Captain Alexander Turner Jnr. and the Scow 'Margaret' 1892-1914

Part I 

Alexander (Sandy) Turner sailed from Ireland to Auckland with his family on the immigrant ship Carisbrooke Castle in 1875. Travelling on to Tauranga by steamer, he established himself as a 27 year old freehold farmer on Katikati’s Uretara River. After farming for some years, he commenced running coastal sailing vessels and cargoes between the Bay of Plenty, Auckland and intermediate ports. 

Captain Alexander Turner Snr. 

Image: The Pioneers: Settlers and Famulies of Katikati and District. Christine Clement, 2012, p.327.

On 13 February 1892, his son Alexander Jnr., known locally as Alec or Alick, sailed into Tauranga harbour with his new purchase, the Margaret, a bluff bowed, flat bottomed, two-masted scow. With a gross weight of 31-tons, it was powered solely by sail [1].

The scow Margaret c. 1890s.

Sitting level in low tide Tauranga  harbour, the crew are offloading posts and sawn timber onto two drays. While scows were often crude and ungainly in appearance, the Margaret has pleasing lines with a nice lift to the capping rail fore and aft. Image: Photographer unknown. Photo 04-572, Te Ao Mārama.

Built at Auckland for its first owner Mrs M. Andrew in late 1884, and described as ‘a small coaster’, the bluff-bowed Margaret was initially engaged in carrying kauri logs, baulk kauri and sawn timber to Auckland, from locations as diverse as Great Barrier Island, Ōrewa, Pūhoi, Pākiri and the Coromandel mill ports at Mercury and Kennedy’s Bay[2]. Between February 1892 and 1906, Captain Alec Turner and the Margaret regularly transported sawn kauri timber from Auckland and Coromandel sawmills to Tauranga, and on to Maketū and Katikati where it was needed for the construction of houses, schools, retail stores, hotels and churches for George Vesey Stewart’s immigrant settlers [3].

The large-scale timber felling and milling operations at Katikati, Whakāmarama, Omanawa and the Ōropi Bush which required numerous scows (most assisted by steam engines) to transport lumber by sea, did not commence in earnest until the early 20th century. During the depression of the 1890s, entrepreneurial local scow owner-captains like Alec Turner took every opportunity to acquire cargoes and ensure that their vessels turned a profit. On St Patrick’s Day 17 March 1892, for instance, he took a party of 30 people on a fishing excursion out into the Bay of Plenty, having sold tickets at 10 shillings per head. Turner continued his fishing excursions as far afield as Tūhua-Mayor Island and picnic excursions from Tauranga to the Mount throughout the 1890s [4].

When not delivering timber to Tauranga on contract, Turner disposed of his own cargoes of sawn timber and posts ‘at unusually cheap prices’, directly to local builders and timber merchants. Soon after purchasing the Margaret he sold off a cargo of sawn timber from Tairua at the Victoria Wharf in Tauranga at just 5 shillings and sixpence per hundred feet, yet was still able to return a profit [5].

The scow Lena Gladys on Katikati’s Uretara River, 1920

Like Captain Turner’s Margaret, the shallow draught Lena Gladys regularly sailed up the Uretara River to deliver and collect freight from Katikati. The Lena Gladys operated in Bay of Plenty waters until the Taneatua branch railway line opened in 1928. Image: Photographer unknown. Western Bay of Plenty District Council Community Archives.

Uplifting their purchases from the Margaret as it lay at Victoria Wharf or as it sat level at low tide locations around the harbour, Turner’s customers transported their purchases away by horse and cart.

Ever the entrepreneur, in October 1893, Turner returned from Mount Maunganui in October 1893 with a cargo of beach shells, before departing to sell them in Auckland for roading and road fill[6]. Turner continued this lucrative sideline into the late 1890s, supplying the Tauranga Borough Council with much needed ‘Mount shell’, as it was called, for local roading [7]. According to the Bay of Plenty Times:

"In those days there were tremendous quantities of marine shell deposited in the locality of the North Rock Light at the Mount. This was shovelled into drays, carted across the isthmus, and loaded into a large scow, the Margaret, in Pilot Bay. The unloading of the boat took place into drays at a point off the eastern end of Spring Street, but unloading periods were restricted to the times when the water was low enough to permit the draught horses to draw the loads. The pulling was heavy too, but nevertheless Cameron Road, the Strand, Devonport Road, and other streets in the business area carried surfaces up to four inches in thickness, when dressed with this material. Those road tops were well maintained. Half-a-century ago practically no metal was used [8]."

View of the Opopoti, Maungatapu Marae and the Rangataua Estuary on 2nd October 1958.

