This was the state of affairs on the 1st September, 1867. On the 2nd a quarrel took place between a miner and two of the sons of Aperahma te Reiroa (one of the principal owners of Waiotahi). The Natives succeeded in getting the man into the Kauaeranga River, where they nearly drowned him. A great disturbance ensued, and fearing a fracas between natives and Europeans, I went with the police, and arrested the three disputants.

On the 3rd of September the man was convicted of assaulting a Native, and was fined £3, or one month's imprisonment. The Natives were proved to have nearly drowned him, and they were fined £5 each and costs, or two months' imprisonment. They were unable to pay the fine, and would have been removed to Auckland. Their father, Aperahma te Reiroa, came to solicit their release; and asked me to lend him the money to pay the fine. I agreed to do so if he would take it as an advance on miners' rights for the Waiotahi Block. He consented to do this, provided a line was cut along the base of the hills, and the flat land left as a cultivation reserve. He paid the fine, and his sons were released. That afternoon, the line of demarcation was laid off on the ground, and the Waiotahi was rushed by the miners.136

This action by an officer, who was a Civil Commissioner and a Resident Magistrate, smacks of sharp practice if not positive entrapment. After all, the assaulted Pakeha was a trespasser. J.H.M. Salmon's judgment that this was an instance of Mackay's 'unscrupulous handling of Maori interests' seems not excessively severe.137

2.    Use of debt to open Ohinemuri

An even more dramatic instance of the way Mackay used debt to win concessions came about in 1875. For ten years Ohinemuri Maori had refused to open their land to diggers. After what Mackay described as 'protracted negotiations' he had turned the Maori landowners around: But not through persuasion. Some years later a representative in the House explained how: 'consent had been ensured by Mackay's unscrupulous use of the debt system.'138 He had made advances to the owners, some of which had been in the form of 'rations', credits made available to Maori at local stores. The only way that landowners could repay these debts was to concede miners' rights on their lands.

3.    His dealing in Maori lands It could be argued that when Mackay was reappointed as Civil

136 AJHR, 1869, A-7, p. 6.

137 Salmon, A History of Goldmining, p. 184.

138 NZPD, 1890, p. 252.

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