The entire Tauranga district (approximately 290,000 acres70), from Nga Kuri a Wharei to Wairakei, was initially confiscated under the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863 on 18 May 1865.71 During peace negotiations held between Governor Grey and some Tauranga chiefs, Grey promised that only one-quarter of the confiscated lands would be retained by the Crown, and the remaining three-quarters would be returned to Maori ownership. It was later decided that the land to be confiscated was 50,000 acres between the Wairoa and Waimapu rivers (see Figure 8).72
Nevertheless, in May 1866 the district surveyor reported that:
nothing like an adequate quantity of “good agricultural land” can be obtained within the limits of the confiscated block, as the greater part of it is of so rugged and broken a character, that scarcely any practicable road at all can be laid out upon it …73
One of the government’s objectives was to establish a military settlement at Tauranga. The Crown was therefore anxious to obtain a sufficient area of land that would be suitable for farming settlement. Premier Frederick Whitaker had instructed that the survey should proceed west of the Wairoa River towards Te Puna, so that 50,000 acres could be obtained.
When the surveyors crossed the Wairoa River to survey land on the west bank, they were resisted by Pirirakau, who apparently had the support of Ngati Haua. The surveyors had their tents broken into and instruments stolen.74 Wiremu Tamihana wrote to Commissioner Clarke to tell him that the survey on that side of the river should be stopped:
When I arrived here I heard that you were living in trouble, the reason, because the survey has crossed this side of the Wairoa and other places of Tauranga, that is the places which the Natives have agreed should be surveyed. I have heard that the surveys have reached those places, and that the chain has been taken twice on this side of the Te Wairoa, and twice on another place. Now do you hearken. I agree to their sending back the chain. This is a decided word of mine to you. Stop your work let it cease at Te Wairoa and at Waimapu on the other side, do not persist determining.75
This is a clear indication that Maori understood that the confiscated block to be retained by the Crown should be between the Wairoa and Waimapu rivers only. It also shows that those Maori who lived on the west of the Wairoa River had not agreed to their land being included within the confiscated block.
A meeting was held on 1 November 1866 to explain why the boundary of the confiscated block would extend to the Te Puna River. The following is Commissioner Mackay’s account of the meeting:
Some discussions ensued and the Arawa claims near Puwhenua were mentioned as a reason for the survey not being carried further back. Mr Clarke explained that the arrangement entered into with His Excellency the Governor and Mr Whitaker was that “if the fifty thousand acres could not be obtained between the rivers Waimapu and
70 ‘Report of the Royal commission on Confiscated lands and other Grievances’, Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (AJHR), 1928, G-7, p 19
71New Zealand Gazette, 1865, p 187
72 Stokes, 1990, p 39
73 cited in Stokes, 1990, p 102
74 Rachael Willan, ‘Wairoa River Report’, a Report Commissioned by the Waitangi Tribunal, 1996, p 24
75 W. Tamihana Te Waharoa to Mr Clarke, AJHR, 1867, A-20, enclosure no. 3
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