OPOTIKI.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume XIII, Issue 569, 16 April 1868, Page 3

OPOTIKI.

(l‘Tom the Xew Zealand iieratJ, Sih Anril.) The news from Opotiki is far from encouraging. We ha"e kept up a continuous system of irritation in that district, and we are reaping the result. A sort of guerilla warfare is being car-

ried ou between the militai’y settlers, assisted by the Arawas, and Uriweras, and other natives to whom those districts originally belonged. On the Bth ' March, the latter made a night attack on a settlement inhabited by friendly| natives, killing two of them. The body of one friendly native was found dead, the breast having been cut open and the heart taken away. We have on more than one occasion expressed our views on the question of the military occupation of Opotiki and its results- During the present summer some five hundred men of all arms, militia, constabulary, friendly natives and others, have been kept in constant work by a handful of savages, and this will continue to be the case so long as the present system exists. If Opotiki is to he held as a European settlement, it must he upon an entirely different system. There must be no issue of military pay. We cannot afford to have the native mind continually harrassed and excited, and to run the risk of a general war in order to find employment for a few retired officers of : the line and a number of military settlers. As long as pay is given to these men, there will be 1 fan-bans to fight jwith, or rather to turn out and search | for. There is no need, that we see, Ito give up the settlement of Opotiki. I The original plan of settlement must, {however, be abandoned. The men cannot, it is clear, settle with safety upon their individual fifty acre lots, hut there is no reason why the settlement could not be successfully established upon the same plan as far more dangerous localities have been settled in America. The men might still hold their fifty acre sections, but be settled in a mass upon some five hundred or a thousand acres of good land immediate* ly surrounding the redoubt, cultivating each if they liked their own portion, and having even an individual title to the land. The}' could thus work ami establish the settlement secure from attack, and leave the occupation of their more distant sections of laud till quieter times. Then there would '*e no vexatious harrassing of so-called Hau-haus, and our own opinion is that when the natives ceased to be harassed, the settlers would hear or see very little of them.