REPORT ON THE NATIVES.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1893, 23 August 1884, Page 2

REPORT ON THE NATIVES.

The following is an extract from the lepoit on the natives in the Auckland, T!i ii hips and Waikato districts, furnished to the Native Office by MrG. T. Wilkinson, the agent for those districts :: — ■ " There are two things that the King natives have a gie.it desire should be taken iv hand and dealt with by the people of England. One of these is the granting of their desire to set up a King f or themselves, and the other to have an mvestignt'on into the cause of the Waikato war, the natives holding that they %v ere forced into it, and that therefore the confiscation of Waikaro was illegal, and should not have taken place. With regard to the latter I have nothing to say, out with legard to the former I am in <i position to state that Tawhiao in going home to England as the so-called VTaoii King does not represent more than one thousand out of a population ot about foity thousand natives in New Zealand. Those tribes? inhabiting Vw country to the north of Auckland, fiom the Waitemata Harbour to the \ T oifch Cape —namely, the Rarawa, the noweiful Ngapuhi, and the Ngatiwhatua tubes— would scout the idea of Tawhiao or am one else but their own chiefs being made Kii.g over them ; so also would the warlike Ngatiporou of the East Coast, who themselves more than outnumber the people who support Tawhiao, taken from whatever source they can be got. So also with the 4rawa tribe, who inhabit the Lake district. The Thames or Hauraki natives have the same feeling, and last, but not least, the Ngatimaniapoto, who until lately were the supporters of the King movement, will now have nothing to do with it. Such being the case, Tawhiao and his followers are in a helpless minority. When ifc is considered that, admitting it were possible to give him and his few-followers the power they demand, any attempt to do so would be opposed by all the tribes mentioned, and that a multitude of troubles would taereby arise between us and them. I think it is better for us to refuse to give the King party what they want and to put up with their opposition and reproach, rather than to set up as a Monarch of the Maori race in this part of the North Island a man who is not in any way acknowledged or fit to be acknowledge a<j such by nine-tenths of the native population thereof. I have for some time been aware that there are really very few natives who, if put to the teat, would set up Tawhiao as King or chief over them— possibly not five hundred who might be called genuine supporters of his, the others made up of a few out of each of the different tribes who only support him as ' a fad' or fancy of theirs. To be forced to accept him as a reality would be very objectionable to them."