Southern Cross, as we have seen, also believed that the purchase would function as a buffer zone between Tauranga Maori and their neighbours.

Conflict between Ngai Te Rangi and Hauraki tribes, especially Ngati Tamatera, had been a feature of the area’s geopolitics for some time, most recently in 1842. The ongoing nature of this tension was commented upon by a witness, with links to Ngai Tamatera and Ngati Raukawa, during the title investigation for Waihi in 1870:

After Ngamarama were destroyed there was fighting at Tauranga – it continued. Ngati Tamatera fought Nga Te Rangi. The last fight of Ngati Tamatera and Ngaterangi was at Ongare (1842). The cause of that fight was Katikati. It was because Ngaiterangi had occupied it. The chief of Ngati Tamatera at that time was Taraia. … That fight was undertaken to prevent Ngaiterangi getting Katikati. Some of the former fights between Ngati Tamatera and Ngaiterangi were about Katikati.²⁵

Another witness, who had been at Ongare in 1842 and identified himself as Ngai Tamatera, spoke about the fighting that had occurred there and its subsequent effect on the occupation of the area:

Ongare was a fight between Ngaiterangi and Ngai Tamatera. I was at it. After the fight at Ongare all the land about Ongare was deserted on account of the people who had been slain there. Te Whanake came there to take possession as a pretext to get all the land as far as Waihi and he would have done so had not Taraia killed him. Te Whanake was a Ngaiterangi man. … I have said that the land from Ongare to Waihi was tapu. It was tapu because it was left as a fighting road. The first fighting was with Ngamarama[,] afterwards with Ngaiterangi.²⁶

Purchasing this particular area to solve inter-tribal conflict, which was ostensibly the aim of the Katikati-Te Puna purchase, had first been mooted in by the government soon after the attack on Ongare. Edward Shortland and George Clarke, Aboriginal Protector, visited the district and proposed the purchase of the disputed area and leaving the two groups to divide the purchase money between themselves. Shortland’s offer, however, was rejected, as it was believed that the government had no right to interfere in matters that concerned only Maori.²⁷

²⁵ Waiturutuu, 21 October 1870, Hauraki Minute Book (HMB) 5, p. 200.

²⁶ Tinipoaka, 21 October 1870, HMB 5, pp. 180.

²⁷ See Edward Shortland, Journal, 7 July 1842, MS Copy Micro 354, Alexander Turnbull Library (ATL). See also Richard Boast, ‘Ngai Te Rangi Before the Confiscation: A History Based on Native Land Court Minutes and Commissioners’ Court Sources’, Crown Forestry Rental Trust / Treaty of Waitangi Research Unit, August 2000, pp. 63-7 and Vincent O’Malley and Alan Ward, ‘A Draft Historical Report on Tauranga Moana Lands’ Crown / Congress Joint Working Party, June 1993, p. 43.