MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 February 1939, Page 2

MAORI MEMORIES

LAND SALES. (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) Having far more land than they could occupy, it had no value to the Maori people but that of sentiment. Disputes concerning its use or ownership were rarely known. Under the Treaty, the government made itself the sole buyer of that Maori inheritance and the purchase price was fixed at the absurd and really dishonest maximum of six pence per acre, £25 per 1000. Before the Treaty, land was sold to speculators and settlers at one penny per acre, so the government price was regarded as a generous advance.

The sale of land was at once recognised as the easiest way in which to acquire wealth, comfort, and luxury, and to gain the neighbourly pakeha’s friendship, the gift of 100 acres was a real bargain to a Maori.

The sixpenny lands were sold to the new settlers at 10s, and sublet at 50 per cent per annum, 5s per acre. Then Pehi tu Korehu, chief of the powerful Manaja poto (brief influence) conquered the Ngatiraukawa, and drove them out. So little did he value the 15,000 acres thus gained that he gave it away to the Waikato and the Ngatimahuta tribes. They felled the bush and cultivated the land until £5 an acre was readily obtained for it. This incited the envy of the first owners, the conquerors and the present occupiers, so tribal wars and disputes over land became general. Even the government bought and sold lands for which the original Maori ownership was in dispute. Fraudulent sales brought fraudulent claims, and almost universal discontent, and long wars, both tribal and racial.