noted the occurrence of ‘would-be purchasers … negotiating deals with local Maori’ well before titles to their land were confirmed in a Crown grant. Te Kuka Te Mea, with Te Puru, had entered such an agreement with James Bannatyne Graham for a large area in the Kaimai district. The land in question was promised to Graham on the issue of the Crown Grant.²⁸ There is, however, no evidence that Te Kuka arranged the alienation of other land in this manner.

The underlying motivation for Te Kuka’s alienations was suggested when he spoke about the local economy at a meeting held at Whareroa in 1873. At the meeting, Te Kuka Te Mea spoke to their guest, Mr Morris, who was canvassing for Maori support in the forthcoming provincial elections:

Your election is secured. We don’t want strangers to represent us. We want a man like you, who has invested capital and is employing labour, and not men who are fickle, here today and away tomorrow. Indeed no. You are our choice and the choice of all natives.²⁹

It is plausible that the sale of certain reserves occurred in order to enlarge the economy and bring prosperity to the district.

There several other transactions that might also be thought of as strategic. These were involved Pakeha men who had been in the district before the 1860s. For example, Daniel Sellars had lived in the district for some years and had married Jane Faulkner, daughter of the Pakeha trader John Lees Faulkner and local woman, Rihipete Puhi. Sellars was also in business with his father-in-law and acquired Lot 29, Parish of Te Mania, from Kiepa Te Amohau on 20 October 1869.³⁰ Another individual who had married locally, Finlay McMillan, purchased land in the Parish of Te Mania at low prices which had been allocated to his wife, Meriana Te Rangihau.³¹

Lots 52 and 53, Parish of Te Puna were actually the first reserves in the Katikati-te Puna block to be alienated. Richard John Gill bought them for £83.5.0 on 1 September 1868. The two reserves had an area of 333 acres, but had originally been part of 400 acres set aside at Omokoroa for ‘Ngawaka Patuhoe and others of

²⁷ Deed register K1 336, ref. 685^K, LINZ, Auckland; deed register K1 390, ref. 813^K, LINZ, Auckland.

²⁸ Stokes, The Allocation of Reserves, vol. 1, p. 221.

²⁹ Bay of Plenty Times, 13 September 1873, np.

³⁰ Deed register K1 260, ref. 545^K, LINZ, Auckland.