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The Southern Districts of New Zealand

Chapter IV

page 79

Chapter IV.

TUHAWAIKI'S FLEET—HIS CHARACTER—SKILL AS A DRAFTSMAN—LAND CLAIMS—SINGULAR HISTORY OF CERTAIN TITLE DEEDS—MONSTER CLAIMS—RESPONSIBLE OFFICE OF THE COMMISSIONER—ABSENTEE NATIVES LIABLE TO SUFFER INJUSTICE—INDISCRIMINATE DISTRIBUTION OF CROWN GRANTS—TO WHOM BENEFICIAL—TO WHOM HURTFUL.

A few days before that appointed for the termination of the Commissioner's investigations, two or three large sealing boats arrived from the southward, with Tuhawaiki and his party.

They went first to Waikouaiti, a whaling station belonging to Mr. J—, who claimed a large tract of land there; and the next morning, although it blew a violent storm from the north-east, we saw Tuhawaiki's squadron making for the harbour, which it soon after entered without accident. Mr. J—, who came with them, told us that he, although an old sealer, would not have ventured out in such weather, had he not been page 80 persuaded by these natives, who are not only very bold, but very expert in sailing their boats.

Tuhawaiki, who has obtained the inappropriate sobriquet of Bloody Jack from the whalers, was a chief of a very intelligent and pleasing address. He spoke a little English, of which, and of his English dress, he was evidently proud. His influence over all the natives present was decided, and appeared to be very beneficially exerted for all parties. He displayed that remarkable power of memory at which I have often wondered in the New Zealander, repeating a long list of miscellaneous property, which he, Pokeni, and others, had received at different times, specifying what share each had obtained on division.

I thus found that several statements previously made by Pokeni, as to payments made to him for land, were untrue; and the old man was obliged to acknowledge his deception.

Sometimes Tuhawaiki's account of goods received did not correspond with Mr. J—'s written lists of property paid: the latter, however, was always ready to admit the error to be most probably his own. Indeed, this native had so good a character for integrity, that he fre- page 81 quently, as we were informed, obtained on credit slops, flour, and rum, in large quantities, which he retailed both to his own countrymen and to the whalers.

We were much amused at the pride the whalers evidently took in him. He was both their patron and their protegé; and was appealed to as evidence of what they had done towards civilizing the New Zealanders.

Colonel Godfrey, who had examined most of the claims to land in the Northern Island, was much struck with the straightforward and willing evidence given by this chief in all the cases examined, and with the skill displayed by him in illustrating his descriptions of boundaries by tracing with a pencil the line of coast, and the positions of islands, rivers, &c. In these sketches, however, he paid no regard to relative distances; as I found afterwards by visiting some of the places described. He would delineate a boat harbour or river very accurately; and was always anxious to mark out the best anchorage by the usual sign of an anchor; yet, perhaps, although fifteen or twenty miles distant from each other, in his chart they would not appear to be more page 82 than one mile apart. In cases where it was more necessary to obtain an accurate knowledge of a distance, I was obliged to make him compare it with the distances of objects we could see, in order that I might reduce it to our standard. This is, in fact, the only way by which natives can describe long distances, as they have no fixed unit of measurement* corresponding with a mile or league.

Tuhawaiki brought his son with him, a lad of about fourteen, who, he said, would be a great man, because he had six toes on each foot, like his great uncle, Te Wakataupunga, and one of the sons of Goliath of Gath.

Patuki or Topi, a young chief of rising influence, and a nephew of Tamaiharanui, was also present. His appearance was more European than that of any New Zealander I have ever seen. He spoke very good English, was dressed in the style of the better class of English sailor, or mate of a merchant vessel, and had the cha-

* The New Zealander's standard of measurement is a “whatianga,” which corresponds to the cubit, being the length from the bend of the arm to the tips of the fingers; or the “kumi” or “maro,” the space between the extremities of both hands, when the arms are stretched out horizontally and in the same straight line.

Vide Genealogical Table, chap. v.

page 83 racter
of being one of the most expert whalers on the coast.

Several claimants of small tracts of land—in some cases merely a few acres—came from the neighbourhood of Foveaux's Straits, to establish their titles. There appeared little doubt that they had generally given for them ample consideration, and that they were never likely to be disturbed in their possession, having been resident thereon for many years. These persons all presented parchment deeds, with fine seals, drawn up in the forms in use in Sydney or England, which were, probably, nearly as unintelligible to them as to the New Zealander, who, of course, could never have understood them.

Colonel Godfrey justly estimated the value of these deeds, and often surprised and disappointed their possessors, by saying that he should have thought better of a scrap of paper, containing a few lines written in the native language.

The history of their origin, and of most like them, was rather amusing. A lawyer's clerk, finding a temporary absence from Sydney convenient, conceived the idea that, as there was at that time a great rage for buying land in New page 84 Zealand, he might employ his time to advantage in that country. He therefore prepared a cargo of these parchment deeds, leaving blank spaces for the names of places and persons, and with them visited various parts of the coast. He seldom failed to find willing purchasers at five guineas per deed.

Though such documents could fairly have no intrinsic value in the eyes of any sensible person, if unconfirmed by the original proprietors of the soil, they had, I was assured, been found very useful at Sydney. There land speculations were then in fashion, and their formal appearance, with the addition of a tattooed face, scrawled in place of a signature, gave them a marketable value. In many cases, goods to a large amount were sent to New Zealand without any security that they would ever be paid for, other than the deposit of such a document as one of the above.

Of the claims to extensive tracts of land, only a part were investigated. The rest had been probably abandoned as untenable, now that it was found that they were to be examined thoroughly; or because they had become part of bankrupts' estates, as they had in some cases; page 85 and had thus fallen under the neglect to which property so circumstanced is often sacrificed.

