Introduction: Chapter Summary

which the Government was acquiring to 'improve' and 'enhance the prosperity' of the district. On the one hand, Maori were seen as benefiting from that development, but on the other, their continuing presence as landowners was blamed for inhibiting it. Thus, their holdings remained a suitable target for purchase despite temporary retrenchment in policy or brief periods of regard for the welfare of Maori in the district.

Four case studies are drawn from Alexander's work to demonstrate continuing Government interest in acquiring the freehold of Hauraki lands containing minerals, partly to secure the absolute control of sub-surface resources, and partly in order to relieve itself of the need to pay out revenues to Maori. Even at a time of retrenchment, efforts to purchase gold field blocks might be stimulated by occasional discoveries of minerals deposits (as in the case of Te Ipu o Moehau), by the demands of the local settler community and capital investment, and by the general belief that such lands should not pass into private hands—this was expressed in the standing authority to land purchase officers to 'purchase if opportunity offered'. The practise of negotiation was complicated by the role of the gold field warden who operated also as a purchase officer in the district. By this stage, little remained of the original paternalistic colouration to the functions of the warden. The activities of this officer were particularly questionable in the case of Kuaotunu where he began arranging mining tenure and laying out a mining township before gaining the consent of Maori owners, and at Moehau no. 4 where he advised the Government to withdraw from the terms of the original rental agreement set up in 1862, since this arrangement was no longer profitable. He subsequently treated the block as if it remained in the gold field, failing to make a new agreement with the owners. In following negotiations for the freehold, the Government's attention was devoted largely to protecting the interests of the major company still working the gold field on the block. A questionable level of pressure was subsequently applied on Maori to induce them to sell the freehold of Moehau, the payment of overdue revenues being made contingent upon that agreement (se pp. 34–42).

The final section of discussion of Crown policy in the 1880s concerns the negotiations for lands in the vicinity of the Piako River, the roots of which lay in the 1860s with the confiscation of Hauraki lands at Pukorokoro-Te Hoe-o-Tainui-Hapuakohe, and Mackay's raihana payments in the 1870s (discussed in Volume 4 at pp. 129–134, 204–208). The Government was particularly anxious to see a return for its expenditure in the area, but there were serious defects in the transaction on which its claim was based. In particular, payments had largely gone to only one of the several iwi holding rights in that region, amounts had been carelessly distributed, and so much time had lapsed since these had been made that the recipient hapu had a flawed knowledge of the circumstances and implications of the earlier acceptance of those monies.

In the early 1880s the Government first concentrated on reaching an agreement with Ngati Maru who had received no payments in the preceding decade but whose lands remained tied up because they had been proclaimed as under negotiation for purchase. These efforts to have Ngati Maru bring their claims through the Native Land Court failed initially, partly because of the tribal complexities—in particular, that created by the continuing presence on the ground of peoples whom Marutuahu claimed to have

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