A Maori family goes to market in Auckland in the eighteen-forties. Photo: Alexander Turnbull Library. Bay where Maori vendors, quickly adopting European practices, auctioned their produce to Europeans. By the beginning of the ‘fifties this trade was starting to blossom out. Shrewd Auckland merchants pioneered an export trade with the Californian and Victorian goldfields. Maori agriculturalists supplied most of the produce, much of it from the Waikato, Bay of Plenty and Poverty Bay. Auckland became an important market town. The Waitemata and Manukau harbours were regularly cluttered with Maori vessels which brought the produce to market and returned laden with European wares. The town was flooded periodically with Maoris who displayed rare talents at bargaining, selling their produce to the highest bidder and buying their requirements at the cheapest prices. Waikato, with its fertile pockets of land, became the granary of the Province. In 1855 the Waikato tribes produced 203,120 bushels of wheat, 1,515 of oats and 600 tons of potatoes. This was valued at £105,472. Ingenious and often laborious methods were adopted to get the produce to Auckland. Fully-laden canoes shipped it down the Waipa and Waikato to the Awaroa and then up this tributary to the portage near Waiuku. The canoes were dragged across the portage to the Manukau, re-loaded and then paddled across to Onehunga. The last stage of the journey was made on foot—long lines of men and women, burdened with the kits, trekked their produce along the Manukau road to Auckland. Then after the produce had been sold and the European goods purchased—and perhaps an overnight stay at Orakei—the long journey home was commenced. Other tribes were just as industrious and frequently made visits to deal in Auckland's markets. Many individuals stayed on in Auckland to work for the Government or Europeans. Maori labour was used on the construction of the Albert Barracks and other public works. They were regularly employed as farm hands by the European gentlemen farmers. Groups of Maoris were temporarily employed during harvesting operations Some acquired knowledge of more skilled occupations like printing and shipbuilding. The more prosperous tribes even went to the extent of employing European artisans, usually by contract, to erect flour mills. Indeed, it seemed that the Maoris were rapidly adapting themselves to the European economy. The relationship appeared to be mutually beneficial and hopeful souls, Governor Gray included, considered that the problems of amalgamation (they really meant Europeanisation) were being solved peacefully. It was only wishful thinking.

ECONOMIC CONFLICT AND RACIAL TENSION The racial conflict which led to the wars of the 'sixties was mainly economic in origin. Economic conflict, in the northern part of the island, was a direct result of the expansion of the European economy—mercantile and agricultural—centred on Auckland. It was aggravated by the success of Maori agricultural production. Auckland merchants wanted to invest profits from the Maori trade in land; and the Maoris, now that they were successfully cultivating their land, did not want to give it up. Increased immigration increased the European demand for land. Auckland farmers resented Maori competition because Maoris were undercutting them in the market. The Maori tribes, while growing European crops and using European equipment, retained their traditional group methods of organised work. They did not farm as individuals. This was the secret of their success, enabling them to produce crops at lower costs than the European farmers. Some European farmers could compete by employing cheap Maori labour; but this embittered unemployed European labourers.