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The Native Tenths Reserves

The New Zealand Company believed that Maori owned the land in New Zealand, which would have to be purchased from them, and declared that Maori should retain all the land used for habitation, cultivation, urupa (burials) and mahinga kai (resource areas). As well, the Company guaranteed to set aside one-tenth of all land purchased from Maori for the benefit of the Maori vendors (the Tenths Reserves), and promised that because of the Tenths, Maori would grow rich as the settlement developed and prospered, making the Tenths the true payment for the land.

Plan of the town of Nelson, approved by Frederick Tuckett April 1842. [London] : Smith & Elder [for the] New Zealand Company. The Nelson Provincial Museum, Tuckett, Frederick. (1842). Bett Collection, M66.
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The Company’s second settlement, Nelson, would consist of 221,100 acres, divided into 1,100 acres of one-acre town sections, 55,000 acres of fifty-acre accommodation or suburban sections, and 165,000 acres of 150-acre rural blocks. Each investor in the settlement would pay £300 for 201 acres – one 1-acre town section, one 50-acre suburban section, and one 150-acre rural block. The Maori vendors, Ngati Rarua, Ngati Koata, Ngati Tama and Te Atiawa, would be entitled to one-tenth i.e. 22,110 acres, across town, suburban and rural sections.

These high ideals were not fulfilled. 100 acres of Nelson Town (one-eleventh, not one-tenth) and 5,000 acres of Motueka (one-eleventh) were selected as Tenths in 1842. No rural Tenths were ever allocated, and surveyors included Maori pa, cultivations, urupa and mahinga kai in the surveys instead of excluding them. The vendor chiefs were not allowed to occupy or cultivate the Tenths after the Government decided to lease them to settlers and use the income “for the benefit of Maori”. No income from the Tenths was distributed to the Maori vendors or their families until 1897, and then only half was distributed until 1956.

The 5,100 acres designated as Tenths was quickly reduced:

• 47 acres of Nelson Town was taken for the “remodelling” of the Nelson Settlement at the behest of settlers in 1847
• 918 acres at Motueka was taken by Governor Grey and given to the Church of England for an industrial school (Whakarewa) in 1853
• 58 acres was taken for public works
• 27 acres was taken for streets and roads
• 1,308 acres was sold to lessees under 1967 legislation.

Nelson from Auckland Point 1848. From Broad, Lowther (1892) The Jubilee History of Nelson: From 1842 to 1892. Bond, Finney and Co. Part of: New Zealand Text Centre
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• made leases of Native Reserve land perpetually renewable by lessees, thus alienating the Maori owners forever
• set rent review periods at 21 years, and
• set rents at 4% or 5% of unimproved value regardless of what was happening in the commercial world.

The plan for Maori to grow rich as the settlement developed and prospered was certainly not realised: many descendants of the vendor chiefs were destitute by the end of the nineteenth century. In 1977 the remaining Tenths Reserves were transferred to Wakatu Incorporation whose shareholders are the descendants of the vendor chiefs of Ngati Rarua, Ngati Koata, Ngati Tama and Te Atiawa.

2008 

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