the present as it would interfere with the Public Works’.¹⁷ Work on the telegraph line between Auckland and Tauranga had been progressing slowly through 1870, but Clarke was prepared to sacrifice his enquiry and tenurial certainty for Tauranga Moana Maori so that this and other projects could be completed. There were, of course, short term financial benefits to be gained by those Maori who were engaged in public works, but in the long term, this delay effectively prolonged, in Halcombe’s words, the ‘locking up of the whole of the Government lands’.¹⁸

Contemporary official accounts of the district published state that at this time, Tauranga Maori were adapting well to post-raupatu circumstances. In March 1868, Clarke reported that ‘[t]he majority of the Tauranga Natives are peaceably disposed towards the Europeans … and are making an effort to live like their white neighbours’. By the early 1870s, the local newspaper reported on economic interaction between settlers and Maori, and there was, according to Stokes, a revival of pre-war Maori trade and agriculture.¹⁹ However, in his 1868 report, Clarke also noted the prevalence of disease amongst Maori and a low birth rate. Population figures that Clarke had taken towards the end of 1866 recorded 468 men, 419 women and 311 children in the district. By 1874, it had increased to 1245, but by 1878, it had dropped to 1086.²⁰ The change could be attributed to different enumeration methods.

In the meantime, Foley and Chadwick, who had bought land from Maori in 1866, continued to purchase reserves in the confiscated block. After his purchase from Tomika Te Mutu and Te Kuka Te Mea, John Chadwick went on to buy 196 acres – Lot 20, Parish of Te Papa – from Hamiora Tu and Te Retimana Te Ao, for £200.²¹ Thomas Craig, an Auckland timber merchant, bought land next, again from Hamiora

¹⁷H. T. Clarke to Donald McLean, 1 July 1871, MS Copy Micro 0535, reel 45, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington (ATL).

¹⁸AJHR 1872, D-6, p. 4.

¹⁹Stokes, Te Raupatu, vol. 1, pp. 179-80. See also Kathryn Rose, ‘The Impact of Confiscation: Socio-economic Conditions of Tauranga Maori, 1865-1965’, Wai 215 #A38, Crown Forestry Rental Trust, January 1997, ch. 1-2.

²⁰Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 214.

²¹Deed register K1 26, ref. 108^K, LINZ, Auckland. Whitaker and Russell were the solicitors involved.