As fifty acres of the reserve were not Te Moananui’s to sell, the sale of Lot 12 resulted in a third grievance. The 50-acre portion had been given to Hohepa Te Kai by Hohepa Te Winika. Hohepa Te Kai subsequently had the area included with the land granted to Te Moananui and others. It seems plausible that Lot 12’s collective ownership was being utilised to protect Te Winika’s gift. Hohepa Te Kai’s decision to transfer the gift from Lot 11 to Lot 12 suggests that he, and the hapu, believed that their Crown grant would protect their reserve.

Native Affairs Committee evidence generated by Ani Ngarae’s petitions has not been sighted. There are, however, minutes from the Committee’s hearing of the Hohepa Te Kai’s petition, although it was sent to the government and duly rejected.⁴ H. T. Clarke had presented evidence during the Committee hearing (on 1 November 1878) but for some reason, the petition was heard after the same grievance was presented in the succession case in August 1878. Clarke stated:

When that land was sold, Te Moananui, I stated on a previous occasion, asked for a reserve of 500 acres for himself and his family. Hohepa Te Kai, another Chief of the same tribe, asked for a reserve of 250 acres adjoining this reserve. This land was granted to Hohepa Te Kai individually. No one else was interested in it at all. When the land was being surveyed Hohepa te Kai and Moananui came before me and Hohepa Te Kai voluntarily stated that he gave up 50 acres that he had got himself to Moananui. That gave Moananui 550 acres and Hohepa Te Kai 200 acres. You will find that the Crown grants are made out that way. I took a memorandum of it, and [--] the survey to be made out according to this arrangement. Both are now dead, and that is the reason why these different applications have come in. That is the whole story of the reserve.⁵

Clarke was also asked about the reserve’s purchase. Clarke’s reply was brief: ‘It is alleged to have been sold to Mr Gill. I believe he bought part of Moananui’s reserve. It was a matter of a petition two years ago’.⁶ Clarke, if he knew, did not volunteer anything else about the ownership of the reserve, nor why the 50 acres were added to Lot 12. In Clarke’s opinion, Hohepa Te Kai had a ‘perfect right’ to dispose of the land, given that the land was granted absolutely to him and not as a-trustee.⁷ Clarke’s final word was that his former clerk and associate Gill bought the 50 acres ‘from the right party, Moananui. The survey was made accordingly after it was made over to Moananui’.⁸ Clarke omitted to tell the Committee that earlier in the year the owner of Lot 12, Gill, had conveyed Lot 12 to trustees Kissling and G. H. Davies, of Wellington.⁹ The beneficiaries of the trust were Gill’s daughter, Emily, and Gill’s colleague, H. T. Clarke, to whom Miss Gill was, at that date, engaged to be married.

⁴ ‘Reports of the Natives Affairs Committee’, AJHR, 1878, 1-3, p. 12.

⁵ Le 1 1878/6, National Archives, Wellington (NA), pp.1-3. See Raupatu Document Bank (RDB), vol. 1, pp. 311-313.

⁶ Le 1 1878/6, NA, pp. 3-4. See RDB, vol. 1, pp. 313-4.

⁷ Le 1 1878/6, NA, pp. 4-5. See RDB 1, vol. 1, pp. 314-5.