For all its shortcomings, the mining treaty reached between the Hauraki people and the Crown in 1852 set a benchmark for subsequent mining arrangements. As a result, recognition that Maori right-holders had to consent to mining on their land characterised both the legislation and the negotiation regarding gold for the next 30 years, bypassing the issue of who actually owned it. The Crown gradually retreated, however, from the spirit of those early negotiations when the commitments embodied by the Treaty of Waitangi were still relatively fresh in the minds of officials. Promises held out by the Crown, and the expectations which they fostered, continued to focus on consent, partnership, and prosperity for posterity, but the means employed by the Crown fell well short of these standards, involving a mixture of unceasing persuasion, threats, cynical exploitation of Maori custom, deliberate undermining of the principles of tribal authority which underpinned the concept of rangatiratanga, and, at last resort, the use of compulsion.
The other thread of discussion in the report which derives from the original 1852 gold field understandings, concerns the question of what should be seen as a 'fair proportion', and how well the Crown fulfilled its obligations to administer returns owing to Maori. It is argued throughout the report that failures in administration and unfair weighting of miner as against Maori interest, generally characterised the conduct of the Government, and formed the subject of ongoing Hauraki protest. Instead of being treated as an autonomous people exercising rangatiratanga over their lands, Hauraki Maori were consistently cast in the role of supplicants, forced to ask for revenues to be handed over, the reasons for delay in payments, or more information on the working of their land, and to protest legislation which ignored their rights under cession agreements and the Treaty. The initial indication of such problems is discussed at pp 81–4
Crown purchases,1853–1865
[pp. 89–98] Discussion of the 1852 gold mining agreement is followed by an examination of the impact of Crown purchase policy, 1853–1865. This period saw the transfer of 48,000 acres in the core Hauraki region from Maori hands into those of the Crown. The sales to the Crown, in combination with earlier alienations to private parties, meant the loss of some of the best sites within the Hauraki rohe at that time—in particular, their interests on the isthmus, lands around Coromandel Harbour, Mercury Bay, and at Waiheke. The Crown had also begun to turn its eyes to the interior lands of the Hauraki rohe, initiating its first attempts to make large-scale acquisitions within the highly prized valley lands of the Waihou and Piako Rivers.
The pressure on Hauraki ability to keep hold of their lands increased with the growth of demand from Auckland, which was generated by land speculation, increasing interest in pastoralism, the implementation of 'land for passage' immigration schemes, and the desire to emulate the prosperity of the Southern provinces which had been founded on cheap Maori land purchase. The Native Land Purchase Department, established in 1853, began to succumb to the pressure of settler demand, and as a consequence, the standard
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