It’s easy to assume, at this distance of time, that in the years after raupatu [1] land ownership was steadily and seamlessly transferred to pākehā settlers. Certainly the end result is confronting.
Wairoa Road, 2024
As well as the large parcels of land permanently and actually confiscated, there were, particularly in Tauranga Moana, areas returned (ie. initially confiscated and then given back) and reserved (ie. put aside from the start as allocations to support the local Māori population). And yet, by the turn of the twenty-first century, of those returned or reserved areas of Māori land, 80 percent had been alienated [2].
Your writer makes absolutely no claim to any expertise in the field of Māori land law [3]. But I do know a bit about Te Puna. This is the story of how Maihi te Poria stood up for himself in, it has to be said, somewhat mysterious circumstances. How did he persuade the Tauranga County Council to pay him a levy of £2 a year for the use of his land for a road from 1907 until at least 1910?
I tell this from a pākehā perspective. Although I have been in touch with some of Maihi te Poria’s whānau, and they have seen this account, my sources are confined to the public record, narrow, but authentic [4] except for one excursion into the unconfirmed space of FamilySearch, “a service provided by the Jesus Christ Church of Latter Day Saints”, all rights reserved. Out of respect for the family as well as a careful reading of the website’s terms of use, I do not quote from its content. I do however offer the link [5] in case my small contribution encourages others to explore the personal history of the Maihi, also known as Marsh, family.
There could be many others in the story. We were unable to identify any Māori ratepayer names at all in the 1909 rating records for Tauranga County. But it is clear that those Māori with interests in such land as was left to them after raupatu were not only wary of officialdom. They were also willing to take it on. At a Council meeting held on 5 April 1910 correspondence was tabled from (if I have read the handwriting correctly) one Riripete Piahana, “re road through Section 116A to 116B Judea”. The response was, to say the least, testy: “It was resolved that the Native be informed that the Council has no idea of taking the land referred to.” The Council moved on to deal with (either) Tinii or Tinui Waata Ririnui’s letter “re rates” and resolved to refer the matter to the District Valuer [6]. Nevertheless, Messrs Piahana and Ririnui thought it at least worthwhile to try. Maihi te Poria, of the Ngāti Pango hapū, similarly tried. And he won.
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Map of Ngati Pango lands, Figure 24, Kahotea, D
Ngati Pango, along with Ngai Te Rangi, “lands extend on the west side of the Wairoa River, to Poripori, Te Irihanga and Te Whakamarama with the Pirirakau [7]”. Under the Tauranga District Lands Act 1867, Commissioners determined Lot 182, on the bend of the river and including the mill pond, to be Ngati Pango (shown in the 1867 map as allocated to one Hori Ngatai [8]). But by 1919 a Maori Land Court notice in the New Zealand Gazette [9] records Maihi te Poria making “application for partition” of that lot, which has to be [10] the land that was traversed by an informal road (or track) used by the Wairoa settlers.
Presumably they had acquired their land on the presumption that there was access to it by way of the river, readily navigable as far inland as Ruahihi. But roads, as every colonial administration came to appreciate, were much more convenient than waterways. The Wairoa been bridged for decades by 1907. It’s not hard to imagine that the casual assumption [11] that trespass was permissible across Maori land, to use a modern idiom, ground Maihi’s gears. We know he became familiar with the law of trespass because of a 1909 notice placed in the Bay of Plenty Times [12], warning “any person trespassing upon my land at Poripori, with or without dog or gun will be prosecuted”.
So we know that Maihi te Poria was willing to tangle with the colony’s institutions of land tenure. The patient reader, having been served a hefty dose of context, surely now deserves to know the mystery at the heart of this essay.
At the County Councillors’ meeting held 1 October 1907 [13], almost straight after the vigilantly critical George Vesey Stewart had asked, with urgency, for a report on “the necessary repairs to be made on the Wairoa Bridge”…
“The Chairman reported that he had made arrangements with a native named Maihi te Poria agreeing to allow the Public to use the road through his property from the Wairoa Bridge to the road leading to Settlers properties on the Wairoa river for the sum of £2 per annum.”
We are not told how this was received. It’s easy to imagine some consternation in the Council Chamber. But this is yet another piece in the uneven jigsaw of Māori land appropriation post-raupatu. The political climate was just a bit more constrained at the time. For whatever reason – memories of the 1886 Barton inquiry, the current influence of the Stout-Ngata Commission [14] - there was a significant fall-off in Māori land alienation around Tauranga in the first decade of the twentieth century [15].
