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An Epitome of Official Documents Relative to Native Affairs and Land Purchases in the North Island of New Zealand

No. 37. — Memorandum by Mr. Commissioner Searancke

page 294

No. 37.
Memorandum by Mr. Commissioner Searancke.

Manukau.—Completion of Negotiations.

The negotiation for the purchase and payment of the land at the South head of Manukau was completed at Waiuku on the 2nd October, letters having been written previously to all the aboriginal owners to assemble there in order that their respective claims might be openly canvassed, and they were also informed that the payment to be then paid at Waiuku would be final. Pepene and his friends of the Ngatitamaoho tribe had, at the meeting at Ihumatao, and subsequently, to the Chief Land Purchase Commissioner, given up all claims to any portion of the payment of this land to Te Katipa and the Ngatiteata tribe. I arrived at Waiuku on the 23rd September; from that date to the 2nd October, the respective claims were daily and openly discussed, upwards of two hundred and fifty men, women, and children being assembled together. I took every opportunity during that time of bringing forward, also of calling upon, those parties who had been privately stating their claims to portions of the payment, to publicly before the meeting make their claims (I allude more particularly to Wiremu Hunia and Ihaia te Kopi, and others); this they would not do, confining themselves to privately demanding of me to pay some portion of the money to them personally. They not being resident on the land, and the claim being, I considered, very small, their influence also being very trifling, I did not think myself justified in making any portion of the payment to these parties, to the prejudice of their relations resident on the land, and to whom I paid the money for the claims of themselves, and relations; and this I did at the wish and by the consent, of the whole of the Natives then and there assembled at Waiuku.

W. N. Searancke.

27th October, 1857.