WAIMATE PLAINS DIFFICULTY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 83, 7 April 1879, Page 4

WAIMATE PLAINS DIFFICULTY

(OWN CORBESPOHDEN- PBEB3 AGENCY.) Opunake, 2nd April. The tangi over Tv Hota at Omalarangi is over. Jt was parlly political as well as a roortusry gathering. Mack ay 'a proposals acd suggestions were received and commented on. Tv Hota was being buried while the telegrem was being written. Tbe situation ia unchanged. Mackay is still at Porahtka, and no news from him has been received. Meanwhile tbe people here go on with their ordinary avoe-tioos ss osual, as ii no Waimate difficulty txisted. The Maoris come to Bartleu's to drink and chaff aa of yore. The carters aod travellers go atou* the beach, and no excitement is manifested among the few and scattered residents, save as to when the detachment of Armed Constabulary will arrive, and were they will be located. Having lived for years voder toe edge of the Maori tomahawk, they are thinking whether (be reinforcement is rot a farce and a mistake, and pretty generally agree that they would have been just as safe without tbe Armed Constabulary. Every Maori I meet deprecstes the idea of war as strongly as the whiles, aod their only dread seems to be such a contingency. Their large and prosporous special settlement at Parihaka they know would be endangered at least, and their extensive cultivations certainly destroyed. They also fear further con6scations, and are really anxious that the difficulty should be— as tbey Bay it ought to be — met and overcome by diplomacy, and not by force, if the white man wooM for once be bonesf. The Maori Bide ot the question is this; Sir D. M'Lesn promised lbem large reserves on ihe Plains, and a monetary acreage compensation for what he sequestrated and cold. These promises they maintain, bave beep ignored or overlooked. Tbey regard all Governmentsas continuous and not as indmdu•_s{and think that the honor and protases of the past should not be broken or set •aide by the present Government. Tbey say that 16,000 acres of the finest land on the Plains bare been surveyed and laid ont without the reservation of a single acre for themselves. Tbe point to tbe advertisement of its esle as the deliberate decision of the Government to ignore Sir D M'Lean'a promises, and rob them absolutely of their inheritance. They have Earopeon •nd native witnesses who can testify to the troth of their statements, and as jo what SirD. M'Lean really did promise. Hence they are pouri (dark), protesting, •nd stubborn, several saying " We may aa well be dead as to have no land on which to live." The white people in the district, or the bulk of them, maintain that the cutting up of the cream of the Plains without any reserves being made, promised, or talked over, and advertised fcr sale •rose from the faot that 25 per cent. of the produce of the sale goes to the' Taranaki Harbor Board. This they state is the reason why all that could be got has been sought to be obtained ere the Assembly conld interfere to prevent such an act of local spoliation. They also assert that Brown and Williams have either ignorantly or mischievously deceived the Government tad the Native Minister m to tbo state

of iho Mcoii mind, and also hey* treated the dispofses.ed natives with ignorant contempt, and in co doing have imperilled the peace of the colony. There is another aspect of this question to which I havo not hitherto referred. It is this: Accordiog to Mo ori custom snd habit of thought (bey consider our corquest of tbeir leeds was not complete. They say " You took tbe land, but failed (o keep ii; yoo allowed us fo return and settle on it; hr.ye we now to contest your cccupnncy 1"' «T TT iTnTTTi T~__~ ~i -i ia»