6. Lands under operation of Tauranga District Lands Act to be surrendered to Natives.²⁷

Clarke attempted to clarify the allocation procedure while presenting evidence before the Native Affairs Committee in 1877. The Katikati-Te Puna reserves were obviously considered by Clarke to be distinct from the others, prefacing his evidence with this statement, ‘I think I ought to state first of all that the reserves in the purchased block are very different to the reserves made in other parts of the block’.²⁸ When asked to explain to the Committee how the reserves differed from others in the district. Clarke stated that:

I think they may be classed under four different classifications. There are reserves made to the loyal natives; there are reserves made to returned rebels; there are reserves made for military services and there are reserves made in this purchase.²⁹

The reserves were differentiated with respect to the restrictions placed on them.

Clarke thought that:

[I]n every case of the ex-rebels they have been made inalienable; those that were made to the loyal natives as compensation awards to do as they liked with them; and those for military services of course were made alienable.³⁰

Therefore, the reserves were not set aside to provide subsistence for Maori until they had assimilated into European society and abandoned communal ownership of land, which was the prevailing philosophy behind reserves legislation. Perhaps Clarke and other officials thought that those who were left to ‘do as they liked’ with their reserves in the Katikati-Te Puna block, and the reserves themselves, did not require active Crown protection.

When asked whether or not those who were involved in the transaction had also been in rebellion, Clarke said: ‘There were both those who had and those who had not. In fact, the whole of the Tauranga people were parties to this except Ngatihi [sic]

and Ngatihoko tribe who had no interest in it’.³¹ Clarke also confirmed that the reserves were made at the conclusion of the purchase of Katikati and Te Puna.³²

²⁷ DOSLI file, box 2, folder 5, cited in Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 112.

²⁸ Evidence of H. T. Clarke, Le 1 1877/5, NA, p. 1.

²⁹ Evidence of H. T. Clarke, Le 1 1877/5, NA, p. 6.

³⁰ Evidence of H. T. Clarke, Le 1 1877/5, NA, p. 6.

³¹ Evidence of H. T. Clarke, Le 1 1877/5, NA, p. 3.

³² Evidence of H. T. Clarke, Le 1 1877/5, NA, pp. 3-4.