Hot Lakes: Maori Use and Management of Geothermal Areas from the Evidence of European
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THE HOT LAKES MAORI USE AND MANAGEMENT OF GEOTHERMAL AREAS FROM THE EVIDENCE OF EUROPEAN VISITORS R.P. BOAST THE HOT LAKES: MAORI USE AND MANAGEMENT OF GEOTHERMAL RESOURCES FROM THE EVIDENCE OF EUROPEAN VISITORS A REPORT TO THE WAITANGI TRIBUNAL BY R.P. BOAST DECEMBER 1992 Copyright R.P. Boast, Faculty of Law, Victoria University of Wellington The Hot Lakes: Maori Use and Management of Geothermal Areas from the Evidence of European. Visitors TABLE OF CONTENTS: 1. Introduction 1. 2. Ngawha and the Bay of Islands Geothermal Zone 3. A. Ngawha Springs: A Chronology 3. B. Records of Visitors and Maori Use of the Resource at Ngawha 5. C. Ngawha Springs: Minute Book Evidence 19. 3. The Rotorua-Taupo Zone Circa 1833-60 22. A. Introduction: the Legacy of Ngatoro-i-Rangi 22. B. Records of European Visitors 31. 4. The War Years 1860-70 84. 5. Tourism and Social Change 1870-1886 86. 6. The Land Court in the Central North Island 103. A. The Fenton Agreement and the coming of the Court 103. B. The Nature of Land Court Evidence 108. C. Principal Rotorua Blocks 109. D. Taupo and other Districts 111. E. Land Court evidence relating to geothermal features 112. 7. Analysis 114. I. INTRODUCTION. 1.1. This study has the quite specific and limited objective of documenting Maori use and management of geothermal sites based on written English language evidence. It needs to be read alongside Paora Maxwell's study of the same subject based on Maori-language sources. The documentary evidence used for the present report falls into three main categories. 1.2. Firstly, there are the records left by European visitors. Since James Cook's sighting of White Island in 1769 Europeans have been recording their impressions of New Zealand's many and varied volcanic landforms. Samuel Marsden, for instance, describes the hot springs, pools and lakes of Ngawha in the Bay of Islands, which he visited in 1815, in some detail. Later visitors, explorers, travellers and tourists, including Angas, Dieffenbach, E.J. Wakefield, Hochstetter and luminaries of the Victorian world such as the novelist Anthony Trollope and the historian J.A. Froude visited the thermal zones of New Zealand and left behind them a wealth of personal impressions and a good deal of information. This material is included in a substantial number of published books, some long out of print, others which have been reissued or reprinted in recent years. The published material is supplemented by an abundance of unpublished manuscripts, letters, unpublished journals and diaries now to be found in the Alexander Turnbull library and other institutions. This wealth of material forms the principal source used to research this report. 1.3. This material is often, needless to say, overloaded with attitudes of condescension towards Maori. Many writers, in a rather typically Victorian way, strove to create picturesque and colourful effects, replete with scantily clad Maori maidens basking in hot pools on romantic moonlit nights (often supplemented by tasteful illustrations for the benefit of the British and New Zealand reading public). Reading between the lines, however, it is clear that the combined effects of an encounter with Maori life and with the remarkable landscape often had a powerful impact on visitors and stirred them greatly. 1 The purple prose also contains a great deal of valuable information about the topography and geology of thermal areas, about Maori life, and about Maori use of and attitudes towards the thermal areas. The prose is, of course, in any case not always purple. Hochstetter's careful description of the thermal regions in his classic account is a remarkable achievement for its time and is still a useful description of the geomorphology of the Rotorua-Taupo zone and other parts of the country. 1.4. The second main source of material are the files of the Tourist, Native Affairs, Lands and Mines departments. Many files have been accidentally lost or destroyed, but a huge quantity of material remains. Laregly this is due to the fact that the development of spas at Rotorua and elsewhere was a government initiative under the aegis of the Tourist Department. Consequently the Department built up a substantial collection of files on every aspect of life and administration concerning Rotorua. This source provides further information about Maori life at Whakarewarewa and Ohinemutu, about the painful readjustments after the devastating eruption of Mount Tarawera in 1886, and about the endless frictions and problems that developed as the government tried to pursue its ideal of developing a spa on European lines and Maori continued living in their traditional way in their villages around Rotorua. Although the purpose of this report is to document Maori traditional use of geothermal resources as revealed in the reports of early visitors and the records of the Land Court this information is often usefully supplemented by government files, and the reader will find that this source has been drawn on to some degree in this report. 