History of the tiriti fraud

ReadingRoom

Dame Claudia Orange reveals the truth about the Treaty signing
From 1840, Māori gradually became aware that they were no longer free to dispose of their lands as they chose. Under the terms of the Treaty/Te Tiriti, they could sell land only to the government. If they wanted to sell land and the government did not want to buy it, the land could not be sold to anyone else. If the government agreed to buy the land, officials could force Māori to sell at a low price, and then could sell it to settlers at a much higher price. Māori communities naturally resented these restrictions, and some wrote to the government to appeal against them.

They also found it strange that land could be resold from one settler to another. Before 1840 land had been ‘sold’ to secure the occupation of a Pākehā who would be useful to the hapū or iwi. Māori did not see land as a commodity. The laws of the new government were now forcing them to accept that selling land to a Pākehā meant their rights over it had gone permanently. Māori began to raise questions, too, about their rights to fisheries adjacent to land sold, and about such matters as ownership of metals and stones in land, and of resources that were part of it – plants, animals, birds and water.

The investigation of all pre-1840 land sales, which began during Hobson’s governorship, caused great agitation among both Māori and settlers. European and Māori evidence had to be given to justify a settler’s claim to a piece of land. Where the sale was fair and the buyer was occupying the land, Māori and settler were usually satisfied. But the investigations raised uneasiness among Māori who realised just how much land they had sold, and among settlers who had bought land when the country was independent. There was disquiet, too, about the fact that the government allowed settlers to retain a maximum of 2,560 acres (1,037 hectares) from their pre-1840 purchases. Land over that size was called ‘surplus’ and went to the government. This seemed to Māori to break the promise at Waitangi that ‘all lands unjustly held’ would be returned to Māori. Te Tiriti was said by some to be a fraud.

In the early 1840s many Māori grew more cautious about land sales. They were not prepared to sell land at random. They often wanted to retain their resource-rich coastal areas and swamp lands. Māori were reluctant to sell large areas of land, because they wanted to remain close to Pākehā settlements to provide goods and services. They were prepared to tolerate a good deal of settler pressure and make concessions to government, but there was a limit beyond which Māori refused to be pushed in land matters.

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Through the 1840s, officials and missionaries soothed Māori fears by arguing that the Treaty/Te Tiriti was a compact (agreement) between the Queen and the Māori people. During the northern war, Henry Williams printed 400 copies of Te Tiriti (in te reo) and spent many days explaining to Māori groups that, because it was ‘a sacred compact’, neither the Queen nor the Governor would allow any ‘tinihanga’ (tricky business). At major meetings, George Grey (arriving as Governor in late 1845) repeated the Treaty promises and said they would be kept. Māori were very uneasy, despite such talk, but still believed they enjoyed a special relationship with Queen Victoria and with her governors.

Some rangatira wrote to the Queen and sent gifts. Governor Grey encouraged Māori to feel that they had a personal relationship with him. The Māori view of government as personal and approachable persisted, but at the same time responsibility for Māori welfare was gradually passing from a ‘benevolent’ governor to a settler parliament. Māori leaders were ill-​equipped to deal with the impersonal kind of system that began to develop in the early 1850s. The government and the missionaries were also still not fully explaining to Māori the real meaning of Britain’s ‘rights of sovereignty’.

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By 1850 it was clear that despite the disadvantages brought by the British since 1840, there were also benefits to many Māori. Supplying towns such as Auckland, New Plymouth and Wellington with produce was profitable. Māori were employed in public works and on private contracts. They built rush cottages for new immigrants. Money earned by Māori contributed to the economic prosperity of both Māori and settlers, with shops in settlements like Auckland relying on Māori trade. In Waikato, at Ōtaki and elsewhere, rural communities flourished. They had horses and livestock, ploughs, mills, and fields of wheat and other crops.

Māori also took part in the social life of the colony. In Auckland there were regattas, social events at Government House, and celebrations for the Queen’s birthday and the colony’s anniversary day. Churches were established, and some money was set aside for schooling and hospitals.

Not everyone could share in these benefits, however. More remote districts had little to do with these changes. And some Māori leaders were still keenly aware of the shortfall between the promises of Te Tiriti and the actions of the government.

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In the 1850s settler society grew rapidly. The governing bodies that settlers wanted were set up under the 1852 Constitution Act, including six provincial (local) councils, an elected national parliament (the House of Representatives) and a nominated Upper House. The right to vote was given to all men over twenty-​one who owned land of a certain value. Since most Māori property was communally owned and unregistered, few Māori men qualified for the vote. Those who did participate in elections were resented by settlers.

