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Background Papers for the Taranaki Raupatu Claim

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Background Papers for the Taranaki Raupatu Claim ! ! i i I ; I Background Papers for the Taranaki Raupatu Claim il 1 I I j : j I) II L, I Hazel Riseborough Massey University 1989 II i . 11 CONTENTS Page Maps iii Introduction IV Chapter One Confiscation on Paper ""* 1 Chapter Two 2'- Confiscation on the Ground: 1866-1876 36 Chapter Three j Confiscation on the Ground: 1877-1885 91 Chapter Four A New Confiscation: The West Coast Settlement Reserves 182 Act and its Amendments , ) Appendix A Reserves, Compensation Court Awards, and Crown Grants 241 Appendix B ~ The West Coast Settlement Reserves Acts 267 Appendix C Commissions of Inquiry 269 Bibliography 270 1Il MAPS Page North Island Confiscated Lands 10 Taranaki Confiscation Boundaries 20 Waimate Plains 95 Taranaki: Lands Dealt with by West Coast Royal Commission 176 I , I, I ) I II .1\ IV INTRODUCTION The confiscation of land in the North Island following the wars of the 1860s created a sense of grievance among the local tribes which continues to affect relations between Maori and European to this day. Maori frustration resulting from confiscation was variously expressed over the years by further armed resistance, by pacific resistance to the enforcement of the confiscation, and by the presentation of a series of petitions to parliament. Governments responded to the expressions of grievance through military and legislative means and by the establishment of a series of commissions of enquiry, but it was not until 1926 that the confiscation itself became the subject of official enquiry. These background papers to the Taranaki raupatu claim to be heard by the Waitangi Tribunal in 1990, survey events in Taranaki from the time of the confiscations to the present day, and i I concentrate on the policy, the implementation, and the consequences of confiscation. Chapter one is a study of the confiscation itself: its genesis, its introduction to and application in New Zealand, the New Zealand Settlements Act, 1963 and its amendments, the proclamation of December 1864, and the orders in council of January 1865 and September 1865 - the 'real instrument of confiscation' in Taranaki. , I, Chapters two and three deal with confiscation on the ground. In the period 1866-1876 the confiscation was enforced south of the Waingongoro and north of the Hangatahua or Stoney 1 , ! River; in 1878 an attempt was made to enforce it between those two rivers. Chapter two looks at the establishment of military settlers in the northern and southern parts of Taranaki; the operations of the Compensation Court; the resistance offered to the enforcement of confiscation, first by interruptions to the survey, and then by the military campaigns of Titokowaru and his followers; the return of various hapu of Ngatiruanui and Ngarauru to their ancestral lands both north and south of the Waingongoro, and the continuing unrest due to lack v or inadequacy of reserves; and at government efforts to 'acquire' confiscated land through the purchase of Compensation Court awards or the payment of takoha. Chapter three is a resume of Days of Darkness: Taranaki 1878-1884 (Wellington, Allen and Unwin, 1989). It deals with the enforcement of confiscation between the Waingongoro and Hangatahua rivers, and the peaceable resistance offered to government attempts to survey the land for sale and settlement before the reserves promised by the acts and proclamations of confiscation were defined on the ground. This chapter also details the legislation passed to deal with Maori resistance to the enforcement of confiscation in the years 1877-1885. Chapter four is a study of the operations of the West Coast Settlement Reserves Act, 1881, passed to provide for the 'proper administration and management' of the reserves to be set aside 'for Natives' and 'for the benefit of Natives' according to the provisions of the West Coast Settlement (North Island) Act, 1880. Continual settler pressure on government resulted i I in a succession of amendments to the 1881 act Progressive diminution of the rights of the Maori owners led to the presentation of petitions to parliament and resulted in the setting up of commissions of enquiry. This chapter looks at the fIfteen major and several minor amendments to the act and at twelve commissions of enquily set up to enquire into or to deal 'lI - with Maori grievances in Taran~weeen 1881 and 1974. Finally it looks at the i establishment in 1976 of the Paraninihi ki Waitotara Incorporation, and the continuing disquiet I f I in 1989 over the operation of the statutory provisions for perpetual lease of the west coast settlement reserves. , I i I I i I CHAPTER ONE CONFISCATION ON PAPER In a House of Commons debate on New Zealand in June 1845, Sir James Graham, a member of Sir Robert Peel's Cabinet, announced that the government intended to calion everyone in New