1.5. Thirdly, there are the minute books of the Native Land Court. As blocks of land passed through the court in the years after 1865 (in Rotorua itself not until after 1881) large quantities of evidence about traditional history were recorded in longhand by the officers of the court. Sometimes this material can reveal further details about geothermal areas. It becomes clear, for instance, that villages and habitations were built around areas of geysers and hot pools, as at Ohinemutu or Orakeikorako. The minute books also reveal economic activities associated with geothermal areas, an example 2 being seasonal taking of ducks from the thermal lake at Rotokawa. Geothermal features were well-known landscape features and often were important boundary markers. Knowledge of the position of geothermal features was sometimes used as a way of testing a claimant's knowledge of a block of land by opposing claimants. 1.6. The writer has written about the modern history of geothermal resource management elsewhere1 and it is not intended in this study to cover events exhaustively up to the present. The focus, after all, is on the traditional use of geothermal resources, not on providing a comprehensive study of the history of each geothermal area. Generally the cut-off point is roughly about 1886, although in respect of some areas (such as Whakarewarewa) the narrative will extend considerably beyond that in the interests of clarity and intelligibility. The study begins with the Bay of Islands geothermal zone centred at the place now known as N gawha. This seems to have been the first geothermal surface area visited by Europeans. 2.0 NGAWHA AND THE BAY OF ISLANDS GEOTHERMAL ZONE2 A. Ngawha Springs: A Chronology _ 2.1. In this section a short chronology setting out the main events in the modern history of Ngawha Springs follows. This seems necessary in that the rest of my report dealing specifically with aspects of the history of Ngawha will deal with the subject thematically rather than as a narrative history. This is set out below as Table 1. Some of the matters referred to in this outline are covered more fully in my separate report on Ngawha Springs. 1 See R.P. Boast, The Legal Framework for Geothermal Resources: A Report to the Waitangi Tribunal, 3 vols, 1991. 2 The author has completed a separate report on Ngawha: see R.P. Boast, Report on Ngawha Springs, A Report to the Waitangi Tribunal, 1992. The present section of this report differs from the earlier report (a) in omitting the material on the general history of geothermal resource management; (b) in omitting the material on mining at Ngawha; and (c) in adding a number of records concerning Ngawha not included in the earlier report, principally those of the Reverend Samuel Marsden and Dieffenbach. 3 Table 1: Ngawha Springs circa 1815-1945 Date Event Para 1815 Ngawha Springs visited by Marsden. 2.1. 1842 Publication of Wade's description of Ngawha in 2.2. his book A Journey in the Northern Island of New Zealand. 1843 Publication of Dieffenbach's Travels in NZ. 2.3. 1858-9 Ferdinand von Hochstetter visits New Zealand 2.4. and his description of the Ngawha springs is published in his book on the geology of New Zealand published in Vienna in 1864. 1866 Discovery of mercury at Ngawha 2.4.-5. 1870 Publication of F.W. Hutton's report in the 2.5.-6. Transactions of the New Zealand Institute. This report confirms the presence of cinnabar (mercury ore) at Ngawha. 1873 (16 July) Parahirahi Block is vested by the 2.19. Native Land Court in 10 owners. 1874 (10 September) Rehearing for Parahirahi 2.19. ordered. 1874 (5 November) Parahirahi rehearing. 2.19. 1885 First Parahirahi partition. The area 2.20. containing the hot springs is at the request of the applicants separately contained in a block called Parahirahi C. 4 1894 Second partition. Crown interests in all three 2.2l. Parahirahi blocks are partitioned out, leaving Maori ownership of one acre at the hot springs. i.e. Parahirahi Cl. 1908 G.W.S. Patterson offers to sell the Tuwhakino 2.9. block to the Crown, but the offer is declined. Patterson sells his land to T C Kelly. 1926 Parahirahi C1 is made into a Native Reservation 2.13., "for the common use of the owners thereof as a 2.21. village and a bathing-place". 1928 Application by R.H. Goodwin for a prospecting licence at Ngawha. 1929 Crown approves mining licence at Ngawha for Kaikohe Development Ltd, a subsidiary of ICI 1930 (December) Mine and processing plant closes temporarily due to technical problems.