3.1 Though no statistical demonstration is possible, it is reasonable to conclude that the Hauraki Maori population underwent a considerable decline between the 183os and the end of the i9th century. Further, it is reasonable to conclude that the considerably larger pre-colonial population was equipped with the resources and the skills needed to sustain itself. Even though early i9th century experiences—warfare, exile and disease—had almost certainly reduced that population by the mid-century, it was still (if the evidence has any reliability at all) nearly twice the size in 1840 that it would become in about 1890. The larger population of earlier times was better equipped with the resources and skills to maintain itself than the much reduced population of the later—but not very much later—period. What that larger population, of course, lacked was the capacity to protect itself from diseases of which it had had no prior experience.
3.2 This conclusion does not imply a belief that pre- and early colonial Maori enjoyed something close to an ideal age. By some accounts, Maori life was characterised by arduous toil, a short average life expectancy and regular warfare, exile and enslavement. But while traditional Maori society should not be idealised, nor should an anachronistic approach which compares that society unfavourably with the conveniences and comforts of the later zoth century be allowed to cause confusion. Early Maori possessed a stable communal social order and a body of traditional skills well designed to utilise the natural resources of sea and soil. As their commercial dealings with the early colonists demonstrated, Hauraki Maori also displayed a marked capacity to integrate their economic activities with the novel opportunities presented by a commercial market. The early entrepreneurial flair shown by Maori in trade with Auckland and in the beginnings of the timber trade illustrates a capacity for adaptation and self-reliance which, in the event, were to be marginalised, perhaps for a time negated, by the drastic effects of later colonisation.
3.3 In 19th and early zoth century New Zealand the land and its varied yields—minerals and timber as well as agricultural and pastoral products—were at the heart of the economy. The loss of by far the greater part of these resources is the basic economic development shaping the situation of Hauraki Maori. It is unlikely, further, that they acquired to any major extent the skills needed to utilise the land they retained for