Zealand, whether Maori or settler, to come in and 'prove and register' their titles to land. At the end of a designated period 'the right of the sovereignty of the Crown to all unregistered lands would accrue', and all waste land registered would be taxed. Lord John Russell, then in , I i opposition, was highly critical of this policy: 'first ... there is to be a tax on the wild lands. Then there is to be registration of all native lands, then a property tax, then confiscation of the land'. Yet at the end of 1846, with Russell's government in power, and Earl Grey secretary of state for the colonies, an even more drastic scheme was put forward 'not only to confiscate unregistered land but to limit the right of the natives to land on which actual labour was expended by them') The rest of New Zealand was then 'to be declared to be the royal demesne'. This scheme 'for land registration and confiscation' failed, and no further attempt I I I 'to confiscate native land' was made at that time;2 it was obvious that the Treaty ofWaitangi had to be accepted as the Maori understood it, or there would be war. It was clear from the start to those who proposed annexation and colonization of New Zealand that control of the land meant control of settlement, and gradually, by manipulative use of the pre-emption clause of the treaty, the governor succeeded in creating a royal demesne of vast tracts of land not in actual 'occupation' (as the British understood it) or cultivation by the Maori. It soon became evident that control of the land also meant control of the Maori, and by the 1860s, when war was no longer such an issue to the strong and numerous settler community, confiscation was proposed as a means of deterring or controlling 'hostile' Maori. E. Wilson Wilson, Land Problems of the New Zealand Settlers of the 'Forties, Wellington, 1935, p208. 2 ibid pp213, 224. \ i 2 Prior to Waitangi the British government had recognised that Maori title to the soil and to the sovereignty of New Zealand was indIsputable, and that land for settlement would have to be purchased from the Maori. Although this fact was widely known and accepted by Europeans in New Zealand at the time, it was disputed by many prominent men in Britain who argued that indigenous people did not have territorial rights to land which they did not cultivate. Officers of the New Zealand Company, bent on profiting through the colonization of New Zealand's waste lands, spoke scathingly of 'Normanby's excessive view of Maori rights') Secretary of State Normanby instructed Captain Hobson to try to induce the chiefs henceforth to cede no lands except to the Crown of Great Britain. This directive which, by subtle means, became the 'pre-emption clause' of the Treaty ofWaitangi, was not founded primarily on any legal or humanitarian argument. It was made with a view to the prosperity of the future colony by preventing the 'pernicious waste' of large-scale land speculation, and to the need for the Crown to make a profit on the resale of 'unsettled lands'.4 As a further brake on land speculation, Normanby recommended that all uncleared lands within the British settlements in New Zealand , I be subjected to a small annual tax and that land be forfeited in default of payment of the tax. Pre-emption having been imposed for profit in the interests of orderly settlement, native ,( interests were to be protected through 'fair and equal contracts' between the Maori and the Crown for the cession 'of such waste lands as may be progressively required for the occupation of settlers'. The fair and equal contracts were to involve 'the investment of a comparatively small sum of money', and the resale to settlers of lands so acquired was to provide the funds necessary for future acquisitions.S \ ' I I, 3 Peter Adams, Fatal Necessity: British Intervention in New Zealand, 1830-1847, Auckland, 1977, pp 175, 179-80, 184, 187-88. 4 Normanby to Hobson 14 August 1839, Irish University Press series of British Parliamentary Papers, I Colonies, New Zealand (hereafter BPP/IUP), vol 3, Shannon, 1970, p86. _See also Adams ppI94-95. , I I , 5 BPP/IUP vol 3 p87. i i 3 That pre-emption was first and foremost to be the means of providing an emigration fund was spelled out by later secretaries of state. Stanley entertained no doubts that the original intention of the pre-emptive provision of the Treaty of Waitangi 'was to enable the Crown, as the sole purchaser, to obtain land on easy terms from the native tribes, applying a portion of the proceeds, when re-sold, to the importation of labourers, and the remainder to other public objects, but especially to the purchase of more land, to be again re-sold at a profit and this operation to be repeated toties Quoties'.6 Earl Grey described it as 'the mode by which, with least inconvenience and difficulty, funds can be raised for emigration, and for executing those public works which are necessary for the profitable occupation of the soil'.
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