When Governor Gore Browne arrived in 1855, therefore, he did not find the two races ‘forming one people’, as Grey’s reports had led him to believe. He realised that Māori had no say in how the country was governed, despite their essential role in the economy. He decided to keep responsibility for Māori affairs himself. This did not work very well. Māori and settler interests were interconnected, and the Governor still had to persuade Parliament to free up the money needed carry out Māori policy.

Browne also knew that many Māori communities were living beyond the reach of effective government authority. Little was being done to help them deal with new laws and regulations introduced by the provincial and national governments. At the same time, chiefly authority was not getting the support that many Māori had expected from the guarantee and protection of rangatiratanga rights under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Toward the end of the 1850s, as the Māori and European populations drew even at about sixty thousand each, the Māori people found that settler attitudes were changing. Many new colonists looked on the Treaty as an unavoidable nuisance, a hangover from the colony’s early days that would have to be accepted – for now, at least.

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While Grey was Governor (until 1853), he pushed ahead with land purchases. Under his chief land purchase commissioner, Donald McLean, strategies for negotiating sales were worked out at tribal meetings. If a meeting agreed to a sale, the purchase deed would often be signed by many of the iwi. Grey and McLean worked hard to overcome Māori reluctance to sell. Sometimes they used intense pressure to persuade Māori leaders, as Grey did in Wairarapa. Sometimes they dealt with only a few owners, as McLean began to do in the early 1850s. During Grey’s governorship, they succeeded in buying over a million hectares in the North Island, and over 10 million hectares in the South Island.

Rangatira were often persuaded to accept ridiculously low purchase prices by government promises of schools, hospitals and generous land reserves. But it was hard to hold the government to its word. In the South Island, where land was bought for the Otago and Canterbury settlements, Māori leaders were soon disappointed. Appeals were made immediately to government officials. Tiramorehu was one who wrote repeatedly, as in 1849: ‘This is but the start of our complaining to you. We shall never cease complaining to the white people who may hereafter come here.’

As long as the government was buying land, settlers did not see the Treaty as hindering the colony’s development too much. When Māori owners refused to sell, however, it was a different matter. This happened in the 1850s, as tribal leaders began to appreciate how land negotiations were seriously threatening their authority. They started asking more questions about the relationship between power and authority as exercised by rangatira on the one hand and government on the other. The situation had changed rapidly since 1840, and the need to reconcile the old with the new challenged young Māori leaders to think of fresh solutions.

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In 1859, a Te Āti Awa rangatira named Teira offered to sell the Governor a piece of land at Waitara, north of New Plymouth. Other leaders had an interest in the land, and usually the government would have negotiated with all parties before finalising the deal. But the government knew that some Te Āti Awa, including the senior rangatira Wiremu Kingi Te Rangitake, were completely opposed to the sale. By accepting Teira’s offer, the government aimed to break the opposition, to go against the wishes of an important leader and force the sale. This was a new way of dealing with Māori land ownership, and was seen by some – both Māori and Pākehā – as breaking the Treaty’s land guarantee. Taranaki settlers, however, saw the Waitara purchase as a test of the government’s strength.

Governor Browne and his advisers considered that the problem was not only about land but about the authority of the Crown to run the affairs of the country. Some argued that Teira had a right, as a British subject, to sell his land if he chose to. Communal ownership and chiefly authority were both at stake.

The sale went ahead: the deed of purchase was signed in February 1860. Surveyors went on to the land to mark it out. Shortly afterwards, Wiremu Kingi’s people peacefully challenged them and disrupted their work. British troops were sent in to protect the surveyors. Fighting began, and for a year utterly disrupted the lives of both Māori and settlers in Taranaki.

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Governor Browne knew that Māori would criticise him for his policy on the Waitara land purchase, so he decided to rally as much Māori support as possible. He held a large gathering of Māori leaders at Mission Bay in Auckland, that became known as the Kohimarama conference. The government had not made such an effort to sound out Māori opinion before: the conference represented a large number of iwi and hapū, and was the most important Māori gathering yet held. Some of those in attendance had signed Te Tiriti in 1840. All were related to someone who had signed. The only leaders absent were from Taranaki and some from Waikato.