Captain Alec Turner and the Margaret once negotiated the estuary’s shallow inner harbour waters to bring a cargo of raupō (bulrush) for thatching the walls and roof of a new wharenui (meeting house). Image: Bronwyn Taikato. Ref 00-127. Te Ao Mārama.

Again, during April 1899, Turner and the Margaret arrived in Tauranga from an unidentified location with a cargo of raupō for Māori at Matapihi who were constructing a large wharenui. At that time there was also considerable demand for raupō by Ngāi Te Rangi hapu who were repairing their wharenui at Wharēroa Marae (near the present site of the harbour bridge on the Mount Maunganui side), at Karikari Marae (on the inner harbour near modern-day Bay Park Stadium) and at Maungatapu, where the Ngāti He hapū were constructing a new wharenui [9].

References

[1] Clement, Christine and Ellen McCormack, The Pioneer Settlers and Families of Katikati and District, Ellen McCormack, Katikati, 2012, p. 328; Bay of Plenty Times, 20 August 1936, p. 2.

[2] Auckland Star, 6 December 1884, p.2.

[3] Bay of Plenty Times, 1 February 1893, p. 2; 14 December 1898, p. 2; 14 May 1900, p. 2; Auckland Star, 25 March, 1898, p.2.

[4] Bay of Plenty Times, 15 February 1892, p. 2; 27 December 1945, p.4; 21 January 1948, p.2.

[5] Ibid:May 1892, p.2.

[6] Ibid: 30 October, 1893, p.2.

[7] Ibid:15 December 1897: 2; 25 August 1897, p.2.

[8] Ibid: 5 January 1839, p.5.

[9] Ibid:5 April, 1899, p.2.

Accessing the Otūmoetai Beachfront Path, The Wairoa River’s Outer Ford - Some Early Māori and Pākehā Crossers

The Wairoa River entrance at low water showing Kaiarero (Tilby) Point on the north-west corner of Fergusson Park

Living in early Tauranga, a place of many peninsulas, rivers, estuaries and fords, often meant getting your feet wet and muddy depending on where you crossed - and now and again in the case of a misstep when travelling on foot or horseback, a complete soaking or drowning. Before the 1870s, overland travellers from the north wishing to access the Otūmoetai Peninsula and beachfront path to Otūmoetai Pā and Te Papa mission stationwere confronted with a final watery challenge - a crossing of the Wairoa River, which contributes about 50% of the total freshwater inflow to Tauranga Harbour.

On 3 July 1838, travelling English botanist John Carne Bidwill and his party of Māori porters crossed the Kaimai range to the Te Puna peninsula, from where he was carried at low tide ‘half a mile’ over the Wairoa Rivers dangerous outer crossing ‘on the shoulders of one of the natives’. to the Otūmoetai beachfront path.¹ The outer crossing from Te Puna’s Oikimoke Point, which followed a narrow zig-zag causeway with quicksands on either side, had a sinister history, with fatalities among both Māori and Pākehā who mistimed the crossing or strayed from the path.

In March 1832, the chief Titore Tākiri’s predatory Ngāpuhi amphibious expedition from the Bay of Islands entered Tauranga Harbour. Initially camping on Rangiwaea Island, the invaders crossed to the Te Puna side of the Wairoa River. When a daring group of Ngāpuhi musketeers attempted the outer crossing at low water, they became caught fast in quick sands off what is now Tilby Point, on the north-west corner of the Matua foreshore (Fergusson Park). All attempts by their comrades to extricate them failed and they remained trapped with their heads barely above the tides. When the sufferers called out for sustenance during the stillness of the nights, the Otūmoetai defenders from the pa, called to them contemptuously Kaiarero! (Eat your tongues!), by which name the point is known to Ngāi Te Rangi to this day.²

Wairoa Swamp

This watercolour was painted by an unknown soldier. He was present at the siege of Maketū, the battles of Pukehinahina (Gate Pā) and Te Ranga in in 1864, and the subsequent occupation of the Tauranga District. Titled ‘Wiroa Swamp’, the sketch shows the old Matua-Otūmoetai Swamp, which was later drained to become today’s Fergusson Park. Kaiarero (Tilby) Point is in the foreground with Te Puna across the Wairoa River entrance at high water. From Kaiarero Point, north bound travellers left the Otūmoetai beachfront path and depending on the tide, walked, rode or were ferried by canoe directly across to Te Puna’s Oikimoke Point.                                  

