Land confiscation law passed

This law allowed for the confiscation (raupatu) of Māori land to punish North Island tribes which were deemed to have rebelled against the British Crown in the early 1860s. Pākehā settlers would occupy the confiscated land.

On the eve of the British invasion of Waikato in July 1863, the government ordered all Māori living in the Manukau district and on the Waikato frontier north of the Mangatāwhiri stream to take an oath of allegiance to the Queen and give up any weapons in their possession. Māori who refused to do so ‘must retire to the Waikato’.

Those not complying with this instruction were said to have ‘taken up arms with the object of attempting the extermination or expulsion of the European settlers and are now engaged in open rebellion against Her Majesty’s authority’. They were warned by proclamation that they:

must take the consequences of their acts, and they must understand that they will forfeit the right to the possession of their lands guaranteed to them by the Treaty of Waitangi, which lands will be occupied by a population capable of protecting for the future the quiet and unoffending from the violence with which they are now so constantly threatened.

The House of Representatives sought to enforce this punishment via the New Zealand Settlements Act. This Act allowed for the seizure of of Māori land, but it was intended as more than a punishment. The sale of confiscated land would help pay for the war. Military settlers would receive sections of land as payment for service, further entrenching European control.

While Governor George Grey called for confiscation to be tailored to the level of guilt of iwi, the settler government headed by Alfred Domett was determined to take as much land as it could.

Under this legislation, the Waikato tribe lost almost all its land and Ngāti Hauā about a third of theirs. But kūpapa (pro-government or neutral) Māori also lost land as the yardstick rapidly changed from guilt to convenience. On the other hand, Ngāti Maniapoto territory was untouched as it was still under the control of the Kīngitanga. In the long term it was Taranaki Māori who suffered most from confiscation in terms of land actually occupied.

Image: New Zealand Settlements Act of 1863 (Te Ara)