motives on this issue is tricky. What is undoubted is the general Maori conviction (which Ngaitai and Ngati Paoa had acquired from first-hand experience) that Pakeha appetite for land south of Auckland had become voracious, and that the economic relationship between Maori and Pakeha was not an unmixed blessing. By the early 186os, although between Hauraki iwi and even within iwi, political attitudes varied, there was a general opposition to the sale of land, and less readiness to trade with Auckland. Sympathy for the King Movement—overt in some parts of Hauraki, covert in others (usually in tribes close to Auckland)—politically expressed this new mood of economic disengagement.25

24 Paul Monin, 'The Maori Economy of Hauraki', p. 204.

25 As Monin points out, the growth of the timber industry on the Coromandel peninsula tended to work against this general trend. (pp. 204-05). A hidden cost arising out of this close economic relationship was (in Monin's opinion) that 'Hauraki Maori were incurring heavy expenses from participation in two societies and inevitably some hapu were living beyond their means'. (p.202). He refers here not only to new consumption interests, iron tools, textiles, alcohol etc., but also to the further incitement towards extravagance, provided by Pakeha (generally unwittingly) with regard to flour mills, feasts, and the like, considered in Maori terms to enhance the mana of the tribe. A prudential cutting back on ostentatious consumption seems not to have been a reason for Maori opting out of the European economy, however.

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