second and third sections survey early sales generally and the early sales in the Katikati-Te Puna block in particular. Richard John Gill’s purchases are the focus of the fourth section, especially, although not exclusively, his purchases from Te Moananui and the consolidation of Gill’s interests at Rereatukahia.

3.1 Tauranga: 1866 to the early 1870s

The earliest officially recorded transaction involving Maori land in either the confiscated block or the purchased area was Tomika Te Mutu and Te Kuka Te Mea’s sale of two reserves at Otumoetai – Lot 34 and Lot 36 – to Edmund Foley on 21 December 1866, for which they received £300.² Foley had come to the district to take up a commissariat contract for troops and had been at Tauranga at the time of Gate Pa.³ Three days later these two sold a further 100 acres at Otumoetai (Lot 92) to John Chadwick for £80, who was farming in the district.⁴ These may have been the areas reserved by Whitaker in March 1866 ‘for natives … to enable them to fulfil engagements entered into with Europeans for the sale of some of the land’, although the lack of documentary evidence means that this is mere speculation.⁵

In contrast to these seemingly mutually beneficial contracts between the two chiefs and two Pakeha, a week later, the recently-arrived District Surveyor, H. L. Skeet, notified Clarke that a survey party had been warned to stop its activities because ‘rebel Hauhaus were on their way to seize both surveyors and camp’.⁶ By 17 January 1867, troops were called out, implementing a scorched earth policy that continued through to March. During this campaign troops burned the villages occupied by Pirirakau and Ngati Ranginui from Whakamarama to Waoku. On the pretext that inland groups had stored enough food to supply the rebel force, crops

² Deed register K1 92, ref. 99^K, Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) Auckland. Jackson and Russell were the solicitors involved in this transaction. Stokes does not list any reserves with these numbers at Otumoetai. Refer to Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves for Maori in the Tauranga Confiscated Lands, Hamilton, 1997, vol. 2: index lists, passim.

³ Guy Scholefield, ed., Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Wellington, 1940, vol. 1, p. 268.

⁴ Deed register K1 25, ref. 92^K, LINZ, Auckland.

⁵ Mackay, Le 1 1867/114, NA, cited in Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 40.

⁶ Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (AJHR) 1867, A-20, p. 39.