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Important Judgments: Delivered in the Compensation Court and Native Land Court. 1866–1879.

1832

1832.

Mr. Cowell makes a voyage from Waihopuhopu (Frith of Thames) to Mahurangi, sailing past Tamaki, Motutapu, etc., and does not see a fire or a native during the whole interval. This part of the country quite empty.

Great expedition of Ngapuhi under Pukerangi, and of Parawhau under Tirarau against Waikato. The Waikato tribes are driven before them up the river, but Ngapuhi retreat without effecting anything. Te Akitai, Te Taou, Ngatiteata, and other Manukau tribes follow them North, defeat them and kill Pukerangi, the leader.

Te Taou, &c, still living at Te Horo with the greater part of Ngatiwhatua.

It thus appears that during this interval the fortune of war had been gradually but constantly turning against Ngapuhi, Waikato, page 75having procured arms through Mr. Cowell and other traders at Kawhia and Waikato Heads, had been rapidly rising into prominence; had successfully repelled all the late Ngapuhi invasions; and had even inflicted some defeats upon that tribe in the North; had carried their arms down south to Taranaki; and had, by 1834, assumed a military position which entitled them to be considered the dominant people in this part of New Zealand. They had, moreover, completely driven Ngatipaoa with much loss out of their possessions in Upper Waikato, and had made peace with Ngapuhi. When, therefore, in 1835, Te Wherowhero, the most powerful chief of the district, proposed to conduct the Manukau tribes to their old places, and locate himself amongst them, there was little chance of their being molested by any of the armies which had for 12 years made this isthmus a place where it was impossible for anyone to live. Moreover, Christianity had begun to make some progress, and, wearied and worn out with war, the people appear to have hastily and gladly embraced the new religion, which, while it offered them a prospect of a happy life after death, secured to them, at any rate, a tolerable certainty of keeping their bodies in peace in this world until the time came for them to die naturally, and without being converted into the "heads," which one of the witnesses so frequently alluded to, and by the number of which he appears to have recollected events.