great drive to purchase lands in the Hauraki heartland, under the Immigration and Public Works Acts of the 1870s, and the impulse of the huge influx of Pakeha into the Thames which stimulated the demand for more land for settlement, timber, and minerals. Hauraki land holding declined greatly in this decade. W.H. Oliver points out that Maori who had experienced a new economy in the 1850s in which they could participate without loss of independence, 'were now subjugated to a more advanced form of that economy.' While Hauraki Maori continued to participate in that system, they did so, as a 'people whose options had been narrowed to an opportunistic, seizing of short-lived (and, in the event, damaging) benefits.'5
Most of the gold and timber resources of the district were acquired from Maori for a fraction of their value in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Once these sources of income had been exhausted, and locked ever more tightly into a cash economy by the destruction of the traditional economy through Government-supported, commercial development of the foreshore and rivers, Hauraki were left with land sales as the only remaining source of income. Fostering that process, Crown agents exerted constant and heavy pressure on non-sellers, cynically exploiting tangi, arranging for secret payments, and using `raihana'—a practice condemned as 'unfair', by the Waitangi Tribunal, in the context of Te Roroa6—while the Government took on powers of exclusive right to purchase, eliminating competition at the expense of those Maori who were trying to realise the best value for their lands when they sold.
A key element in the history of the developing relationship of the Crown to the Hauraki tribes lay in the importance of the natural resources of the land—and in particular of minerals, as well as timber. In both cases, the Crown furthered goals of extractive development at the expense of native rights, while arguing that such steps were required for the 'public interest'. But at the same time, the actions of the Government ensured that Maori participated less and less in the profits of development even though the loss for them was greater, in terms of the degradation of their natural environment, and the loss of their ability to use its resources. The desire to acquire complete control of such resources meant the acquisition of the freehold as well, and increasingly Government purchase activity resulted in Maori being excluded from any benefits from gold mining at all.
When gold had been first discovered on Hauraki lands, the tribes had been at their most powerful, and the Crown had negotiated accordingly, making no clear assertion of a prerogative, and giving what seemed to be an acknowledgment of Maori rights of ownership. Clearly, in the Hauraki view, the first agreements regarding gold had the status of treaties, recognising their ownership of the land and all its attributes, their authority to open it or to keep it closed, and their willingness to co-operate in the development of their lands with the help of the Government and western technological expertise—but on terms of partnership. But as the position of the Crown strengthened, it
5 W. H. Oliver, The Social and Economic Situation of Hauraki Maori after Colonisation. Report prepared for Hauraki Maori Trust Board, 1997.
6 See Waitangi Tribunal, Te Roroa Report, Wai 38, Wellington, 1992, p. 6o.
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