and Ngati Rahiri in particular. (This hearing has been discussed in sections 2.2.6 and 11.1.2.) Te Mokena Hou stated his hapu were Ngati Tumutumu, Ngati Hue, and Ngati Kopirimau, all associated with Ngati Rahiri. He also listed 20 other Hauraki hapu with interests in the block and stated: ‘These tribes held this land from ancient days down to the invasion of Ngapuhi – they afterwards used to come backwards and forwards from Hauraki to Te Aroha’.⁸ He listed 16 names ‘and others’ who are now living at the base of Te Aroha, and refuted Ngati Haua claims to any pa on the mountain. ‘We were driven away by Ngapuhi and took shelter amongst Waikato tribes and then returned to Te Aroha until the time of the war with the Pakeha, we then straggled away and have now returned and are cultivating on the land’. He then suggested, ‘The reason that Ngatihaua lay claim to the land is to take it because their own land is gone’.⁹

In the 1820s, following raids by northern tribes around the Hauraki Gulf, Marutuahu tribes retreated inland to the Waikato district, but after the Taumatawiwi battle about 1830, fought near Maungatautari, Marutuahu moved back to Hauraki (see sec 2.2.3). Ngati Haua claimed they had won this battle and asserted their title to Maungatautari; they also claimed the Te Aroha block, on the grounds of conquest and occupation. This was refuted by Marutuahu witnesses, who conceded that, while their main settlements were near the coast, they periodically came up the Waihou River to get eels, and snare birds in the forests of Te Aroha mountain or the wild fowl of the swamps nearby. Te Mokena Hou stated that when not at Te Aroha he lived at Hikutaia and Puriri. ‘I was there [Puriri] when the Missionaries came there and at the time of the first Governor’s coming I went backwards & forwards to the Aroha’. He returned on 18 August 1868 and ‘took permanent possession of Te Aroha’.¹⁰ Te Mokena Hou and others cultivated crops in clearings at Matauraura and Omahu and ran pigs at Manawaru, and although Ngati Haua may have used ‘Rauwiri’s eel pa’ it did not belong to them: ‘It is not right according to Native custom to take Te Aroha for Taumatawiwi. Maoris claim land from their ancestors’.¹¹

In support of Ngati Rahiri’s claims, Rina Mokena stated, ‘Te Mokena is my husband. I was born at the Aroha, at Pakamako – at the base of the mountain’. She claimed Ngati Tumutumu and Ngati Maru had made the eel weirs there. Although she was related to Ngati Haua, and had lived for a time at Matamata and Waitoa, Ngati Haua were not owners. Ngati Tumutumu lived at Te Aroha, and even at the time of Taumatawiwi, there were a few who remained as kaitiaki or guardians.¹² Erana Ketu corroborated this statement: ‘During times of war there were always kaitiaki at the Aroha’.¹³ There were other witnesses too, who

8.Waikato minute book 2, fols 216-217

9.Ibid, fols 217-218

10.Ibid, fol 219

11.Ibid, fols 220-221

12.Ibid, fols 244-245

13.Ibid, fol 248