All we know is that Councillor McEwen proposed, incorporating a shrewd nod in the direction of Councillor Stewart, who seconded, “that the Chairman’s actions be approved and that the Engineer be requested to inspect the road with a view to its acquisition under the Public Works Act.” [16]
The approval lasted until 1910, when Maihi, for reasons undisclosed, advised the Council that he intended to close the road through his property. For reasons also undisclosed, the Council resolved to leave the matter “in the hands of the Chairman” [17].
The County Chairman, J.A.M. Davidson, must have known Maihi te Poria quite well. They were near-neighbours, Davidson holding an extensive property just over the hill, along the Hakao [18]. And, as my reading of the Minute Books made clear, there were many instances when the Council trusted his personal capabilities to smooth conflicts and find practical solutions. At any rate, the matter at this point fades from the record. I wish I knew if Maihi te Poria’s toll earned him more than £6, and how, eventually, the road connection between the bridge and “Mr Perston’s property[19]” was formalised. Semi-acquiescent takings under the Public Works Act were, and indeed are still, not unknown to officialdom.
However it happened, the public road still winds up the hill from the bank of the Wairoa River. And Maihi te Poria had other, more extensive, land to make a go of, behind the Minden hill at Poripori. For a long time, the only way he could get to it was over the land on which he had once successfully charged a toll.
References
Belgrave,
M., Young, Heinz and Belgrave, D., A: Report to the Waitangi Tribunal
WAI 215 #T16a. Tauranga Māori Land Alienation, A Quantitative
Overview, 1886-2006, Final Report
https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/Documents/WT/wt_DOC_93401142/Wai%20215%2C%20T016%20(a).pdf
Kahotea,
Des Tatana: Report to the Waitangi Tribunal commissioned for Wai 42A, a claim
lodged by Ngāti Kahu in 1986 (Wai 27)
https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/Documents/WT/wt_DOC_94031141/Wai%20215%2C%20A037%20(a).pdf
O’Malley,
V: The Aftermath of the Tauranga Raupatu, 1864-1981, an overview report
commissioned by the Crown Forestry Rental Trust, June 1995
https://www.academia.edu/2993300/The_Aftermath_of_the_Tauranga_Raupatu_1864_1981_Crown_Forestry_Rental_Trust_June_1995_222pp
Notes
[1] For these purposes, “raupatu” encompasses both the consequences of the Katikati and Te Puna purchase up to 1886, and the post-1886 acquisitions under a number of statutory measures including the Public Works Act in its various iterations.
[2] Belgrave et al, p 12
[3] In this blog I have relied on the far greater scholarship in the sources listed at the end of the essay.
[4] My thanks to Glenda McDell and the team at Western Bay of Plenty District Council for providing desk space and access to the Minute Books and rating records of the Tauranga County Council.
[6] The correspondence is minuted at pages 357 and 358 of the Minute Book recording proceedings of the Tauranga County Council for 1907-1911.
[7] Kahotea, D., p. 9. This detailed study of the three hapū of Ngāti Kahu, Ngāti Rangi and Ngāti Pango has been invaluable, as has the input from the Maihi Te Poria whanu, whose whakapapa is quite distinct from that of Maihi Haki.
[8] Hori Ngatai’s role in the Ngati Pango story is a compromised one, too complicated for a place in this story. Readers are referred to Des Kahotea’s report for further particulars.
[10] Based on the writer’s personal knowledge of the area. For instance, I know just where the Perston property was (adjacent to the present Oliver Road).
[11] Or assumptions based on usual terms of Court orders? See O’Malley, p. 190: “The right to run roads through Maori lands was included in grants made pursuant to the decisions of the [Native Land] Court…”
[13] Page 240 of the Minute Book recording proceedings of the Tauranga County Council for 1907-1911.
[14] O’Malley, Part B, section 3; p94 and p.194, citing ‘Native Lands and Native -Land Tenure: Interim report of Native Land Commission, on Native Lands in the County of Tauranga, AJHR 1908, G-1K https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/parliamentary/AJHR1908-I.2.4.3.15 .
[15] Belgrave et al, p 30
[16] Page 240 of the Minute Book recording proceedings of the Tauranga County Council for 1907-1911.
[17] P. 351 of the Minute Book recording proceedings of the Tauranga County Council for 1907-1911.
[18] Readers may be interested in the essay on the Hakao, Friday 14 January 2022, https://taurangahistorical.blogspot.com/2022/01/te-punas-lost-watercourse.html
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