The promises made to the surrendered ‘rebels’ and ‘friendlies’ by Grey at the first meeting touched on how the government would treat these groups and provide for their future welfare. Grey told his audience that:

At present I am not acquainted with the boundaries or extent of your land, or the claims of any individuals or tribes. What I shall therefore do is this:- I shall order that settlements be at once assigned to you, as far as possible, in such localities as you may select, which shall be secured by Crown Grants to yourselves and your children. I will inform you in what manner the residue of your lands will be dealt with.

But as it is right in some manner to mark our sense of the honourable manner in which you conducted hostilities, neither robbing nor murdering, but respecting the wounded, I promise you that in the ultimate settlement of your land the amount taken shall not exceed one-fourth part of the whole lands.

In order that you may without delay again be placed in a position which will enable you to maintain yourselves, as soon as your future localities have been decided, seed potatoes and the means of settling on your lands will be given you.

I now speak to you, the friendly Natives. I thank you warmly for your good conduct under circumstances of great difficulty. I will consider in what manner you shall be rewarded for your fidelity. In the meantime in any arrangement which may be made about the lands of your tribe, your rights will be scrupulously respected.⁵

However, the hui ended, as Grey’s speech reveals, without an indication of any specific areas that those present were prepared to cede to the Crown.

Any intention of buying land during this official visit was not recorded in official documents. Nor, does it seem, was such a plan proposed during the hui itself. The historian, Hazel Riseborough, suggests that the Crown’s acquisition of Katikati and Te Puna was a consequence of Grey’s promise to return three-quarters of the land to Maori made during the pacification hui, an action that was perhaps contrary to the views of Grey’s ministers. Indeed, in Riseborough’s opinion, the Katikati-Te Puna purchase ‘was obviously some sort of solution to the long-running dispute between the Governor and his Ministers’.⁶ This dispute had arisen from a difference of opinion over the extent and function of the confiscation Maori land. While Grey’s approach to confiscation was, in accordance with Colonial Office instructions, relatively moderate, Fox and Whitaker favoured wide-scale confiscation, primarily as a means

⁵ AJHR 1867, A-20, p. 6.

⁶ Riseborough, p. 28.