THE CROWN, THE TREATY, AND THE HAURAKI TRIBES, 1800–1885

enquiry. Bell operated on the assumption that the first Commission's findings had established whether a legitimate sale had taken place, and despite continuing evidence that transactions fell well short of standards of informed consent, Maori repudiation of early grants was interpreted as mercenary in nature, or politically-motivated, not as indicative of a different understanding of what they had agreed to, or had intended by such transactions. While Maori objections might have to be appeased by further payment or adjustment of the boundary, the fact of sale stood. Bell's investigation gave rise to a particular sense of grievance at Hikutaia where promises of a full re-examination of the question of grant were not met, and the grantees (the McGaskills) were seen to have been confirmed in their ownership of lands not included in the original transaction, and in which some right-holders had not participated at all.

The issue of surplus lands

[pp. 62–72] The Crown did not generally assert its claim in the Hauraki region to surplus land—the balance of acreage between that 'proved' to have been purchased by the old land claimants and that for which grants were actually issued. There were, however, a number of important exceptions where the question was complicated by subsequent Crown payments. The most notable of these incidences occurred in the western zone of Hauraki influence on the south Tamaki isthmus, deriving from the original Fairburn `purchase' [at pp. 64– 68]; and to the north, at Great Barrier Island, from the Webster, Abercrombie, and Nagle 'old land claim', and pre-emption waiver 'purchases' by Whitaker and du Moulin [at pp. 69–71].

The question of sale had been particularly problematic in the case of the south Tamaki isthmus area where the transaction, with missionary Fairburn, derived directly from tribal peace-making efforts after the dislocations of the 1820s. Intrinsic to the agreement was a promise that one-third of the area would revert to Maori where they would then resettle peacefully. The intention behind that promise was, however, transmuted into the creation of limited reserves for hapu at spots where they were actually cultivating lands, and further payments to others. The Crown acquired the bulk of the area, estimated at over 75,000 acres—the difference between the land awarded to Fairburn as a result of his 'purchase' and the boundaries described in the deed. Leading Hauraki rangatira protested in the early 1850s when it became clear that the Crown considered that land to be within its control. Instead of giving up its claim, or making reserves for the Hauraki people in the increasingly valuable isthmus area, the Government made further limited payments to some, but not all, of the iwi who had participated in the original transaction. Those payments were subsequently considered to have represented the Crown's absolute purchase of the Fairburn lands outside the grant, and thus to remove the area from any subsequent enquiry into the question of 'surplus lands'. In any case, the Myers' Commission appointed in 1948 to look into transactions resulting in Crown retention of surplus lands was limited in its scope, because it assumed the legitimacy of the original transactions, and that these had been fully and properly investigated in the 1840s and early 1860s. [pp. 71–72].

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