STORIES OF NEW ZEALAND

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 235, 3 October 1936, Page 20 (Supplement)

STORIES OF NEW ZEALAND

. By JAMES COWAN.

THE town of Napier and the farms and villages of Hawke's Bay Province were founded later than the other British settlements that gradually came to be linked together as the Colony of New Zealand. The early history of Hawke's Bay is different from that of Wellington and Wanganui and Taranaki, because there were no disputes with the Maoris about land. The New Zealand Company and Colonel Wakefield had nothing to do with the beginnings of pakeha settlement on the east coast. No attempt was made to obtain land for white settlers in that part of New Zealand until more than ten years after the first English immigrants landed on the shore of Port Nicholson. The peaceful way in which pakeha enterprise , began in the province which is now so beautiful and wealthy was due in the first place to the influence of Sir George Grey, and in the second to a young Scottish Highland colonist and official. Donald Maclean. It was in 1851, after Grey, in his first Governorship of the Colony, had visited Hawke's Bay and mado friends with the Maori chiefs there that Mr. Maclean (afterwards Sir Donald) began the long series of purchases which secured most of the east coast for British settlement. The People and the Land. There were already many white men along the coast, mostly whalers and traders, living at Ahuriri (now Napier), Mohaka, Wairoa and Mahia. Their concern was chiefly with the sea and the coast Maoris. The great interior of the country, from the ocean to the mountain backbone of the land was only thinly peopled. There was very little forest; the country was open and easy to travel through, except for the numerous < rivers and the large swamps. The < owners of the soil, the Ngati-Kahu- • ngunu (Kah-hoo-ngoo-noo) were from , the first kindly disposed toward . white people, and when the Govern- i

ment began to buy the land required for settlement the high chiefs readily gave up large areas-:for small sums of money. In after years it was realised that the white man acquired the great plains and downs of Hawke's Bay very cheaply indeed. But the land was useless as it lay: it required

' pakeha industry to make it valuable. The tribes retained great areas for themselves, and they b°:ame in the end the most prosperous of all the Maori communities because their land increased in value through the enterprise and progress of the white settlers, who were cViefly sheep farmers. The Site of Napier. The Ahuriri block, on which the town of Napier now stands, was thy first land, bought. All this site and an area extending up to the ranges inland cost the Government only

£1000. The high land, now called Scinde Island, which is the beautiful residential part of Napier, was a subject of a separate purchase, completed by Maclean in 1856. The purchase price was £50, and a reserve for> the chief, Talieha (pronounced with the, accent on the first syllable), consisting of two town sections "when the land has a town." As the site of Napier's business area was then merely a stony and sandy waste, it was not greatly valued by the Maoris, and for his part the canny Maclean was not giving away much. Thus cheaply did the Crown acquire a place that in time became so rich and busy a town and seaport. The island-like heights where the homes of the townspeople lie so comfortably among their trees and flowers to-day bore a long Maori

name which was replaced by Scinde, when the surveys and street-naming were carried out. Farewell to The Land. I searched the records of these early land purchases in Wellington, and noted down the terms of the original deeds which the Maori chiefs signed with their names or marks. They were documents into which some pathos and poetic feeling entered. This is an extract from the final Scinde Island purchase deed, signed on the shore of Ahuriri harbour in 1856. After naming the boundaries of the land, the deed pro ceeded in these words:— "Now we have fully considered wept over and bid adieu to this land inherited by us from our forefathers with all its rivers lakes waters streams trees stones grass plains forests good places and bad and everything either above or below the soil and all and everything connected with the said land we have fully and entirely given up under the shinins sun of the present day as a lasting possession, to Victoria the Queen of England and to all the Kings and Queens her successors for ever."

Observe that in these lejral documents there is no punctuation. That is to-prevent mistakes and disputes arising through misplaced commas or other punctuation marks which might alter the meaning of the deed in the, eye of the law. The Napier Names. Tt was Alfred Domett, poet and politician, who was responsible for the laying out and street naming of the town. He came to the settlement as Government agent in 1854. Napier was named after the famous British general, Sir Charles Napier, the conqueror of Scinde, as the lower valley of the Indus in Tndia is called. He won the great battle of Meanee. in 1843, which opened the way for the British annexation of Scinde. Like General Cameron in the New Zealand Wars, Sir Charles Napier did not approve of this war of conquest. He thought the British had no moral right to seize Scinde. He was a great and gallant soldier, who had served in the Napoleonic wars. Domett named the heights of Napier after the conquered province Scinde. The township of Meanee — which some people have thought to Ibe a Maori name —commemorates the battle of 1843. Other famous British names in the history of India are perpetuated in Hawke's Bay in the town of Hastings and the townships of Clive and Havelock. As for the streets of Napier town, many of their names, too, were given by Mr. Domett, in honour of English poets and other famous writers. The Sheep Fanners. The first fettlers who took up grazing holdings in the great levels and the rollin™ hill country of Hawke's Bay, following on the Gov-

EAST COAST SETTLEMENT — THE PIONEERS OF HAWKE'S BAY — SIR DONALD MACLEAN, "THE GREAT MAORI MYSTERY MAN."

ernment purchases, were fortunate in 2 the generally clear character of the province and in the freedom from Maori wars. They had lordly ideas as to the areas necessary for their e sheep stations. Ruataniwha, Wai- _• pukurau, Takapau, Waimarama and • some other large districts were held ' by a few men in the beginning, until • the days of subdivision came. ' However, they deserved all their ~ good fortune. The country was 1 quite unroaded, the rivers were • unbridged, there were frequent floods, | the first flocks of sheep were ravaged ' by wild pigs and Maori dogs. The prices of wool were low, there was no market for anything else, and the I task of getting the clip to the sliip--1 ping port was difficult and expensive. '< But there was the compensation that. ; meant much to those pioneers—the freedom of the life, the agreeable climate, the satisfaction of looking out over, and riding over miles of wild country which they helped to tame and redeem and hoped to leave as a golden land to their descendants. The names of many of the early families are prominent in the story of the peaceful development of FTawke's Bay—the names of Russell, Nairn, A'Deane. Lambert, Lowry, Hill, Gordon, Williams, Ormond, Kinross, Gollan, Colonel Lambert. Colonel Herrick and, greatest of all, Maclean. Maclean's Life Work. Sir Donald Maclean can be called the father of Hawke's Bay: he founded it, and his personal influence with its chiefs made for peace and progress all through its early years. He was a truly wonderful pioneer. He came to New Zealand in the first years of the Colony, and practically the whole of his life here was spent in the service of the country. He was born on Tiree, one of the Scottish western isles, in 1820;. he died at Napier in 1877. In his special sphere, his life work, the direction and handling of native affairs, he was supreme. No one, not even Governor Grey, was his equal in dealing with the Maori. No man did so much for peaceful colonisation as Maclean. His quick mastery of the Maori tongue, his talent for entering into the ways and minds of the people,, his sympathetic understanding of their feelings and their hopes and fears, made him the per- | feet intermediary in Maori affairs. He had unlimited patience. He saw New Zealand in its first wild, raw state; his life efforts were directed towards making it a land of comfort and riches, covered with the homes and cultivations and flocks and towns of the British peonies, living in friendship with the Maori. In the first period of his life in New Zealand, up to about 18(10, he was chiefly engaged in obtaining land for white settlement. Tn his later life he entered politics, and he was eight times Native Minister. (Continued on page 37.)