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August 2010
OLD IDENTITIES AND NEW INIQUITIES
The TRieri Plain in Otago Province
- 1770 - 1870 -
by
G.F. DAVIS
Presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements
for the degree of ~i.A. in History at the
University of Otago
Presented 1973
Dedicated
to my father, F.e. Davis.
PREFACE
Today, the Taieri Plain is primarily agricultural in function;
but the nature of the landscape is changing more swiftly than at
any time in the past. Soon, because of modernised farming,
substantial building programmes and new patterns of communication,
it will in no way resemble that which was present in the past.
The advance of progress has been steady for almost a century on
the Taieri. All indications of the century 1770-1870 are rapidly
becoming a matter of conjecture.
Some works have been written which involve study of the Taieri
Plain - in particular, Shaw and Farrant's excellent volume The Taieri
Plain.- Tales of Years that are Gone written for the Otago 1948
Centennial. As well, J.A. Thomson's The Taieri Allans (Dunedin 1929)
and Mrs Daphne Lemon's Taieri Buildings (Dunedin, 1970) and More
Taieri Buildings (Dunedin 1972) provide sources of information relating
to particular fami.lies. Only Shaw and Farrant's book comes close
to being a definitive study but it glosses over the important early
years. TIle only analytical study of the general area which includes
the Taieri Plain is A.H. McLintock's History of Otago (Dunedin, 1949).
This significant work deals with the whole province and because of its
wide scope, examination of the Taieri Plain specifically is limited.
Because of its importance there will be sections of the thesis which
will compare or contrast with ideas in McLintock's History of Otago.
No major work has yet been attempted which links European
settlement in this local area with effects on the resident native
population; or any comparison made between types of settlement before
ii
1844, any contrast of ideas about the development of the
0::-
Taieri Plain held in the l840s with the later realities, or
any analysis of the effects of gold discoveries on the nature
of a local settlement. These are significant facets of
changes in the character of the early Taieri Plain, These
ideas will be examined in this thesis.
I sincerely wish to thank all those who helped me, over
a long period of time, to prepare this work. I am deeply
indebted to the librarians of the National Archives, Wellington,
Judith Hornabrook and Tim Lovell-Smith, and the Bocken Library,
Peter MiLler- and Stuart Strachan, with whose help much of the research
was carried out. In these two institutions the bulk of the
information used in this thesis was found. My thanks go to
Professor Angus Ross, Head of the History Department, Otago
University, who shepherded me through the troublesome period of
writing with a great deal of patience and understanding. The
responsibility for the clear and meticulous presentation of
this thesis belongs to my sister-in-law, Mrs Isabel Campbell,
who spent long hours separated from her family to ensure that
the work would be completed in time. I cannot thank her enough.
I am also grateful for the help of t-lr Peter ~lcDonald, of the
Geography Department, Otago University, who spent a great deal
of time reproducing not only the photocopied maps in this thesis
but also the maps which were used in analysis, kindly lent by the
Lands and Survey Department, Dunedin. To others whom I have
neglected to mention, I also extend my gratitude. Finally, my wife
provided the kind of home as well as inspiration which enabled me to
complete this work, so long after it had begun.
Hi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Preface . . . ii
Introduction: Defining the thesis vi
CHAPTER
ONE European Exploration and Coastal Settlement 2
TlVO Site and Sale. . . . . . 14
THREE The Original Proprietors 42
FOUR Pre-Sett1ement Surveys 75
FIVE Settlement ~jotivation 91
SIX Debate and Slow Development, 1848-1855 . .. 108
SEVEN A Passing Frontier, 1856-1870 128
EIGHT The Fate of the Taieri ~laoris 178
NINE Focal Areas on the Taieri, 1770-1870 186
. .
TEN Conclusion .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 191
Appendices 195
Bibliography 215
iv
ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE page
1 The Taieri Plain - the area of study 1
2 Short1and's Sketch of the Southern
Districts of Ne\\' Zealand 16
3 Tuckett's Sketch of the Lands to be
Annexed to 'New Edinburgh', 1844 30
4 Maori Sketch of the Southern half
of the South Island, c.1841 57
5 Sketch of the Taieri with Maori, place
names 65
6 Sketch of estimated Vegetation, c.1840 70
7 Kettle's Index Map of the Otakou
Settlement, 1847 77
8 Garvie's Working Plan of a Trigonometrical
Survey, 1857 83
9 Adaptation of Tuckett's Sketch for the
Free Church pamphlet (Glasgow, 1845) 99
10 Kettle's 1851 Sketch Map of part of the
Otago Block 121
11 Garvie's south-east Reconnaisance of
Otago Province, 1857-1858 135
12 1866 Map of the Province of Otago 149
13 Sketch of the Extent of the February,
1868 Flooding of the Taieri 167
ABBREVIATIONS
G.B.P.P. Great Britain Parliamentary Papers Relative to the
Affairs of New Zealand.