Governor Browne opened the conference by talking about Te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi. He repeated the pledges made by the Crown and by Māori leaders. But he was careful not to stress the view that Māori had handed over their sovereignty (which was again translated as kāwanatanga or government).

His explanation of the second article was very important indeed. It spelt out (as Te Tiriti in te reo had not) that Māori rights to forests and fisheries and taonga, as well as lands, were guaranteed. They had always been covered by the Treaty in English, but the Governor’s words confirmed this beyond any doubt. However, he did not speak of te tino rangatiratanga (rights of chieftainship) – just of a guarantee of possession of land.

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We know what was said by leaders at the meeting because we can read the speeches in English and in te reo Māori in The Maori Messenger. Each Māori leader checked his speech for accuracy before it was printed. The speeches show that many had not known in 1840 what signing Te Tiriti would mean to them. Some had found out only when British authority extended into their tribal area and they had to start obeying a new set of laws.

‘It is true I received one blanket when I signed,’ said one man from Wellington. ‘I did not understand what was meant by it; it was given to me without any explanation.’

Others wondered if the agreement was still in force when it had been broken by the spilling of blood – during the conflict at Wairau, in the northern war and in the fighting in Taranaki. Ngāpuhi leaders, however, had a very definite understanding of Te Tiriti as a sacred covenant, unifying Māori with Māori, and Māori with Pākehā.

Some leaders at the conference realised that the Governor might make Treaty guarantees conditional on all Māori accepting government authority. Northern rangatira Tamati Waka Nene urged the conference to consider this carefully: ‘I am not accepting the Pākehā for myself alone, but for the whole of us.’ He reminded them that, though many of them were old enemies, thanks to Christianity brought by the English, ‘we are able to meet together this day, under one roof . . . I say, I know no Sovereign but the Queen . . . I am walking by the side of the Pākehā.’

At the final conference session, the Māori leaders resolved that they were ‘pledged to each other to do nothing inconsistent with their declared recognition of the Queen’s sovereignty, and of the union of the two races’. They also promised to have nothing to do with anything that might break this covenant that they had ‘solemnly entered into’.

The pledge became known as the Kohimarama covenant and, with the conference as a whole, it was as important to Māori understanding of Te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi as the meetings to sign the agreement in 1840. The covenant was like a new, or renewed, commitment to the Treaty as a very sacred deed. Many northern chiefs had always seen it this way, but now the idea was shared by others from all over the country, including hapū and iwi who had not signed in 1840.

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The most important idea retained by Māori leaders from the conference was that Māori mana had been guaranteed. Partly this was because Governor Browne and the conference chairman Donald McLean had stressed this in their explanations of the Treaty. But it was also because the conference itself was a recognition of rangatiratanga. Māori leaders had expressed their dissatisfaction about the unequal participation of Māori in law and government. They petitioned the Governor to make the conference a permanent institution. The government agreed, and promised to reconvene the assembly in 1861.

Parakaia of Ngāti Raukawa expressed his pleasure at the possibility of greater participation: ‘Now, perhaps, for the first time, shall I fully enter into the arrangements of the English Government, and now, perhaps, for the first time, will what I have to say be heard.’

But Browne did not really achieve what he had hoped from the conference. He failed to get support from the gathering’s leaders for his Waitara policy and his condemnation of the King movement. Many were critical of the government’s failure to investigate the Waitara purchase carefully. They thought that the government should have referred the dispute to mediation by appointed Māori leaders.

The Kīngitanga was a more difficult problem for some of the rangatira. They were willing to accept the Queen’s authority in its protective sense. But they were reluctant to admit that the authority of a leader like the King could not sit alongside the Queen’s authority. After all, the concept of a shared authority or mana, which Te Tiriti allowed for, was applicable not just to the King but to all Māori leaders.

In the first half of 1861 the government seemed to be drifting toward a showdown on the question of sovereignty. Some Waikatogroups had become involved in the Taranaki fighting. The first King, Te Wherowhero, had died, and his son, Tawhiao, had become the second King. The Kīngitanga looked as if it would last. The Governor was even more determined that something should be done about it.

There were also strong rumours going around that Governor Browne was determined to deprive Māori of their land and destroy chiefly influence. In March 1861, Browne wrote in The Maori Messenger newspaper to deny this. He repeated the second article of the Treaty. But in May he sent a proclamation to the Waikato iwi, accusing them of violating the agreement. He demanded submission without reserve to the Queen’s sovereignty and the authority of the Law”.

