Kohimarama conference to demonstrate their loyalty to the Crown (also discussed in chapter 3) included the following remarks in a message to the Governor:

Our land at Tauranga was owned formerly by a different people – by Ranginui. Our ancestors made war upon them and took the land. It was inherited by their children, and has thus descended to us. Now the descendants of the conquered tribe, who are related to us through inter-marriage, insist upon having it back. This is not right, inasmuch as we were the conquerors and our mana over this land has never been lost.⁶³

This was the position adhered to by ‘loyal’ Ngai Te Rangi chiefs when conflict broke out over the confiscated block and the Te Puna–Katikati purchase after 1864. They dismissed Pirirakau and others of Ngati Ranginui as ‘slaves’ with only very limited and subordinate rights to land (see chs 7, 9).

However, Crown officials should not simply have accepted such assertions by one group of Maori about the rights of others. There was another viewpoint, which was put forcefully in 1866 by Rawiri Tata of Pirirakau. Tata denied that Ngai Te Rangi had any rights over his land; pointing to the ground, he said ‘Hori Tupaea has no right to that’. Then, placing his hand on his forehead, he said ‘Hori Tupaea has a right to this’.⁶⁴ Tata was explaining that, although he acknowledged Tupaea’s political authority and mana, this did not give him (or anyone else) the right to control or dispose of the land of Tata’s hapu.

The Ngai Te Rangi conquest did not affect the rights of Ngati Ranginui hapu within the areas where they continued to live, use resources, and exercise control following that ‘conquest’. In our previous section; we outlined the areas where we consider the hapu of Ngati Ranginui continued to exercise their rangatiratanga. The situation in Tauranga described by Clarke, where the conquerors had intermarried extensively with the earlier inhabitants, is typical of the way in which conquerors acquired rights in Maori society. As the Rekohu Tribunal explained, conquest alone was not considered to provide secure title. Unless the earlier inhabitants were either exterminated or expelled from the district altogether, they could continue to possess ancestral rights. Meanwhile, the conquerors could acquire rights by marrying or incorporating the conquered people (so that the children would inherit a strong ancestral right to the land) or by ‘maintaining control and burying their dead on the land over some generations’.⁶⁵ Secure title required further legitimisation by the passage of time.

By the nineteenth century, hapu of Ngai Te Rangi had acquired rights both by intermarriage and by long association with the Tauranga Moana area. At the same time, the hapu of Ngati Ranginui remained on the land, not as slaves but as people with their ancestral rights and their mana intact. It was perfectly legitimate, in terms of tikanga Maori, for them to continue to claim on the basis of their Ranginui ancestry, despite their intermarriage with

63. Tomika Te Mutu and others to Governor Browne, 16 July 1860, ma23/10 (RDB, vol 88, p 33, 940)

64. Mackay to Richmond, 22 November 1866, AJHR, 1867, a-20, p 28 (doc m9(a))

65. Waitangi Tribunal, Rekohu, pp 138–144