E-No. 7

LECTURES ON Again, in reference to the tribe which now reside at Orakei, called the Ngatiwhatua, (which is a hapu of the great Kaipara tribe the Roroa,) this hapu does not admit any tribal right to be exercised over it by the Waikato, Tainui, or Ngatipaoa tribes. This hapu took possession of their district by force of arms fron the Tainui and Ngatipaoa tribes. All the fishing grounds on the Waitemata river belong to them, and none of the surrounding tribes would attempt to fish on them unless permission were granted by the Ngatiwhatua';; nor do they pay any tribute of fish or other thing to the original owners of the district. Although connected by marriage to the Waikato chiefs they still keep a separate and independent cantrol of all their land, and in their numerous sales of land they gave no portion of the payment to the other tribes. This was not merely the case with regard to the original owners of the soil, but they do not even allow the parent tribe at Kaipara to exercise any control over them in reference to the land they claim here. And although as a portion of the parent tribe, they claim an equal right with the rest of the iwi, to the land of the iwi Te Roroa at Kaipara yet as the descendants of these men who conquered the Auckland district, they alone claim it to the exclusion of the rest of the Roroa. The time allotted for a lecture precludes me from noticing each Waikato tribe separately. Although they now occupy what is called the Tainui district, they are not all of Tainui origin, as some of them date their descent from the original people of New Zealand, who were called by the Maori people Ngatimokotorea. Reserving a further reference to some of them when I shall speak on the mana I will pass on to the Aotea district (in which the claims of the original owners have been as much curtailed by migratory movements of chiefs from other parts of New Zealand as by conquest), and to the next district of Tokomaru or the New Plymouth natives, whose family wars have been carried on with bitter hatred on account of their numerous lines of descent from other migrations. The adjoining migrations of Matahourua, or the Taranaki and Naatiruanui, have kept more aloof from the rest of the tribes ; they are of a more savage disposition than the other people, and may be termed the only New Zealand savages of the present day : they have a slight mixture of the Rangitane people of the South island, who are more of the Malay than any other, and this may account for their being a savage, yet cowardly people. Their district has been overrun by many war parties, but (save a portion of the South end), they have kept their original dominion ; there are, therefore, very few hapus among them who act independently of the iwi. But in the next migration of Takitumu, there are tribes who act without any reference to the Ngatikahuhunu on thu East, as they do of the Ngatiruanui on the West. There is in the Port Nicholson district a portion of a Waikato tribe, now called Ngatiraukawa. A quarrel of two brothers near Maungatautari in Waikato, was the cause of the tribe coming to open combat; and the beaten portion migrated South and eventually located in their present home ; having driven off the portion of the Ngatikahuhuuu, they exercise the sole right as a tribe over their own district, nor do they allow any tribal right to be exercised over them by any of the Waikato chiefs to whom they are so nearly related. Again, there is the Ngatitoa in the Port Nicholson district, who were originally the owners of Kawhia but migrated south and took all the Ngatiranui country; and then resigned the greater portion back to the old owners, but demanded a tribute of tribal right or mana of the laud to be given to them by the Ngatiruanui, such as kumara and fish : which was invariably done by them to Rauparaha. The Ngatitoa, though of Kawhia, do not allow any right of the iwi at Kawhia to be exercised over them, but are in the Port Nicholson district as independent as it is possible to be ; on the other hand they not only exercised the tribal right over part of Port Nicholson district, but they invaded the South Island, and brought under tribute the then owners of that Island up to the time it was sold by them. I shall have again to refer to the Ngatitoa on the mana : I will meanwhile pass on to the Horouta or Hawke's Bay people, who though one iwi yet are divided into many hapus acting quite independently of the chiefs of other hapus or iwi. This remark will also apply to the Ngaiporou district or the East Cape natives, and may perhaps also extend to the Bay of Plenty natives; yet there is a shade of difference in some of their hapus, for they are descendants from women who came from the Hawke's Bay and East Cape natives, and on that account repudiate any claim of tribal mana being exercised over them by the iwi in whose district they reside and of which they claim part. Passing on we come to the Thames tribes in speaking of whom I shall have to revert to the past, in order to clear up an apparent contradiction. Previous to the arrival of Te Arawa and Tainui in New Zealand, a chief named Ruaeo followed Te Arawa, in which his wife, who had been taken by the Arawa navigator, Ruaeo, landed at Maketu, and having met the Arawa there, after a war between Ruaeo and Te Arewa navigators, Ruaeo and party crossed inland to Matamata, and came down the Thames, taking all the land as far as Caps Colville. The Ngatiawa migration followed, and drove the Ngatihuarere or the people from the district; and, on the departure of the Ngatiawa northward, Paeko and his followers from Ohiwa took the district. This people also were driven off by the descendants of a woman called Upokotioa, from Turanga, and who divided into the hapus of Te Tuhuke, Ngatihako, Ngatimarama, and Ngatikatarake,—the iwi being the Upokotioa. Hotunui of Kawhia was the ancestor of Paoa, who migrated back to the Thames, and founded the Ngatipaoa tribe. Marutuahu, the son of Hotunui, was the founder of the Ngatimaru, of which the Ngatitamatera and Ngatiwhanaunga are subdivisions. The Ngatipaoa exercise the sole tribal right over their own land in the Thames, without reference to the Waikato or any other tribe; so also the subdivisions Natitamatera, and Ngatiwhanaungn are each as independent in tribal rights of their own land from each other as they are of the Ngatipaoa. As I have giyen the tribal rights of each Iwi, I will now shew the tribal rights of the people in respect of individual claims to land and as a matter of course, enter on those of the head chiefs first: and will again take the same line of route in each Iwi as I did in the tribal rights of the Iwi, and commence therefore with Ngapuhi going round by the West Coast. The Ngapuhi or