Miss Eliza Jones, 1858

Eliza Stack née Jones in later years

In June 1858 the Anglican missionary John Kinder accompanied Miss Eliza Jones, a well travelled,  adventurous young woman, from Auckland to Tauranga in the schooner Hope. Having lost her Welsh parents at an early age, Jones who had been born and raised in Edinburgh, came out to New Zealand with her brother Humphrey, an officer in the Britsh Army in 1857. After enduring an appalling ten-day, rough weather voyage in a dirty, cramped cabin, half suffocated, amidst dogs, poultry, potatoes and three additional fellow passengers, Jones resolved never to repeat the experience and later returned to Auckland on horseback.

Arriving at Tauranga on 9 July 1858, Jones lived at the Te Papa Mission Station with the Volkner family and later with the Chapmans at the Maketū station. Her enjoyable and memorable sojourn which included picnics, local explorations, and a visit to the Rotorua themal district soon came to an end. On 25 October, she departed overland to Auckland by way of the Kaimai Ranges’ Wairere Track accompanied by Rev Karl Volkner. The Maori travellers and porters accompanying the party travelled on foot while Volkner rode a horse and Miss Jones rode Archdeacon Brown’s pony Robin Hood, sitting side saddle, with a starched bonnet and thick veil to ward off the ‘venomous bites’ of mosquitoes.³ She recorded:

It was sad parting from my dear friends at Te Papa, who had been so kind to me, and to whom I was indebted for one of the most notable experiences of my life. The whole party together with the [Maori] school children, came to the beach to see me off [from where they crossed the Waikareao Estuary by boat]. The horses were already waiting for us on the Otumoetai side, and a few minutes after saying good-bye I was mounted on Robinhood and cantering along the beach with Mr Volkner, to catch up our Maoris who had gone on with the baggage and provisions. We found them waiting for us at Te Puna, a broad estuary which could only be crossed at low water, and under the guidance of some-one who knew the fords.

As soon as the tide permitted, we commenced what proved to be a most disagreeable undertaking. We had to traverse a wide extent of sand and mud flats, crossed by many water channels, varying from two to four feet in depth. The sides were steep, and getting in and out was very unpleasant. The shortness of my pony's legs caused him to drop into the water with such a sudden jerk every time that he nearly pitched me over his head, and I was very thankful when the last channel was crossed and we got back to dry land. The danger when crossing this estuary is being caught by the tide. The channels are only fordable at dead low tide, and as it takes some time to get over them all, it proved nervous work till it was done.⁴

Near the end of her return journey to Auckland in October-November 1858, 29-year-old Miss Jones stayed at the Kohanga mission station on the Lower Waikato River. There she met for the first time James Stack, a young missionary who was then assisting the missionary-linguist Dr Robert Maunsell. On the 28 January 1881, Eliza Rachel Jane Jones and James West Stack were married by Bishop Selwyn at Auckland; they had seven children.

Eliza Stack and her party were fortunate to have crossed the Wairoa safely. The river’s outer crossing continued to take the lives of the tardy, the reckless and the unlucky into the 1870s. Under the heading A Horseman Lost, the New Zealand Herald reported on 14 August 1871:

A man named E. G. Hall, attached as foreman to the party engaged in the erection of the telegraph to Katikati, was on Tuesday reported to the police by Mr. Floyd, as missing. He had started to cross the Wairoa at the ford on horseback. The horse was caught on the Te Puna side of the river with saddle and bridle on, but the rider has not since been seen. He was believed to be drowned while crossing that very dangerous ford. Mr. Hall was seen riding east Mr. McSweeny’s place beyond Otumoetai, going towards the Wairoa, between one and two o'clock in the afternoon, with a heavy bag over his shoulders and long boots on ... [A] native coming down from Te Puna to the Wairoa river to fish for eels, met and caught the horse just as he came out of the wnter on the Te Puna side, with a saddle and bridle on, but no rider, so it must have been almost immediately after the catastrophe.

Only those who have crossed this ford can properly describe its dangerous character. The ford is at the mouth of the river, which there is very wide; and the track - if it may be so called - is on a narrow strip of solid sand, on each side of which are numerous quicksands. The water, at the lowest tide, is over the saddle flaps, and the route for more than half-a-mile goes in a zig-zag direction, only known to those who have to cross frequently, and very unsafe for an unpractised traveller. It is said that a Maori and his horse once disappeared altogether in one of the quicksands. The search party returned again on the evening of the 6th instant, without having found the remains Mr Hall. It is said that he was the bearer of a considerable sum of money, wherewith to pay the men employed at the telegraph camp.⁵

Wairoa Village

Painted by the same unknown soldier, the original handwriting on the front reads ‘Wiroa vilace.’ Looking across the Wairoa River from the Matua side to Te Puna, the watercolour shows the Wairoa River at high water with Wairoa Pā and kainga in the background. In the foreground is a waka tētē (utility canoe) for ferrying travellers across to Te Puna.

