The Waitara purchase is disputed
- When
- March 1859
- Where
- Waitara
- Reach
- Several regions
Governor Gore Browne accepted a junior chief’s offer to sell land at Waitara over the veto of the senior rangatira, Wiremu Kīngi Te Rangitāke.
Te Teira offered a block he had rights in; Wiremu Kīngi, whose authority covered it, refused. The Crown chose to treat the offer as valid, which broke with the customary requirement for collective consent and set a precedent settlers badly wanted. Surveyors went in the following March, Kīngi’s people pulled out the pegs, and the First Taranaki War began. A 1927 royal commission later found the purchase unjust.
Regions affected
Sources
Written for this project from these references rather than copied from them. Follow a link to check the account against the original.
Related
New Zealand Settlements Act — raupatu
Te raupatu whenua
The Crown took roughly 1.2 million hectares from iwi deemed to be in rebellion — including from communities that had never fought.
The Native Land Court is established
The court converted customary communal title into individual freehold — the mechanism by which most remaining Māori land was lost, without a shot fired.
The invasion of Parihaka
Te pāhuatanga o Parihaka
Some 1,600 troops marched on a village that met them with singing children and offered loaves of bread. Te Whiti and Tohu were arrested, the settlement destroyed, and no one resisted.
ParihakaTe Tiriti o Waitangi is signed
Te Tiriti o Waitangi
Around 540 rangatira signed Te Tiriti at Waitangi and at more than 50 meetings around the country. The English and te reo Māori texts do not say the same thing, and never have.
Waitangi