Preface.

In consequence of applications made from time to time for copies of Judgments delivered in the Compensation Court and Native Land Court, it has been thought advisable to print all the more important of these in a collective form, so as to be easily accessible by persons requiring such, and also as a record of some of the most interesting events in Native history. In delivering judgment upon titles to Native land, it has frequently been found necessary to take a short retrospective view of the history of the particular tribe in question, inasmuch as Native title is founded either upon long-continued occupation from ancestral times, or upon conquest. Many of these Judgments will therefore be found to contain interesting records of Native history for a period of 200 years preceding the present time, and will prove of great assistance to any one who may hereafter compile a complete history of the Maori race.