Travellers crossing to Te Puna from the Otūmoetai Peninsula were able to avoid the treacherous outer crossing by bypassing Kaiarero Point. Wading over Wairoa Bay (today’s Matua Saltmarsh Reserve) which could be safely crossed at half tide, they made their way to Bethlehem, where, depending on the state of the tide, they waded or were canoed across the Wairoa at its safer upper ford - crossed in later times by three successive bridges.⁶

In 1874, with travel across the Wairoa River increasing, the government built a one-way bridge of kauri timber. It replaced the ferry service operated by Te Puna’s Ngāti Kahu who were transporting travellers across in waka and row boats. The wooden structure was replaced in 1913 by a single laned concrete bridge. The two-laned State Highway 2 bridge that motorists use today was opened in February 1968.⁷

References

¹  Bidwill, John, Rambles in New Zealand, W. S. Orr and Co. London, 1841: Capper Reprint 1974: 79-81.

² Rorke, Jinty, Fergusson Park and the Tilby Point Farm: The Maori History, Tauranga City Council, 1997: 1.

³ Matheson, A.H; The Wairere Track: Ancient Highway of the Maori and Missionary, The Elms Trust, Tauranga, 1975: 56-58.

⁴ Stack, J.W; Early Maoriland Adventures of J.W. Stack, A.H. Reed (ed.), A.H. and A.W Reed, Dunedin, 1935: 48.

⁵ New Zealand Herald, 14 August 1871: 2.

⁶ Von Hochstetter, Ferdinand, New Zealand: Its Physical Geography, Geology and Natural History, J. G. Cotta, Stuttgart, 1867: 445.

⁷ Neal, Justine, ‘The Wairoa River Bridge’, Tauranga Historical Society, 3 September 2021. https://taurangahistorical.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-wairoa-river-bridge.html

Images

Photographer, White’s Aviation, ‘Aerial view of Matua Peninsula, Otūmoetai, with Mauao and Mount Maunganui in the background’. Photo 00-Whites Aviation 52741 (473i), 17 March 1960.  Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries Photo 00-434.

Artist unknown, ‘Wairoa Swamp’, Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries. Art 21-042.

Photographer unknown: ‘Portrait of Mrs James West Stack’. Williams, Nigel (Canon), 1901-1980: Photographs of Maori chiefs and others. Ref: PA2-2782. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

Artist unknown, ‘Wairoa Pa’, Te Ao Mārama, Tauranga City Libraries. Art 21-043.

Enemy at the Gates 1820, 1828

The Intertribal Musket War’s Impact on Tauranga

A Ngāpuhi musket haka or haka peruperu

During the 1820s and 1830s, the Matua-Otūmoetai foreshore boomed and echoed ominously to the roar of haka, as besieging enemy tribesmen from several iwi leapt and stamped in frustrated fury below Otūmoetai, a previously unconquerable pā tūwatawata (palisaded fortress). During the summer months of 1820, the foreshore became the scene of one of the most famous peace-making incidents of the intertribal Musket Wars.

In that year, Tauranga was invaded by a Ngāpuhi musket taua of 600-700 warriors aboard 50 waka taua.¹ The expedition was initiated by the rangatira Te Morenga, who was seeking further utu for the killing, cooking and devouring of his niece Tawaputa at Tauranga in 1806. Deploying his contingent of shock troops ahead of his force (35 toa armed with the only flintlock muskets in their possession), Te Morenga oversaw the destruction by gunfire of the Ngāi Te Rangi defenders of [Mount] Maunganui Pā, who twice charged their ranks with traditional short and long weapons of stone, bone and wood. ‘For three days the grisly aftermath of the battle [fought at Waikorire-Pilot Bay] continued as the bodies of those slain were committed to the hāngī and eaten’.²

Te Morenga and his triumphant taua next turned their attention to Otūmoetai Pā. Initially bypassing the fortress, the Ngāpuhi fleet encamped on Matakana Island for several days, before sweeping en masse one morning into the Matua inlet near the Wairoa River outlet. The toa disembarked and camped on the long-abandoned pā site of Matuaiwi, a knoll overhanging the Wairoa River, about a mile and a half from the great Otūmoetai pā. Like successive enemy taua before them, they too attempted to storm Ngāi Te Rangi’s central fortress without success.³

Te Morenga’s moko Mataora (face tattoo).
Eight years after the kidnapping of his niece and sister by convict pirates in 1806, Te Morenga sketched this image of his own moko Mataora for John Nicholas, who was friend and assistant to the leading missionary Samuel Marsden