Wiremu Tamihana wrote a thoughtful reply, pointing out the understanding of Te Tiriti that the King’s closest advisers had always had: that there was a place for an independent Māori leadership in cooperation with the Queen’s sovereignty or mana. Frederick Weld, the government minister responsible for Māori affairs, read the letter as a statement of ‘Māori nationality’ or independence. He was convinced, as were some other government people, that force was needed to impose European superiority.

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War did come, despite efforts by many Māori and settlers to avoid it. With the government and the King movement holding different views of sovereign rights, a meeting of minds was near impossible. Grey returned as Governor for the second time in November 1861 and tried to negotiate. But at the same time, he had a military road built from Auckland into the Waikato, the stronghold of the Kīngitanga. Māori were highly suspicious of his plans. In January 1863 the Kīngitanga tried to get Grey’s agreement to their terms, based on the Treaty’s guarantee of Māori mana over lands, forests and fisheries. The King’s control in Waikato was to be respected. The Governor’s road-​making – ‘cutting the land’s backbone’ – was to stop at the Mangatāwhiri River. And no armed steamers (then being built) were to be allowed up the Waikato River.

Grey was evasive, and for some months debate raged in articles and newspaper reports, keeping Māori and settlers in suspense. Violent incidents flared on the border south of Auckland, and the government ordered Māori to withdraw from their settlements adjacent to the town. Reluctantly they did so. Finally, when war broke out again in Taranaki in May 1863, Grey and the government decided to strike a blow at Waikato. On 12 July, British troops crossed over the Mangatāwhiri River, and the wars began in earnest. A proclamation warned the King’s supporters that those who ‘rebelled’ would have their lands confiscated. It was issued too late to reach Waikato.

The New Zealand wars developed into a series of engagements that spread through the central North Island. Having started as moves against Taranaki and Waikato, by the end of the 1860s the fighting involved almost all North Island districts directly or indirectly. British troops, whose numbers were steadily built up to eleven thousand at their peak, were joined by colonial troops, volunteers recruited from Australia, and by Kūpapa, the allied Māori forces. Set-​piece battles in Waikato and at Tauranga gave way to protracted guerrilla warfare in Taranaki and on the East Coast.

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As the fighting dragged on through the 1860s, many among the British troops and their officers came to the conclusion that they were fighting a war for land on behalf of settlers, against an enemy they respected. Many settlers, too, were deeply disturbed that two peoples who had aimed to make a new nation together had ended up fighting.

The fighting drew to an uncertain and untidy conclusion at the end of the 1860s. The British government was determined to pour no more money into expensive warfare in New Zealand, and in 1870 the last British troops left. The colonial government now had full responsibility for all people in the country (previously the Governor held responsibility for Māori), and was more prepared to state bluntly that Māori had signed away the mana of the country in 1840. And yet a degree of idealism survived. Thoughtful settlers recognised that significant groups of Māori had been allied to Pākehā throughout the war. Many also understood and respected the reasons for Māori resistance. Different shades of political opinion agreed on one point, however: if force failed, then the law must succeed in achieving European supremacy.

Finding a way to bring Māori into the General Assembly of Parliament was considered essential. Having the Māori population not represented was neither desirable nor wise. But Māori leaders didn’t even have the right to vote. In 1867, legislation gave this right to all Māori men aged 21 years or over and allowed for four Māori members to sit in the House of Representatives. Although considered a temporary move, the Māori seats continued.

In general, Māori were subject to the law administered by European magistrates and judges, and were entitled to sit on juries in certain circumstances. Special provision for Māori education was made in the form of a native school system which would ultimately foster an English-​speaking Māori population. Because of this, Māori children were soon able to enter the mainstream primary school system as well. By the end of the 1860s, government policy had settled on integrating Māori into Pākehā society.

Māori were well aware of the diminishing of their mana in the 1860s. But they did not accept that agreeing to British sovereignty meant giving up altogether the mana of chieftainship. For them, this was a new interpretation of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

It was some time before Māori leaders fully understood that responsibility for their affairs had been transferred from the British to the New Zealand government. It was hard to believe that the Queen and her British parliament had washed their hands of the Waitangi covenant.

But they had.

A mildly abbreviated version of a chapter taken with kind permission from the major new study The Story of a Treaty | He Kōrero Tiriti by Claudia Orange (Bridget Williams Books, $35), available in bookstores nationwide.