Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

An Epitome of Official Documents Relative to Native Affairs and Land Purchases in the North Island of New Zealand

Report on Port Nicholson Cultivations

Report on Port Nicholson Cultivations.

Report of Lieut.-Colonel McCleverty on the Wellington Native Reserves. Wellington.

Sir,—

According to your Excellency's wish, I will endeavour to describe some of the principal difficulties attendant on the settlement of the question of cultivations, occupied by Natives, on sections purchased by settlers from the New Zealand Company in the Port Nicholson District.

I am not prepared to assert that the whole of the lands now under cultivation by Natives were so at the date of Captain Fitzroy's arrangement, viz., January 29th, 1844, or had been so cultivated by them since the establishment of the colony, though at that immediate date discontinued. It would be a task nearly amounting to an impossibility to ascertain what was not included in the above arrangement and is now in cultivation, if such do exist, of which I have little doubt, for the parties from whom evidence can be obtained are so self-interested on one side or the other that the evidence would be most contradictory. It must be remembered that in many cases the sections are the property of absentees, and are let to industrious persons of the working and labouring classes, at a low or often a peppercorn rent, to encourage the clearing of the land, and these would gladly include in these page 10nominally free leases those portions that have been cleared by the Natives, thus saving an expense to themselves and engaging the ready concurrence of the interested landlord.

The Natives, I have little doubt, have encroached, though I think to no great extent. The quantity of land now in cultivation, or which bears recent marks of it—taken in proportion to the Native population, viz., 639 acres to 633 people, children included (or one acre each), their mode of cultivation, their usual habits and wants—is not so disproportionate, nor more than was required by them at the time of the arrival of the first settlers, and from this I infer that the encroachments are of no great amount; but these even might have been prevented, by the issue of plans on which boundaries were defined, the originals to have been kept in a register or other office and copies given to the Natives.

From inquiry amongst some of the settlers (English) of the labouring classes, and who have Natives on land in their vicinity, from which they are anxious that they should be removed, and which is corroborated by others who have an opportunity of judging, the aborigines, from their mode of cultivation, require more land for their individual support than an equal number of Europeans.

The Natives have at present about 528 acres cleared on sections of European settlers, and which either now are and were under cultivation, or were so in the interval between the settlement of the colony and Captain Fitzroy's arrangement, according to the statements of the aborigines. To induce them willingly to relinquish these cultivations, to the greater portion of which they now lay a just claim, it will be necessary to obtain for them an equivalent in land, not in equal quantity, but in blocks of land which would contain a number of acres at least equal in quantity and quality to what they relinquish, and in situations equally easy of access from their places of abode: all this is most difficult to attain.

In considering the question of these lands I must confine myself to their present wants and modes of cultivation: a deviation from the latter must be a work of time and gradual improvement in civilization in the Native race, to obviate their wants as to the quantity of land required.

If the Natives do not obtain land in the immediate vicinity of Port Nicholson, many say—and there may be no great cause to doubt them—that they will migrate to Taranaki, thus increasing the difficulty attached to the settlement of New Plymouth, which it would be better to avoid. The Natives resident at Port Nicholson are all of the Ngatiawa Tribe, with a small exception of the Ngatiruanui, amalgamated with the former at Te Aro: they have the choice between Port Nicholson and Taranaki, from whence they emigrated in 1834, consequent on their conquest by the Waikatos. These are the only places on the Northern Island whereon they can locate, and by a migration to Taranaki we get rid of a difficulty at one place with some show of injustice on our part, only to expose ourselves to one equally troublesome at the other. A question may fairly be asked, "Should we be acting with good faith to those who have been to some extent faithful and vigilant allies to us in the late rebellion in not settling the land question here and obliging them to seek lands at a distance?" thus alienating them from us and increasing our difficulties elsewhere by that alienation.

I now return to their cultivations in Port Nicholson, supposing no emigration to Taranaki takes place, as well as the quantity of land available for cultivation in the Native reserves according to Mr. Fitzgerald's report, and the population of each pa in the district, as near as it can be obtained. The roads now being completed towards Porirua and the Upper Hutt may remove some part of these difficulties, more particularly as an outlay of money of no great amount expended in purchasing the claims of English settlers on Native reserves (about £175) would place at disposal a block of land of 300 acres, in three continguous sections, nearly the whole of which is available for Native cultivation. These sections, Nos. 7, 8, and 9, are Native reserves, and the road to Porirua passes through the block, dividing it into two equal portions.