Te Waru, Ngāi Te Rangi’s paramount chief, set out alone one day to reconnoitre the Ngāpuhi camp. Advancing carefully through the ngaio trees along the foreshore, he saw Te Morenga, who was resting in the shade, also alone and unguarded. Springing upon the Ngāpuhi, Te Waru disarmed him, bound his hands and drove his prisoner into Otūmoetai Pā. There he untied Te Morenga, restored his weapons and instructed him to treat him in the same manner. When Te Morenga drove the disarmed and bound Te Waru into the Matuaiwi encampment, he, with some difficulty, persuaded his warriors not to kill his prisoner. Invited to make peace with Ngāpuhi, an extended kōrero ensued during which Te Waru accepted the offer. Soon after, Te Morenga and Ngāpuhi fleet departed for the Bay of Islands. The peace was to last until 1831, when the tohunga Te Haramiti’s Ngāti Kuri and Ngāpuhi predatory raiders were defeated by Ngāi Te Rangi and allied iwi on Motiti Island.⁴

In 1828, Otamataha Pā on the Te Papa Peninsula was stormed in a night attack by a Ngāti Maru musket taua under the rangatira Te Rohu, during which most of the Ngāti Tapu inhabitants were slaughtered. Te Rohu’s waka fleet then crossed to the Otūmoetai foreshore and pā, where they met with counterfire from the now musket armed defenders. The besiegers withdrew when one of Te Rohu’s wives persuaded him that the utu he had attained from Ngāi Te Rangi during the storming of Otamataha Pā was sufficient.⁵

A pōwhiri or welcoming ceremony on the harbourside bench beyond the palisades of Otūmoetai Pā. The palisades proved impervious to musket and cannon fire when Tītore Tākiri of Ngāpuhi launched an amphibious artillery campaign against the Tauranga people in 1832

On 17 July 1842, Ensign Abel Best visited Otūmoetai Pa at a time when it was still subject to attacks by Te Arawa contingents from Rotorua. Impressed by its defences, he recorded:

Part of the Pa is on the sea beach and part on the top of a cliff or steep bank 40 feet high. By its position naturally strong it is rendered more secure by a strong palisade and on the land side & flanks it is further protected by a deep and wide Ditch having a Stockade on its exterior side. Moreover, the level of the exterior plain is somewhat lower than that of the Pa. Were it well defended its intricacy alone would render it formidable but at present there are not men in it to defend one fifth of its great extent. Nowhere have I seen so great a number of fine Canoes the care with which they preserve their fishing nets was also worthy of remark every net being placed on a little elevated platform and then securely thatched over.⁶

During the Musket Wars, the Ngāi Te Rangi hapu occupying the Otūmoetai Pā site were able to defend their fortress and drive off besieging Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Maru and Te Arawa  taua. The wars set in motion more than 40 heke or tribal migrations, but Ngāi Te Rangi were never driven from their lands. Otūmoetai Pā’s steep escarpments, defensive ditches and palisades were unassailable, the defenders too well led, provisioned and resolute.

Endnotes

¹ Crosby, Ron, The Musket Wars: A History of Inter-Iwi Conflict, Reed, Auckland, 1999: 71-72.

² Ibid: 72

³ Gifford, W.H. and H, Bradley Williams, A Centennial History of Tauranga, Capper Press Christchurch, 1976: 18.

⁴ Ibid: 18-19.

⁵ Wilson, J.A. The Story of Te Waharoa, Whitcombe and Tombs, Wellington, 1907: 17.

⁶ Best Able, The Journal of Ensign Best, 1837-1843, Nancy M. Taylor (ed.), R.E. Owen, Wellington, 1966: 371-372.

Illustrations

Artist unknown, ‘New Zealand war-dance’, in Grant, James, British Battles on Land and Sea, Vol. III, Casell, Petter and Gilpin, London, Paris and New York, 1880: 259.

Te Morenga, self portrait in Nicholas, John, Narrative of a Voyage to New Zealand, Performed in the Years 1814 and 1815, James Black, London, 1817: 216. Alexander Turnbull Library Ref. A-080-061

Joseph Merrett, A meeting of visitors Mounganui. Tauraga in the distance. [1843?], E-216-f-119, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington

Maihi Te Poria and the Wairoa Road

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.

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

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[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.

[5] https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/L5RQ-18C/wiremu-henare-marsh-te-poria-1884-1958

[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.

[9] http://www.nzlii.org/nz/other/nz_gazette/1919/47/71.pdf

[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…”

[12] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19090319.2.50.3

[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

[19] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19071106.2.40