The claimants, however, of this class, or their agents who were present, could generally give no more description of the boundaries of the lands which they claimed, than that contained in their deeds, which was often no more than a certain number of miles along the sea-coast, from a named point, the extent inland being as far as the hills, or else far enough to make up the number of acres claimed. The names of places given were more often those by which they were better known to the whalers and sealers, than to the natives themselves.

The internal evidence, therefore, which they offered was, that they could never have been derived from native dictation,—indeed that they could with difficulty have been made intelligible to the natives, whose signatures were attached, even by a person who had an entire knowledge of the language. The only means, therefore, of obtaining a tolerably accurate description was to refer to the natives present for their statement of the boundaries of the lands they acknowledged to have sold. In one instance it page 86 was evident that the claimant was thereby given even a larger number of acres than he demanded. This, however, was a peculiar case, for he had been long resident in the country, and had paid, at different times, a very large amount of property to the natives. He was, besides, on friendly terms with them, so that they were anxious to deal generously by him.

It appeared, at the same time, from observations made by the natives, even when they shewed a desire to give evidence favourable to the claimants, that most of the monster claims had originated simply in the purchase of a right to occupy sufficient ground ashore for the requirements of a whaling station, and to fish along a certain extent of coast, to the exclusion of all others, within a reasonable distance of the station.

The nature of their tenure was, in the first place, what the natives term “he noho noa iho,” which is about equivalent to what is called a “squatting license” in New South Wales; in fact, one expression is almost a translation of the other. When it seemed probable that New Zealand would, at no distant time, become a British Colony, there naturally arose a desire to page 87 substitute for this holding a more permanent claim; and, by the payment of property of comparatively trifling value, it was not very difficult to obtain the signatures of a few chiefs, who, in some instances, were at the time on a visit at Sydney, to deeds of the nature above described.

It was indeed affirmed by the natives, on several occasions, that the coast boundary, set forth by the claimant, only defined the extent of his right by sea; whereas he would have it to serve for the base line, which was to determine the extent of his property on shore.

Among the claims not examined by the Commissioner, was one of a million of acres, in the neighbourhood of Banks's Peninsula, alleged to have been purchased from a single native called Gotok. I was for a long time unable to discover who Gotok could be; but at last found that it was the whaler's pronunciation of “Koroko,” an old chief residing at Waikouaiti. I afterwards inquired of him, how he could have thought of selling so much land, which could not possibly have belonged to him? His reply was characteristic. He had heard that the natives residing at Kokourarata and Hakaroa had sold land, to page 88 which he had also a claim—for he was one of those who had moved to the south, through fear of Te Rauparaha—without asking his consent, or sending him any part of the payment: he therefore sold the whole district to shew them his displeasure.*

On the Commissioner, whose duty it was to examine and report on these claims, a serious responsibility rested. The local Government trusted to him for faithful and correct information, on receiving which, it would give the claimant a grant to a greater or less number of acres. Whatever the real nature of the claim, whether fairly bought from all the original native proprietors or not, it would, when fortified by such authority, have a greatly increased value in the eyes of the public.

It appeared most probable that the claimants of large tracts would, on obtaining the much desired Crown grant, divide and sell their property to a class of persons who were more likely to become resident proprietors. Now should there have been any flaw in the title derived from the native sellers—should it turn out that there

* Hei wakahe i a ratou.

page 89 was in reality a considerable number of natives, who had a just title to, and were then, perhaps, in actual possession of the soil, who at the same time had never been consulted as to the sale, or received any share of the payment—the unwary purchaser, under the idea that the title (a Crown grant) must, from its nature, be unexceptionable, would find, on going to the spot, either that he could not get possession at all, or that he must, at any rate, pay for the land a second time. In all cases, a large proportion of the lands claimed were at a distance from the place where the Commissioner held his court. It was certain that the claimants would not, if they could help it, bring forward native evidence unfavourable to themselves: and it was often highly probable that there were other native proprietors of the soil, who had never been parties to its sale. They, perhaps, were seated quietly at home, ignorant of what was passing before the Commissioner; or, if they had heard that some other natives had sold their land to the “pakeha,” it accorded rather with their habits to bide quiet till he came to take possession, and then get up to defend their right.
page 90

Besides the claimant, then, and the natives present in court, there were two other classes of persons interested; viz., absentee natives who had valid claims, and the honest unsuspicious settler, who might become a purchaser with the intention of occupying his estate with his family, and thus proving a valuable member of the colony. And these two classes were assuredly equally deserving of the benevolent consideration of the Government with the former—if not more so.

It was, moreover, but fair to those who had justly purchased their lands, and had therefore good and undisputed claims to them, that due precautions should be taken before the issue of a Crown grant. For—if thereafter it frequently occurred, that persons who purchased land under such a title could not obtain undisputed possession of their estate—a discredit would fall alike on all similar titles; as it would be impossible for the public to distinguish between the good and the bad.* It would then be discovered that

* Good and bad are here used, not as expressing what the titles might be deemed in the Courts of Law, but as expressing the light in which they would be regarded by the natives, which would represent their actual, though perhaps not their theoretical, value.

page 91 the only persons benefited by an extensive and indiscriminate distribution of Crown grants were those who, having made hasty and imperfect purchases from natives incompetent to give them a good title, had resold to the unwary newly-arrived colonist on the first opportunity. Whereas this latter class of persons, who, it is to be feared, might be numerous, would be injured most unjustly, and perhaps ruinously; as well as all those who, having originally made good purchases from the natives, had retained their lands in possession; and who, if subsequently they wished to sell, would find their property depreciated in value, by the discredit which had fallen generally on all titles of similar origin.