Chapter 1 The Purchase of the Katikati-Te Puna Block

1.1 Introduction

The purchase of the Katikati-Te Puna block was inextricably linked to the confiscation of lands that followed the conflict between some Tauranga Moana Maori and the Crown. As the details of this conflict and the events leading up to the purchase of lands at Katikati and Te Puna are covered elsewhere, a full discussion of these matters is unnecessary in this report.¹ The purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to summarise these events and the issues surrounding the purchase.

1.2 The Crown’s acquisition of land at Katikati and Te Puna

On 5 August 1864, Governor Grey, Colonial Secretary Fox, and Premier and Attorney-General Whitaker visited Te Papa to arrange the specific terms of the ‘Ngaiterangi’ surrender. At this so-called ‘pacification meeting’, rangatira who spoke gave Grey the mana of the land and left the decision of what to do with the land up to Grey.² According to official records, the chiefs who spoke during the meeting were Peneamini Taka, Enoka Whanake, Te Hokoho, Raniera Te Hiahia, and Te Harawira.³ The Auckland newspaper, the Daily Southern Cross, reported a subsequent meeting that was held to fix the terms of the ‘submission’. This meeting was attended by many of the same ‘leading chiefs’, apart from the influential rangatira, Hori Tupaea, and Raiwiri Taipiri and Harawira both gave speeches to the assembled group.⁴

¹ Evelyn Stokes, Te Raupatu o Tauranga Moana: The Confiscation of Tauranga Lands, Hamilton, 1990, vol. 1, ch. 2; Hazel Riseborough, ‘The Crown and Tauranga Moana 1864-1868’, Wai 215 #A23, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, October 1994. For other interpretations of the conflict see James Cowan, The New Zealand Wars: A History of the Maori Campaigns and the Pioneering Period, vol. 1: 1845-64, Wellington, 1983 and James Belich, The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict, Auckland, 1986.

² Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (AJHR) 1867, A-20, p. 2.

³ AJHR 1867, A-2, p. 2.

⁴ Daily Southern Cross, 10 August 1864, p. 5.