THE STORY OF AUCKLAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 233, 2 October 1928, Page 6

THE STORY OF AUCKLAND.

EPISODES OF THE YOUNG 'FORTIES.

ENFORCING THE PAKEHA LAW. (By JAMES OOWAN.) No. XI. In the last article reference was made to the preparations for the first Government military expedition from Auckland (1842), as the result, in the first place, of Tarai's cannibal raid on Ongare pa at Katikati. Ongare pa was tapu after the slaughter of Whanake and his people. A white trader from Tauranga happened to land there, or near by, unwittingly, to get some potatoes. A Maketu lad, an Arawa, with him was knocked on the head by the Tauranga people in punishment for the breach of tapu, and the boat was seized. There was, naturally, retaliation by the Maketu people, -who secured revenge in true Maori fashion by going to Tuhua (Mayor Island) and taking "utu'' with musket and tomahawk on an unsuspecting canoe crew there. The resultant Qannibal meal was in Maketu pa. Two traders' sailing boats had been seized by this time, and there was a pretty complication of vendettas between the Ngai-te-Rangi and the Arawa. An Expedition to Tauranga. The Government, in the customarv blundering way of governments, by this time had turned on the Maketu people as a suitable object of attack, as it would be easy to turn artillery on the pa from seaward. The Maketu warriors refused to give up the boat which they had seized—Tauranga held the other—and the civil power called on the military arm. Off sailed the Government brig Victoria out of the Waitemata, off to Tauranga with Bunburv and his fifty redcoat musketeers. H.M.s. Tortois'e no doubt appropriately named —lent three guns to the force; she was a storeship loading kauri spars at the Great Barrier Island. The brig landed her men and artillery at the entrance to Tauranga Harbour, just outside Mount Maunganui, and camp was pitched on the beach at Hopu-Kiore ("Catching Rats"). Shortly before this Lieutenant Bennett, an officer of the Royal Engineers detailed from Sydney for dutv with Bunbury's company in Auckland, had made a private reconnaissance of the bay and had examined a number of fortified positions. His report was the first expert account of Maori forts. But not a hostile shot was fired at HopuKiore or Maketu. There was a long and comical dispute as to authority, and poor Bunbury seems to have been between the devil and the deep sea, the devil being the civil power, as reoresented by the deputy-Governor. At last, after several weeks had been spent peacefully on the beach the expedition was withdrawn to Auckland. But it had at least served one purpose; it had been a kind of police station between the rival tribes, the warriors of Tauranga and those of Maketu. And before long the quarrelsome campT made peace, and all was serene, for a while, along the Bay of Plenty shore. A Lesson in British Justice.

Far more dignified, and of more value as a demonstration of the power of British law, than the expedition of Major Bunbury and his haifcompany of the 80th Regiment, was the first trial of a Maori on a capital charge, at the first criminal sitting of the Supreme Court in New Zealand. This was in February, 1542. It was the trial (ending in conviction and execution) of Maketu for the murder of the Robertson family at the Bay of Islands. The late Rev. Geor rr e Clarke, who became Chancellor of the University of Tasmania, was in his young days a Native Department official, and then, only a vouth of 18, he was interpreter in this case, tried befqre Chief Justice Martin (afterwards Sir William Martin). In his reminiscences, "Early Life in New Zealand (published in 1903) he described the Maketu trial as a question of life and death for the Government. It was a crucial test and demonstFation of British law. '"ihe contrast so great between the deliberation of the trial and the passionate way in which the Maoris were accustomed to settle such matters anions themselves that they (the Maoris in Court! were struck with admiration and awe at the formality and patience of the whole proceeding, and, anxious as the crisis was, it went far to inspire them with confidence in the desire, at of the Supreme Court, to be scrupulous]v just in its administration of the law. They were much astonished at the grave prccoss of provin" a crime that was already confessed, and greatlv impressed with the personal demeanour of the judge and the solemnly which I tried to put into my rendering of his words." Progress of Ssttlcment. At this period Mr. Spain arrived from England, in his capacity of Land Claims Commissioner, under appointment bv Lord John Russell to investigate the titles of the New Zealand Land Company. There was much trouble browine for company, settlers and Government in the South but Auckland remained happily free from landtitle complications of a serious character (the Cornwallis fiasco was an exception). S'owlv but steadily the breaking-in of the waste countrv near Auckland went on through the 'forties Population increased, Auckland gradually became self supporting, and presently boiran to" produce something for export beside kauri timber—''he great staple export of the colony in its earliest years—and the dressed flax of the Maoris. Some reference is necessary here, to preserve the chronological sequence, to the Cornwallis settlement and the Manukau (1342). Of that ambitious scheme, with its plan for a'fine c : tv on the Manukau shores, nothin? remains but' the name. The British body which promoted the Cornwallis settlement was known as the Manukau Land Association. The principal were two Scots—Colonel John Campbell, Mr! Robert Roy, a lawyer, of Edinburgh-—an English man, Mr. D S. Bo~kett, of London, and a Welsh landowner, Mr. Reid, of Landesleigh Hal! Dmbighshire. , T , h ® block on which these promoters proposed to establish settlers consisted of 25 000 acres extending from the Manukau northern and western shores towards the West Coast, and taking in much land that after-wards yielded the kauri timber millers a great business. The vendors' professed to have bought the land fr-m "a m:ssionary named Mitchell" in Sydney; this <Wl»man professed in his turn to have "bought it from the Maoris for tobacco and other foods The Maoris repudiated its sa'e, and sa : d that the tobacco, for one thing, was so verv bad ♦hat they could not smoke it. (It must have been very poor indeed). The Native Land Claims Co-irt later on awarded the association 2500 acres. The settlers paid £1 an acre for the'r sections hu + never secured their titles; their cVms 'were afterwards satisfied to some extent by the Government giving them land scrip. "St. Georges Square" at Puporga Point. The Cornwallis town, surveyed near P.iponea Point, vas quite a beautiful specimen of citvplanning, on the map. It had wide streets and large squares—St. George's Square, St. Andrew's Square. There were Great Queen Street, Little Queen Street, Buccleuch Place. Athol Place, Portland Street, Brilliant Street, and so forth. But the map was as far as the Cornwallis project got. The c'.av spurs, sparsely scrub-clothed, remained as they were; the beautiful man-dream melted away; the settlers drifted elsewhere. Onehunga was at this time growing into a place of pakeha-Maori business, a trad'n? station of increasing importance as the traffic with the West Coast and Waikato increased. The Waikato Maoris brought down their produce by way of Awaroa nortage and Waiuku, came to Onehunga and sold their produce, either there or in Auckland town, and returned with European goods in exchange. For the first fifteen or twenty years of Auckland's life the townspeople relied for a great part of their foodstuffs on the produce brought from the Waikato in this way and from the many villages around, the Hauraki Gulf. (To be continued.)