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No. 4. CLAIM OF TAPA TE WAEEO. Hon. Sir W. Fox to Hon. Native Ministee. "West Coast Commission Office, New Plymouth, 10th May, 1882. Sir, —I have the honor to enclose a Eeport on the claim of Tapa te Waero to sections 395, 397, and 399, Okotuku, and section 76, Block 11., Wairoa, and to request that you will lay the same before His Excellency the Governor for his information. I have, &c, William Fox, The Hon. the Native Minister, &c. West Coast Commissioner.

Enclosure. Report of the Commmissioner appointed under " The West Coast Settlement {North Island) Act, 1880," on the Claim of Tapa te Waero to Sections 395, 397, and 399, Okotuku, and Section 76, Block 11., Wairoa. 1. This is one of a class of cases, (too numerous among the records of the Native Office,) which might long ago, by the exercise of ordinary firmness and common sense, have been satisfactorily disposed of, but which has been allowed to stand over from year to year till it has become complicated and extremely difficult to be dealt with. It was in the hands of the Native Department in the earlier stages of its development for some years before 1876, at which date, on a petition presented to the House of Eepresentatives, it was investigated by the Native Affairs Committee. That Committee did not give a final decision upon it, though with the evidence before it, it might have done so ; but it recommended that an enquiry should be made into a particular allegation, and that certain action should follow in a prescribed direction according as that allegation should be established, or the contrary. The Native Department, however, entirely neglected to carry out the recommendation. No such enquiry, as suggested, was made. But after a lapse of several months, during which the papers appear to have reposed, in an official pigeon-hole, the case was allowed, to take a fresh departure on lines quite irrespective of that which had been indicated by the Committee ; and the result has been a very unsatisfactory complication, of which it is not easy to suggest a solution. 2. The present position of the case is as follows —(also see Note A.) :■ —Tapa te Waero, a chief of the Ngarauru Tribe, claims to have issued to him, personally, Crown grants of four sections of land— 395, 397, 399, and 76, Okotuku, on the north of the Waitotara Biver—under a permissive power vested in the Governor by " The Special Powers and Contracts Act, 1878." No special reason for the grant is stated in the Act. It was recommended by the Under-Secretary, Mr. Henry Clarke, as appears from an official miuute—(N. & D., 78/3473), —as being " in accordance with the recommendation of the Native Affairs Committee," which it was not. The Attorney-General, Mr. Stout, having noted and demurred to this, Mr. Clarke suggested, and the Native Minister, Mr. Sheehan, accepted the suggestion that it should be stated to be " to give effect to a promise made by the late Sir Donald McLean " ; but there appears to be no sufficient evidence of any such promise, and this ground seems also to have been abandoned. Finally the Act was passed, and the power to issue the grant given without any reason at all. Before, however, any grant was issued, its preparation was stopped (November, 1880) by the Native Minister, Mr. Bryce, who expressed the opinion that " No such grant should have been thought of; that the promise of it was obtained under false pretences, and that the conditions on which it was to have been issued had been disregarded by Tapa." (Minute on L. 80/2405.) This opinion of the Native Minister was the more weighty, because he had been Chairman of the Native Affairs Committee in 1876, when it investigated the claim, and directed that further enquiry should take place before it should be admitted. 3. After a very careful examination of the official papers, including the whole of the evidence taken before the Native Affairs Committee, and with the addition of considerable light thrown upon it by the investigation of another case with which it is interlaced (Mr. H. Churton's), I have arrived at the following conclusions : — 1. That the fundamental ground on which Tapa rested his claim—that after the wars he and his people had been left by the Government absolutely without land to live on —is entirely without foundation. (See Notes A. & B.) 2. That the only promises made by Sir Donald McLean was that made at Wanganui in January,, 1873 (See Note C), which was not in favor of Tapa individually, but of " himself and his people," and which was duly fulfilled by the allocation to him and them of land sufficient for their maintenance. 3. That if Tapa and his people had occupied the land allotted to them as reserves it was enough for their wants ; but, instead of doing so, he and they let it and other lands to Europeans for a long term of years, and have ever since lived on land belonging to other people, in some instances occupying it defiantly, and in others probably by permission of the original owners. (See latter part of my report on Mr. Churton's claim to sections 386 and 387). 4. That such occupation by them has been a source of great complication, and put the Colony to a considerable loss. I allude more particularly to Churton's and Eiddel's cases. (See my report as above.) 5. That at the present time they are occupying sections to which they have no right, to the exclusion of the lawful European owner (See Note D.), although it was made a condition of a certain agreement with Major Brown, Civil Commissioner, that Tapa and his people should quit all such lands so illegally occupied; on which ground Major Brown has himself protested against the issue of the grant. (See his letter appended—Sub-Enclosure 1.) My recommendation is, therefore, that the grants be not issued, because the sole basis on which Tapa's claim rests is false and fraudulent, and he deliberately misrepresented his case to the Native.