As well as being an ancient home of Ngati Ranginui, Pukewhanake was still inhabited in the 1840s. Alfred Brown, who established the Church Missionary Society station at Te Papa, recorded the following visits to Maori at Pukewhanake in his diary:67
Date
Comment
7 May 1842
Went to Pukewhanaki to see the Native raise the posts of their new chapel, size 48 by 26. A party from Maungatautari, 70 in number, are over to assist in the erection.
1 March 1846
At Pukewhanaki. A small but attentive congregation of 50 Natives
15 April 1848
Went overland to Pukewhanaki in order to spend the sabbath with that party tomorrow
20 January 1850
Held Divine service at Pukewhanaki in the morning.
2 June 1858
Went to Pukewhanaki and addressed the Natives at evening service
Ensign Best also visited Pukewhanake and gave the following description:
The chief of this place Hamiora was an old friend of mine a most intelligent and go ahead young man was not at home but his people treated us with every hospitality taking pride in showing me all they had worthy of attention. The principal objects were a well built and roomy church and a small field of fine wheat. Puke whanaki is prettily situated on the face of a steep cliff it is a place of considerable strength and the regularity and cleanliness pervading the settlement bespeaks the presence of a Master mind.68
In the 1840s there was very little Pakeha settlement in Tauranga Moana. However, after the Crown confiscation of Maori land in the 1860s, Pakeha settlement was actively encouraged. This severed the relationship Maori had with Pukewhanake, and other traditional sites.
2.2 RAUPATU WEST OF THE WAIROA RIVER
Legal title to Pukewhanake derives from the confiscation of the Tauranga district in 1865. It is not the intention of this report to provide an historical account of the circumstances surrounding the confiscation, and readers requiring further detail should consult reports which have been prepared for the Wai 215 inquiry, such as Evelyn Stokes, Te Raupatu O Tauranga Moana: The Confiscation of Tauranga Lands, and Hazel Riseborough, ‘The Crown and Tauranga Moana’.69 It should be noted that the use of the term ‘Pirirakau’ in the following section follows the description used by nineteenth-century officials for those Maori who refused to surrender. It may be that ‘Pirirakau’ actually included other Ngati Ranginui hapu from the Wairoa River area.
67 The table is compiled from extracts from Brown’s diary in Kahotea, pp 38-39
68 cited in Kahotea, p 39
69 Evelyn Stokes, Te Raupatu o Tauranga Moana: The Confiscation of Tauranga Lands, University of Waikato, 1990 (Wai 215, A2), Hazel Riseborough, ‘The Crown and Tauranga Moana’, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, 1994, (Wai 215, A23).
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