At the Margin of Empire by Jennifer Ashton

Author:Jennifer Ashton [Ashton, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Australia & Oceania, Biography & Memoir, Historical
ISBN: 9781775587798
Publisher: Auckland University Press
Published: 2015-02-20T05:00:00+00:00

The arrest of Te Wake

In 1868, Webster’s desire to see law and order come to the north was undermined by the murder of a man named Nuku, for which Te Rarawa man Heremia Te Wake was held responsible, and by the events that followed. This episode acted as a serious challenge to the government’s ability to establish any real control over Māori, and the authorities’ apparent impotence drew scorn from Webster and other settlers. But once again, this supposed weakness gave Webster an opportunity to put himself forward as someone able to control the otherwise uncontrollable.

Speaking of New Zealand generally, Alan Ward has argued that ‘[b]y the late 1860s the problem of enforcement of the law had eased. Largely because the Resident Magistrate worked with Maori Assessors and police, acceptance of their decisions, in petty matters at least, was general.’41 This statement also held true in Hokianga.

In 1867, James Clendon wrote to the Native Minister that ‘[several] years since scarcely a week passed over without a Taua between one or other of the Tribes — Now, with the assistance of the Assessors and the influence of the principal chiefs these Tauas are scarcely heard of — All differences being settled either before or during my visit amongst them’.42 Clendon’s optimism that peace was breaking out in part thanks to himself and his officers was supported by at least two episodes during the mid-1860s. Like his predecessors, Clendon became involved in disputes involving both Māori and Pākehā participants, including an incident in 1865 when John Marmon complained that Māori at Mangamuka were illegally killing his cattle; they responded that the cattle were, in fact, wild. But Clendon was now also being called in to arbitrate in cases where both parties were Māori. In July 1864 he was told of a fight between two men he referred to as ‘Toma and Te Taui Whakaroa’ of Whirinaki. They had been at Waimā digging gum and had gone to Rāwene to sell their haul, where they got into an argument, apparently provoked by Toma, over cooking utensils. Te Taui defended himself, causing Toma to fall and suffer a fatal head injury. Te Taui was bailed and Clendon summonsed witnesses to give evidence. Eventually, Te Taui was discharged for lack of evidence and on the grounds of ‘so long a time having elapsed without another word being raised in favour of Tomo or against Te Taui’.43 Here, it seemed, was evidence that Māori communities were now willing to participate in European forms of dispute resolution.

But Clendon’s optimism was only partly justified. The quote from Ward above contains a qualifier: Māori were willing to accept Pākehā justice ‘in petty matters at least’. While Toma’s accidental death could not be called petty, it lacked the inflammatory power of the long-standing inter-hapū disputes which still existed in the north in the late 1860s, and which had cost more than ten lives in the two years preceding 1868.44 And Clendon’s ability to deal with something as reasonably straightforward as

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