work schemes were directed exclusively towards the development of settlement, extractive industries, and farming, with local politicians, Government officers, and law–makers taking little account of the impact of river clearance, gold field development, and timber extraction on Maori use of foreshore and traditional river and riparian resources. Maori were also told that they would benefit from the rise in value of the lands which they retained, but at the same time, the Government took to itself semi–monopolistic powers by re–introducing a measure of pre–emption over large tracts of Hauraki territory. Maori complained that not only were they prevented by such measures from realising the best price on their land but that they were being denied equal treatment under law. Public works were presented to Maori in terms of benign intent but the underlying imperative was to break the hold of Government opponents in the upper Thames valley. The telegraph and road were deliberately run through the blocks of known opponents of sale who were either categorised by Government agents as ultra–hauhaus, or dismissed as out–dated reactionaries, standing in the way of their own people's progress as well as that of the nation as a whole. This represented an ideological defeat for Maori leaders who wished to control the pace of engagement with European settlement and to retain authority over not only lands but rivers and coastal fisheries; and the western equation of progress with extraction of resources and domination of the natural landscape which was `useless' until the hills were cleared of timber, the rivers freed of snags, the mudflats reclaimed, and the swamps were drained.
Pressure on Ohinemuri
[pp. 194–198] Beyond Omahu Stream, lands were held under the mana of Te Hira and Tukukino and their sections of Ngati Tamatera, supported by Ngati Hako, whose response to war, and to Government and settler pressure, was to attempt to resist any further encroachment. In the eyes of this group, the requirements of their opponents—the Government, European settlers, and those within Hauraki society who wished to attempt to engage in the new economic order on European terms—were met more than adequately by the agreement to allow mining in the Thames and western peninsula. They were now 'perfectly justified' in holding back the rest for themselves–`the surface and the underground as well'. That wish was not respected at all. The Government utterly denied the capacity of non–selling rangatira to withhold their lands from the Crown's jurisdiction, or from settlement, throwing responsibility for maintenance of 'Te Pai o Hauraki' onto their willingness to open up their territory to mining, to roads, and to purchase.
The conduct of Crown purchases
[pp. 199–208; 212–214] The capacity of Hauraki Maori to retain their lands at Ohinemuri, Tairua–Whangamata, Te Aroha, the Whangapoua peninsula, and in the Hauraki Plains was undermined by the activities of Crown agents, who began by making payments to any possible right–holder who was well–disposed to the opening of their territory to mining, timber milling, the jurisdiction of the Native Land Court, and survey. As one of his first steps,
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