Sidestep: The tradition of land ownership

As a follow on to the treaty post on 12th January and the principle of ownership post on 30th January, I found this interesting piece written about a land purchase. This story is about an event in 1839 and is either typical of confusion among Maori as to rightful ownership (which is unlike any ownership principle Europeans understood) or that many Maori just saw an opportunity and when money is in the mix, suddenly everyone owns the land up for sale. Does it sound familiar? Nothing has changed.

From Old New Zealand by Fredrick Maning

"...I now purchased a piece of land and built a home for myself. I really can't tell to the present day who I purchased the land from, for there were about fifty different claimants, every one of whom assured me that the other forty-nine were “humbugs,” and had no right whatever. The nature of the different titles of the different claimants were various. One man said his ancestors had killed off the first owners; another declared his ancestors had driven off the second party; another man, who seemed to be listened to with more respect than ordinary, declared that his ancestor had been the first possessor of all, and had never been ousted, and that this ancestor was a huge lizard that lived in a cave on the land many ages ago: and, sure enough, there was the cave to prove it.

Besides the principal claims there were an immense number of secondary ones—a sort of latent equities—which had lain dormant until it was known the pakeha had his eye on the land. Some of them seemed to me at the time odd enough. One man required payment because his ancestors, as he affirmed, had exercised the right of catching rats on it; but which he (the claimant) had never done, for the best of reasons, i.e., there were no rats to catch: except indeed pakeha rats, which were plenty enough, but this variety of rodent was not counted as game. Another claimed because his grandfather had been murdered on the land, and—as I am a veracious pakeha—another claimed payment because his grandfather had committed the murder! Then half the country claimed payments of various value, from one fig of tobacco to a musket, on account of a certain wahi tapu, or ancient burying-ground, which was on the land, and in which everyone almost had had relations or rather ancestors buried, as they could clearly make out, in old times; though no one had been deposited in it for about two hundred years, and the bones of the others had been (as they said) removed long ago to a torere (abyss) in the mountains...

...it took about three months' negotiation before the purchase of the land could be made; and, indeed, I at one time gave up the idea, as I found it quite impossible to decide whom to pay. If I paid one party, the others vowed I should never have possession, and to pay all seemed impossible; so at last I let all parties know that I had made up my mind not to have the land.

This, however, turned out to be the first step I had made in the right direction; for, thereupon, all the different claimants agreed amongst themselves to demand a certain quantity of goods, and divide them amongst themselves afterwards. I was glad of this, for I wished to buy the land, as I thought, in case I should ever take a trip to the “colonies,” it would look well to be able to talk of “my estate in New Zealand.”

The day being now come on which I was to make the payment, and all parties present, I then and there handed over to the assembled mob the price of the land, consisting of a great lot of blankets, muskets, tomahawks, tobacco, spades, axes, etc, etc; and received in return a very dirty piece of paper with all their marks on it, I having written the terms of transfer on it in English to my own perfect satisfaction. The cost per acre to me was, as near as can be, about five and a half times what the same quantity of land would have cost me at the same time in Tasmania. But this was not of much importance, as the value of land in New Zealand then (and indeed now) being chiefly imaginary, one could just as easily suppose it to be of a very great value as a very small one; I therefore did not complain of the cost.

(courtesy of www.polynesianresourcecenter.com)