Figure 45: Sketch map of Ohinemuri, published by the Daily Southern Cross and Weekly News Company, 1875

Ngati Maru of Kopu and Puriri to meet Te Hira.² The discussions Te Hira held with these delegates were not open to Europeans or ‘friendly’ Maori. Following them, he banned Government officials and declared his land a refuge for offenders against the law.

Mackay was trying to draw people out of Ohinemuri. At Opukeko, up the Waihou near Te Hira’s setdement, he invited Taraia and Te Hira to meet with him. On 5 April 1867, in Taraia’s presence, Mackay said that if the Waikato refugees left Hauraki to fight, they should not be allowed to return ‘for he would not allow Hauraki to be the gathering place for the disaffected’.³ Between the Kingitanga and ‘friendly’ camps lay a buffer zone between the Hikutaia Stream and the Omahu Stream, where customary rights were contested.

Early in 1868, King Tawhiao held a great meeting at Tokangamutu (Te Kuiti) attended by Te Hira and Tukukino with 500 supporters; they ‘placed’ the gold in their lands into the hands of the King. King Tawhiao reiterated his disapproval of land sales and leasing and proscribed the mining of gold. Te Hira returned home fortified by Tawhiao’s support, and in mid-April 1868, as Mackay was finalising the goldfield proclamation of that month, Te Hira proposed that Te Munu, one of the King’s councillors, should be the guardian of the boundary of the goldfield at Omahu.

2. John Lincoln Hutton, ‘Troublesome Specimens: A Study of the Relationships between the Crown and the Tangata Whenua of Hauraki, 1863–1869’, ma thesis, University of Auckland, 1995, p 224; Hauraki minute book 8, p 58 (Paul Monin, This Is My Place: Hauraki Contested, 1769–1875 (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2001) p 212)

3. Daily Southern Cross, 16 April 1867 (Hutton, p 220)