes and actions of several officials who were involved in these activities suggest that it was not a straightforward Crown purchase and that the reserves were not given to Maori simply for their future use and benefit. The question is, did this then absolve the government or its officials from actively protecting the lands? Given the precarious situation that most Maori found themselves in after the war, and that Maori in the district experienced tenurial uncertainty until 1886, it could be argued the Crown should have, at the very least, been more attentive to the fate of the reserves at least until the lands were returned.

Bibliography

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I. National Archives, Auckland

BACS A187 box 214, 744 Lot 210, Parish of Te Puna, 1915-18

BACS A187 box 215, 1910-30 Part Lot 22, Parish of Tahawai

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BACS A187 Box 225, 5816 Lot 5, Parish of Tahawai, 1935-61

BACS A187 Box 225, 5920 Lot 75B, Parish of Tahawai, 1938

BACS A187 Box 227, 6460 Lot 7, sections 18 & 20; lots 8 & 9, section 20, Parish of Katikati

BACS A203 Box 284 TGA 1746 Lot 1, section 20, Parish of Katikati

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BAHX 10204 4a Waiariki Maori Land Board. Single number record book no. 2374-3308, 1920-29

BAHX 10208 1a part 1 Tauranga subdivision register, 1904-06

BAHX 10211 1a part 1 Tauranga local register, 1865-1909

BAHX 10212 1a Waiariki Maori Land Board. Meetings of owners, 1910-12

BAHX 10213 1a Waiariki Maori Land Board. Outward letter book, 1906-10

BAHX 10214 1a Waiariki Maori Land Board. Annual number record book, 1903-10

BAHX 10223 1a 1 Tauranga Succession Register, 1867-84

Hauraki Maori Land Court Minute Books

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II. National Archives, Wellington

G 17/3 no. 15 Native claims to land at Katikati

IA 1 65/3015 Maori land titles

IA 14/35 Purchase of land at Te Puna and Katikati

IA 15/10 Tauranga lands

IM 72/131 Plan of Tauranga District 1872 (SEP 76)

IM 6 11/1-2 Tauranga Special Settlement

Le 1 1877/5 Native Affairs Committee

Le 1 1884/108 box 196 Removal of alienation restrictions

Le 1885/6 Native Affairs Committee

Le 1867/134 Papers relative to Native Affairs at Tauranga

Le 1867/120 Papers relative to Tauranga

MA 1 1913/305 box 146 Tauranga petitions

MA 4/59-70. Letterbooks to Resident Magistrates and Civil Commissioners, Microfilm 6621-6673

MA 12/4 vol. 1 Abstracts of Title

MA 13/89 Te Puna Block (special file 121)

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MA 14/14 Register of Applications for the removal of alienation restrictions by Native owners

W 1 35/161 Omokoroa and Te Puna Roads

III. LINZ, Auckland

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SO 414

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C. Other Unpublished Material

I. Alexander Turnbull Library

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II. Tauranga District Library

H. T.Clarke. Letters to T. H. Smith, 1861-1866 (typescript).

R. J. Gill, miscellaneous papers, MS 61.

Secondary Sources

A. Books and Articles

Anon. ‘The Family of John Lees Faulkner’, Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society, no. 36, March 1969.

Bush, Ernest E., ed. ‘The Katikati Story’, Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society, no. 23, March 1975.

Cowan, Janies. The New Zealand Wars: A History of the Maori Campaigns and the Pioneering Period, vol. 1: 1845-64,Wellington, 1983.

Gray, Arthur J. An Ulster Plantation, 2^nd edn, Wellington, 1950.

Macky, Neill Lloyd. Macky Family in New Zealand, 1845-1969, Auckland, 1969.

Kissling, Trevor G. The Venerable George Adam Kissling: A Memoir and a Family Tree of Descendents in New Zealand 1842-1972, Auckland 1972.

Rutherford, J. Sir George Grey: A Study in Colonial Government, London, 1961.

Scholefield, Guy, ed. Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Wellington, 1940.

Stewart, Adela. My Simple Life in New Zealand, London, 1908.

Stone, R. C. J. Makers of Fortune: A Colonial Business Community and its Fall, Dunedin, 1973.

Stone, R. C. J. The Making of Russell McVeagh: The First 125 Years of the Practice of Russell McVeagh McKenzie Bartleet & Co. 1863-1988, Auckland, 1991.

Stokes, Evelyn. Whanau a Tauwhao: A History of a Ngaiterangi Hapu, Hamilton, 1980.

Stokes, Evelyn (compiler). Stories of Tauranga Maona, Hamilton, 1980.

Stokes, Evelyn. Matakana and Rangiwaea: A Report on an Island Community in Tauranga Moana, Hamilton, 1980.

Stokes, Evelyn. A History of Tauranga County, Palmerston North, 1980.

Woods, Jenny. Omokoroa, Tauranga, nd.

B. Tribunal Research

Anderson, Robyn. The Crown, the Treaty and the Hauraki Tribes, vol. 4, Paeroa, 1997.

Bassett, Heather and Richard Kay. ‘Huharua, Pukewhanake, and Nga Kuri a Wharei’, Wai 215 #A45, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, December 1996.

Bennion, Tom. Rangahaua Whanui National Theme P. The Maori Land Court and Land Boards, 1990 to 1952, Wellington, 1997.

Boast, Richard. ‘Ngai Te Rangi before the Confiscation: A History Based on Native Land Court and Commissioners’ Court Sources’, Crown Forestry Rental Trust / Treaty of Waitangi Research Unit, August 2000.

Hamilton, Fiona. ‘Ngai Te Ahi Historical Report’, Wai 215 #G1, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, February 2000.

Hedley, Simon. ‘Ngati Tapu Tribal Lands Claim’, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, April 2000.

Hutton, John L. “‘A Ready and Quick Method”: The Alienation of Maori Land by Sales to the Crown and Private Individuals, 1905-30’, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, Twentieth Century Maori Land Administration Research Programme, Wellington, 1996.

Hutton, John L. ‘Archival Records Relating to the Maori Land Councils and Boards: 1900-1952’, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, Twentieth Century Maori Land Administration Research Programme, Wellington, 1996.

Kahotea, Des. ‘Nga Mana me nga Whenua ki Tauranga Moana a Waka’, Wai 215 #I 14, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, December 1999.

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Minhinnick, Roimata. ‘A Report on Mauao/Maount Maunganui’, Wai 215 #A49, nd.

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O’Malley, Vincent. ‘ The Te Papa Block: A History of Church Missionary Society and Crown Dealings, 1838-1867’, Wai 215 #A29, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, November 19996.

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C. Theses

Derby, Beth. D. ‘Maori Land Ownership in Tauranga County’, University of Auckland MA thesis, 1981.

Rogers, Jasmine. “‘A Little Comer of Ulster in New Zealand”: The Katikati Special Settlement, 1875-1900’, University of Auckland MA dissertation, 1998.

Appendix I. Reserved areas and their owners

(This data has copied from Evelyn Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves for Maori in the Tauranga Confiscated Lands, Hamilton, 1997, vol. 2: index lists)

I. Parish of Katikati: 1205 acres

II. Parish of Tahawai: 2125 acres

III. Parish of Te Mania: 2884 acres

IV. Parish of Apata: 1040 acres

V. Parish of Te Puna: 875 acres

VI Lands vested in trust: AJHR 1886 G-15, p. 12

Appendix II. Chronological Table

This is a chronological list of transactions, covering 1868-1886, compiled from data found in the Historical Section at LINZ, Auckland. In the case of reserves that were leased, then later permanently alienated, only the lease and the final conveyance, and no intermediary transactions, have been listed.