that either Mackay or Wilkinson did make some general comment while negotiating for the area about local Maori being able to continue using the hot springs because they would be in public ownership, but neither thought such a comment significant enough to record. The provision of such a limited facility as a single small bath at spring 7, a tepid spring which was no longer flowing by the early 1900s, is a minimal acknowledgement of traditional Maori possession of a valued geothermal resource. In conclusion, it seems to us that the Crown has failed to ensure that the traditional role of Ngati Rahiri Tumutumu as kaitiaki of Te Aroha mountain and the hot springs is recognised and protected in the management of these resources.

We accept Dion Tuuta’s comment that it is a reasonable assertion that Te Mokena Hou offered his family’s land for occupation in order that he might have Pakeha settlement on his land’.⁷⁹ We also note the significant role of his Pakeha son-in-law, George Lipsey, in securing the Te Aroha goldfield township on Mokena whanau land (Morgantown) and the land awarded to his wife, Ema Lipsey, and their two children, Ani and Akuhata. However, we also note that younger children of this marriage were not awarded any interests in land, except in the wills of Rina Mokena and Ema Lipsey, but these were overridden by special legislation, which we consider below. In the 1880s, however, as Tuuta commented, ‘Giving permission for the miners to settle on his family’s land also proved to be a very sound investment for Mokena’s family, for at least the first 20 years after the discovery of gold in Te Aroha’. Crown officials did ‘treat very fairly with the Maori owners of sections 15 and 17 who received all the rents from business and residence site licenses under mining legislation. ‘This would have placed the Lipsey and Mokena families in a very enviable position by the late nineteenth century’ which ‘did come to be envied, and perhaps resented by the citizens of Te Aroha’.⁸⁰

The claimants were critical of the Crown role in the alienation of Mokena whanau lands. The principal complaint is that all the Maori land in sections 15 and 17 was sold to the Crown by 1917. The pressures to sell were complex, and one factor was agitation by Te Aroha residents to freehold their properties. While they may have resented a Maori landlord, they also resisted Crown leaseholds too, and mining tenures only ended in 1920. The Crown also wanted to prevent private speculation on goldfield lands. George Lipsey’s purchase of some interests in section 15 may have been a factor pushing the Crown purchase in 1902 of the balance area not already acquired as an addition to the hot springs reserve. From 1907 on, the Crown acquired the whole of section 17 in a series of separate transactions. The Crown also acquired two town blocks in section 17 as gifts, the school reserve in Church Road (1a 3r 32p) and the Government buildings reserve (two acres) adjacent to Boundary Street. Other sites were donated to churches, but these were private transactions that did not involve

79.Document G1, p 116; Albert Bruce, ‘Report’, 31 August 1914, AJHR, 1914, c-3, p6

80.Document G1, pp 116-117