Province?’.¹⁴ Clarke did not receive a reply to his letter so when Colonel Russell visited Tauranga in May 1866, Clarke drew his attention to this problem. Russell responded by writing in Clarke’s minute book ‘please act in accordance with the Government Agent’s instructions until you are further advised on this subject’.¹⁵ Documentary evidence of any further official advice on the subject of the reserves has not been located.

The apparent neglect of legislation or absence of official instructions setting out criteria to be used in the allocation of reserves in the Katikati-Te Puna block means that the precise bases for their award are unknown. Apart from general notes about requests, Mackay did not keep substantial or organised records of this process.¹⁶ This also frustrates attempts to ascertain how reserves came to be set aside. However, from the requests for land that have survived, it appears that the applications, either from individuals or hapu, guided the process. O’Malley notes too that kainga currently occupied were awarded in trust to chiefs.¹⁷

It was Whitaker, and more specifically Mackay, who dealt with applications for reserves in the purchased area. In his June 1867 report, which has been referred to in Chapter 1, Mackay described why some of the reserves were set aside by Whitaker during the March 1866 meeting:

Mr Whitaker made several arrangements for reserving pieces of land for natives, in compensation for their claims within this [confiscated] block, and also to enable them to fulfil engagements entered into with Europeans for the sale of some of the land.¹⁸

¹⁴ H. T. Clarke to Colonel Russell, 13 April 1866, Appendices to the Journal of the House of Representative (AJHR) 1867, A-20, p. 20.

¹⁵ H. T. Clarke to Native Minister, 26 June 1867, IA 14/35, National Archives, Wellington (NA).

¹⁶ Records of the Tauranga confiscation are commonly referred to as the DOSLI files. They are housed at LINZ, Hamilton and the name comes from this agency’s former acronym. Their content and organisation is described by Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, pp. 209-301. This material has been copied and may be found in the RDB, vol. 124-7. Mackay’s notes are found in the DOSLI files, box 1, folder 5. See also Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 105, and Raupatu Document Bank, vol. 124.

¹⁷ O’Malley, ‘Aftermath’, p. 22.

¹⁸ Mackay, ‘Report on the Katikati Purchase and other questions relating to the District of Tauranga, 1867’, Le 1 1867/114, NA, cited in Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves for Maori in the Tauranga Confiscated Land, Hamilton, 1997, vol. 1, p. 40. A full transcript of Mackay’s report may be found in Stokes, Te Raupatu, vol. 2, pp. 105-116.