later augmented, in the 1860s, to some 80,000 acres. This study does not attempt an exhaustive examination of the details of all these claims, but merely an overview of them. Some emphasis is given, however; to particular cases such as Fairburn's at South Auckland and McGaskills' at Hikutaia, which also form the basis of more detailed studies undertaken by independent researchers. Nor is it intended here to revisit the arguments which have been so thoroughly aired in the context of the Muriwhenua claim; rather, it is intended to demonstrate the extent and situation of Hauraki land loss, outline the experience of Hauraki groups with reference to the Commission, identify instances in which the Crown kept surplus lands, and highlight evidence of ongoing Maori dissatisfaction with the Crown's handling of the early claims.
It is argued, that the intentions of the first Commission to enquire into transactions prior to 1840 and the pre-emption waiver 'purchases' (see below) were benign, but that its deliberations were based on, and ultimately entrenched, false assumptions that Maori had intended 'sales' by their endorsement of deeds. It was not appreciated that Maori might have intended to consolidate their own interests, expressing a customary practice of incorporating useful newcomers into their community, by the new means of the written word, rather than a permanent conveyance of property giving exclusive rights to the purchaser. Questions were designed to elicit whether a rightful transaction had taken place in terms of English usage, not what Maori had really meant by their participation in transactions and whether customary practice was still in operation. Thus the Commission responded to Maori complaints about boundaries and failures of payment by adjusting rather than overturning deeds. There was, however, little reason for Maori, numerically dominant and prospering on the trade generated from Auckland, the timber industry, and other early attempts to exploit extractive wealth of the region, to question the nature of the Commission's findings or the value of their own early dealings with the Crown and other 'purchasers'.
The Bell Commission
[pp. 53–62] The failure to survey the boundaries or to use the lands deemed to have been sold by Maori, as well as the administration's immediate tampering with awards, invited continuing misconstruction of the deeds, and of the implications of the first Commission's awards. Maori rejection of British understandings of sale was not revealed until a decade later when they began objecting to the presence of licensed flax-millers and timber-cutters on lands kept by the Crown as 'surplus' (see below), and to attempts to survey boundaries of grants. The grants arising from the first Commission were resubmitted to enquiry in the late 1850s, at a time of greater Government effort to effect land transactions. There was, too, increased suspicion of Government purchase activities amongst Hauraki Maori, more especially those based in the Thames valley, and it was in this region that greatest dissatisfaction was generated by the land claims investigation process.
The immediate function of the Bell Commission was to establish the boundaries of grants and of land to be retained by the Crown, not to review the findings of the earlier
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