establishment of a sort of gypsy race, homeless, destitute, and idle, as well as to secure the permanent good working of the original Act by securing its popularity among the Natives against the revulsion of feeling that might otherwise ensued.²

Vincent O’Malley and Stephen Robertson, in their of survey of politics and land in Muriwhenua, have noted that the 1866 amendment ‘made it mandatory (rather than merely optional) for the [Native Land] court to report on the advisability of imposing restrictions with respect to every block investigated’. Section 5 of the Act provided the legal means for ‘Native reserves’ to be protected from unscrupulous buyers for a period of time:

Every Crown Grant which shall hereafter be issued of any land comprised in any Native Reserve shall contain a provision that the land therein comprised shall be inalienable by sale or mortgage or by lease for a longer period than twenty-one years from the making of any such lease except with the assent of the governor in Council.⁴

An important reason for placing a restriction on land including reserves was, according to Richmond, to ‘retard’ the sale of land, ‘to give a somewhat longer time and better chance for the adoption of European habits of mind before the Maori settles down to the poverty and necessity for labour to which he must in most cases come’.⁵ This provided some legal protection for reserves, even if it was motivated by paternalism and a particular view of Maori culture and society.

The return and re-allocation of land to Maori was a complex and drawn-out process, made under the provisions of the Tauranga District Lands Acts’ of 1867 and 1868. The two Acts had provisions for the ‘due enquiry’ into the title of the three- quarters returned by the Government. H. T. Clarke was duly appointed the Commissioner of Tauranga Lands under these Acts to conduct the enquiry.⁶ As native title had been extinguished in this area in a proclamation made in May 1865 – even

² J. C. Richmond to J. H. Burslem, 15 January 1867, Appendices to the Journal of the Legislative Council (AJLC), 1867, p. 41, cited in Vincent O’Malley and Stephen Robertson, ‘Muriwhenua Land and Politics, 18662-1909’, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, September 1997, p. 67.

³ O’Malley and Robertson, p. 66. See New Zealand Statues, 1866, no. 28, Section 11, pp. 142-3.

⁴ New Zealand Statutes, 1866, no. 28, Section 5, p. 142.

⁵ J. C. Richmond to J. H. Burslem, 15 January 1867, AJLC, 1867, p. 41, cited in O’Malley and Robertson, p. 67.

⁶ Evelyn Stokes, Te Raupatu o Tauranga Moana: The Confiscation of Tauranga Lands, Hamilton, 1990, vol. 1, p. 144. H. T. Clarke, William Mair, H. W. Brabant, and J. A. Wilson were all Commissioners between 1868 and 1886. The Commissioners of Tauranga Lands are the subjects of a separate report. See Tony Nightingale, ‘The Commissioners of Tauranga Lands 1868-1886’, Wai 215 #A4, Waitangi Tribunal, November 1996. For a succinct chronology of the Commissioners’ appointments see Vincent O’Malley, ‘The Aftermath of the Tauranga Raupatu, 1864-1981’, Wai 215 #A22, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, November 1996, pp. 218-9.