Ohinemuri District: Ohinemuri

agree and are able to do so, in all probability the Government would have no objection, but I think it will be necessary to show first that the chiefs are willing to carry out their agreement before the Government is asked to act in the matter.112

In September 1881 Wilkinson reported on a petition presented to the House of Represen-

tatives by Hirawa Te Moananui and others. This petition sought the payment of miners' rights and timber cutting fees.113 The Native Affairs Committee had reported that

This transaction is still in progress and is being dealt with as quickly as signatures are received to a deed of cession. The Government is recommended to acquaint the petitioners with the actual condition of the case, and settle the business as expeditiously as possible, as there seems to be considerable misapprehension in the minds of the Natives concerned.114

Wilkinson explained, following the Committee's report, that

The questions raised by the Petitioners represent the principal difficulties that have to be met in connection with the settlement of the Ohinemuri Gold Field purchase.

According to an agreement made in February 1875, during the visit of the late Sir Donald McLean to Ohinemuri, it was then agreed that, instead of the purchase of the freehold of the Ohinemuri Block being proceeded with, a lease for Gold Mining purposes should be substituted in its place, and the said Lease saddled with a debt of £15,000, which sum had been advanced up to that date to Natives for purchase of the freehold. It was agreed that all Miners' Right fees, rents etc, should go to the Crown until such time as said £15,000 had been paid, after which all the Revenue would go to the Native owners.

During the period since the opening of the field to the 31st August [1881], the sum of £4,317–0–0d has been received from the sources above-named. During the time above referred to, the larger number of the owners have sold out their right, title and interest to the Crown, most of them signing the deed and taking final payments before they had proved their ownership to the Block in the Native Land Court. On some cases it was discovered that, through selling before the Block was adjudicated upon by the Court, a large number had sold out for much less than their shares would now fetch at the rate of 5/- per acre (Government price); in other cases, and they also are numerous, it was found that those who were known to be large owners, and to whom large advances had been made by Mr Mackay, were discovered to have had much more - in some cases five and even ten times more—than the areas to which they have been adjudged by Court is worth. Those who were short paid (that is if they had waited until the land passed the Court before they sold) are now clamouring for more, whilst those who have had too much dispute many of the items charged against them by Mr Mackay, in some cases going so far as to say that they never had some of the amounts charged against them, and others saying that some of the amounts charged against Ohinemuri Block were had on account of other blocks, the transactions concerning which have long been closed. Be that as it may (and Mr Mackay is the only person who can properly set the matter right by meeting the Natives in Court and proving their statements to be false), they all appear to think that they have a right to benefit by the refund £4317–0–0d money received by Government as Native Revenue. But they do not take into account that each one that has signed the deed has been properly bought out according to a satisfactory arrangement come to at that time between him or herself and the Land Purchase Agent, and that in no case have any of them signed without getting a money equivalent, so that if they now refer back to the money received by the Government in liquidation of the previous £15,000–0–0d debts and demand that the £4317–0–0d be distributed proportionally amongst

112 Native Agent Thames to Native Minister, 6 April 1881. Maori Affairs Head Office file MLP 1881/246. Supporting Papers #B36.177–178.

113 Petition of Hirawa Te Moananui and 69 others, 15 July 1881. Maori Affairs Head Office file NO 1882/1284. Supporting Papers #c3.4–5.

114 Report of Native Affairs Committee on Petition 250/1881, 24 August 1881. Maori Affairs Head Office file NO 1882/1284. Supporting Papers #C3.6.

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