As to whether the land was implicated in the arrangement as well as the gold, Mackay stated to Te Hira that a division had been made:

you are to have the land, and I am to have the gold; this has been agreed to by the tribe and there is nothing else to say, the people have received payments on the land outside and on Ohinemuri, also in which you participated; this is the arrangement you are to have the land and I am to have the gold.⁹³

Mackay took credit for this division since, he said, both had already been conceded at the Pukatea-wairahi meeting: ‘your people not only gave me the gold, but also the land. It is I who proposed to accept the gold and to leave the fee simple of the land.’ Te Hira then observed: ‘There is gold sufficient upon the blocks I have already agreed to sell, upon Waikawau, Moehau, Te Puru and others’ If gold were not found on Ohinemuri, the land would then have to be taken to pay the debt, therefore, ‘let the land already given be sufficient’. Either he had discerned or the officials had clarified that acceding to the mining arrangements afforded no absolute protection for Ohinemuri land.⁹⁴ However, on 22 December 1874 Te Hira withdrew his opposition.⁹⁵

In February 1875, Mackay and McLean finalised a mining lease. The goldfield revenues would, as discussed in the late 1874 meetings, be paid to the Crown towards repayment of the raihana issued – some £15,000 worth – against the purchase of the land.⁹⁶ The agreement covered gold and other minerals, gum, and coal. Official interest in coal in Hauraki came from discoveries at Miranda and in Ohinemuri itself (a discovery apparently kept secret from Maori by the prospectors who found it).⁹⁷ As in Thames, rights to cut timber went with miner’s rights, except for kauri, which was to be sold in lots by public auction subject to the right of miners to purchase trees at the standard 25 shillings per tree. Miner’s rights fees and rents would be charged and paid to the Crown. Significantly, the agreement also gave the Crown the right to grant agricultural leases under regulations in accordance with the Gold Fields Act then in force. The Crown had long been interested in the district for settlement purposes.

As drawn, the lease was between the Governor on the one part, and ‘the Chiefs and people of the tribe Ngatitamatera of Hauraki’ on the other. It appears that, at the official signing on 18 February 1875, in the presence of Pollen, McLean, and Puckey, 88 Maori signed or affixed their marks (both to the deed and to the boundary description and plan drawn

93. Ibid, p 12 (p 557)

94. Thames Advertiser, 21 December 1874 (doc o6, p 263)

95. Ibid, 23 December 1874 (p 264)

96. Henry Hanson Turton, An Epitome of Official Documents Relative to Native Affairs and Land Purchases in the North Island of New Zealand (Wellington: Government Printer, 1883), Auckland deed 835, deed 391A, pp 543–548

97. Document a8, p 227