Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Notes on Sir William Martin's Pamphlet Entitled the Taranaki Question

Page 16

page break

Page 16.

"On the block stood two pas."…………

One of these pas was built by the permission of Tamati Raru, To Teira's father. This was perfectly well known to Sir W. Martin, and should have been alluded to when he says that Wiremu Kingi and his people had been residing there for years: but the reference to these pas, in immediate juxta-position to the account of Wiremu Kingi's speech to the Governor when Te Teira made his offer, appears as if it was intended to show that Wiremu Kingi had a proprietary right in all the land which Teira offered. But it was always known that Wi Kingi had some claims on the south bank, and his property was carefully left out of the survey.

The sellers had exclusively occupied the block since their return from the South in 1848, with the exception only of the site of Kingi's pa. This fact of the exclusive occupation of the block is not disputed. Previously to the migration of part of the Ngatiawa to Kapiti, Tamati Raru (Teira's father) lived on the block in a pa called Pukekoatu. The pa of Kingi's father was at Manu-korihi on the North bank of the Waitara; and Kingi's own cultivations were all on that side. Up to the year 1826, none of W. Kingi's immediate relatives had ever cultivated on the south side but once. The sellers possessed the exclusive right of using a fishing net in that part of the Waitara river which bounds the block. Subsequently to the offer of the land to the Governor they signally asserted their ownership by the destruction of a fence which the opposing party had erected on the block.

It must not be supposed, therefore, that Wiremu Kingi's residence in a pa erected by permission of Tamati Raru was in itself any evidence of ownership of the land which was offered for sale.