(HOCKEN) Hocken Library, Otago Universit y, Dunedin.
N.Z.C.Correspondence 3/30. New Zealand Company Correspondence
papers relating to Otago.
N.Z.G.G. [0] New Zealand Government Gazette (Otago).
(O.E.S.A.) Otago Early Settlers' Association Museum, Dunedin.
O.P.G.G. Otago Provincial Government Gazette.
v
DEFINING TIlE TIlESIS
The Taieri Plain is an allu.vium-filled fault depression,
formed in recent geological times. As the lowering of land
to a position beloH sea-level continued, the river dropped its
load of silt from the catchment area of Central Otago, and built
up an alluvial flood plain. The valley extends for 18 miles
in a north-east/south-west direction and averages 4 1/2 miles
in width. A low rock barrier approximately 180 feet high divides
the Taieri Plain from its southern neighbour, the Tokomairiro
Plain. Significant landscape features of the Taieri are the high
Maungatua Range, the two lakes Waihola and Waipori, the Chain Hills
on the north-eastern side with their southern end capped by the
prominence of Saddle Hill (Figure 1, p.l).
Since last century, significant changes have occurred in the
Taieri. The Maungatuas have been stripped of their beech and
silver fern cover, lakes Waipori and Waihola although still serving
as ponding-areas in time of river flood have been limited by
stopbanks and a canal, the Chain Hills are no longer tussock and
bracken-fern covered and Captain Cook's ... 'Saddle-Back hill' •••
has not only been denuded of what the explorer-surveyor Tuckett
called in 1844 " ... a great pig cover ..." of pine trees but also
the small hill of the saddle - the Maor i, Turi-rnakamaka or sleeping
taniwha - has been decapitated for crushing as valuable road metal.
Most of these changes are in the recent past, the last century.
vi
What of changes in the past? Were there other more
significant human patterns established and then broken on the
Taieri? Two broad patterns arc evident before 1870 - the
patterns and forms of settlement of the Maor i, which were
disrupted and redirected by forces fotmd within early European
culture, and the subsistence pattern of post-1840 European
agricultural settlement which was disrupted by the discovery of
gold. Gold was the catalyst providing effective, dramatic
changes in the people's way of life and in the landscape of the
Taieri.
Understandably, defining and describing the way of life of
the Maori inhabitants of the Taieri area presents a difficult
problem. They left no written records. ~ruch of the extant
records on f·laori culture are non-Maori in origin and very little
of it relates directly to the Taieri. Argument on the Taieri
Maori will be composed principally of archaeologists' deductions,
Maori folklore, botanical evidence and stories told to early
explorers and settlers in the area. From these a composite
abstract will be formed from which a way of life will be deduced.
It is the purpose of this thesis to establish, as far as possible,
the way of life before the impact of the first Europeans became
apparent, and then demonstrate how the impact changed that way of
life in the local district. Generally, the development of
European contact with the Southenl Maori was detrimental to his
traditional customs. One major question which will be raised in
this thesis will be whether changes from the traditional Maori life
style were significant before or after the sale of the Otago block
vii
to t.he New Zealand Company, The establishment of a definite
answer to this question greatly affects vi ewpoi nt s on the 1844
deed of sale. As a means of establishing the time-scale of
changes in local Maori culture in the l800s an examination of the
relationship of the ~jaoris Idth local t r-ader-ovhal lng institutions
is necessary. The effects of contact between the two groups
are important. The relationship will be examined to see whether
the culture-contact caused or merely accelerated the later-apparent
changes in the way of life of the local /.faori. The particular
details of title to land, customs, food-gathering, nucleation of
villages, health, social mores, integration into a new economic
pattern and changes to the landscape arc integral parts of a
justification of far-reaching effects caused by European incursors.
The newer pattern established by British emigrant settlers is
more permanent and better-documented. They established a way of
life which wel l.vni gh obliterated the traces of Maor i occupancy. In
the years 1848-1861, their survival was dependent on deriving
subsistance from the land. Their establishment was in the form of
a sedentary exploitative pattern on the land with the lines of
individual proprietorship becoming clearer year by year. Their
way of life was traditional, but foreign to New Zealand. To the
early emigrants who settled on the Taieri, success was dependent
upon subduing the land to an exotic, principally British-conceived
pattern. The attempts of the families which settled on the Taieri
Plain were abruptly interrupted in 1861 when the first major "rush"
started for the Central Otago goldfields. The prime function of
the Plain changed overnight from being a major food-producing area
for Dunedin to that of a hi ghway, a route to the "diggings". To
viii