product marketed as ‘Waiaroha Mineral Water’.³³ However, by the 1940s the popularity of Te Aroha as a health resort declined. Although the medical field of balneology or hydropathy has been superseded by other medical procedures, the baths remained popular, both for recreation and relief of muscular pain and joints stiffened by arthritis or rheumatism. Many of the old bath houses survive and have been restored. The Cadman Building, formerly the sanatorium, now houses a museum, and there are modern spa baths and a swimming pool complex, and two springs supply water to two drinking fountains.³⁴ But in more than a century of development there has been little direct Maori involvement in the management of the Te Aroha Domain and its hot springs.

19.4NGATI RAHIRI TUMUTUMU CONCERNS

Tane Mokena gave evidence to us expressing his family’s view of Crown acquisition and control of the hot springs:

My ancestor was Te Mokena Hou. After the fights in the land court and the troubles among the various iwi of Hauraki he turned to further affirm his right to live on his lands at Te Aroha. In 1877 he built a hotel right next to the springs as a place for the Pakeha tourists to stay in and those who visited to swim in the health giving springs. The cost for Pakeha was one shilling but for Maori it was free because the springs were a taonga.

This was the means by which our ancestors held the land. They knew that most of their lands had been lost to the government and only a residue remained. That was the reason that this hotel was built, so that the government could not say that these people lacked the initiative to utilise their lands.

Of the lands reserved to Mokena Hou, half was transferred to his daughter Ema Mokena Lipsey... The springs are in the middle of the land which was reserved for Mokena.

But in 1880 at the time in which the goldfields commenced at Te Aroha, the hungry gaze of the government turned to the most sacred of the ancestral treasures, to the springs themselves. The ancestors wanted nothing other than to retain the springs in their ownership but the Crown was stronger and the people agreed that the Crown should administer the springs. In return for the transfer, it was promised that the springs would be administered in such a way as to ensure free access by Maori to them. The Crown agreed and the Pakeha moved in to administer the springs.

The springs are a great treasure. It was a beautiful place to our ancestors, but to the Pakeha they saw only a wild, rough and untamed scene. As so they turned to renovate the springs

33.Henderson and Bartrum, p 30

34.Rockel, pp 55-61; Stokes, p 250