1860: The West Coast Purchase

May 21, 2023

By AHNZ

Today in history, 21 May, 1860, 100 or so Ngai Tahu sold the entire West Coast of the South Island to the Crown.

James Mackay paid the natives just $40,000 (£300.) The gold alone mined from these lands would be $2.8 billion. It was a sweet deal and Greymouth’s main street to this day is named Mackay Street.

Mackay was quite prepared to have paid more if he needed to. The Grey River was in flood (as it also is now, 21 May, 2022) and toppled Mackay’s canoe. Somehow he not only survived with the deed but also made it to the northern bank with the remaining 100 sovereigns the Maori dealers missed out on.

Interesting to note that the site of the deal, Mawhera Pa (future Greymouth) was a busy place that day. Mackay’s expedition was there and so was the Haast expedition. The schooner Gipsy the arrived too, making a supply drop as one of the first ships ever to cross the Grey Bar.

“Mr Mackay purchased the West Coast from the remaining 110 surviving male Maoris and paid them 300 gold sovereigns at Greymouth on May 21, 1860….The Maoris reserved the principal portion of the town of Greymouth for themselves. From the town land only, in 1900, they received about £5000 in rents, which European industry and enterprise had rendered so valuable, while the Maoris lived in idleness at the Arahura. Arahura may mean to ” find a path.”” – Roberts, Otago Witness (1910,) Papers Past

“It was generally considered impossible for Mackay not to have known of the gold. The Oakes brothers and Messrs Harper and Locke had reported it to the Canterbury Provincial Government three years before the sale, the Nelson Examiner had actually published the fact that the Maori brothers Tarapuhi and Tainui had found it “in abundance” in 1858, and, most important of all, Mackay’s friend John Rochfort had reported its discovery at the Old Diggings a year later. Again Mackay was a Goldfields Warden and, as such, was known to have a good knowledge of the metal royal. Further, von Haast and his assistant, James Burnett, were on the spot and surely, if only out of curiosity, must have panned a dish or two of wash, and by so doing, proved that gold was existent everywhere.” – The Golden Grey, Tony Kokshorn (2011)

Mackay certainly knew about the gold and knew he had to get ahead of the gold rush. The Maoris had known since at least 1858 although the scale and importance they could hardly have suspected. At any rate, the natives did very very well out of their sale. Especially so considering that this tribe had, only a generation or 2 earlier, slaughtered and kicked out the previous tribe! The new transition was far more civilised.

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Ref. RBNZ Inflation Calculator

Image ref. James Mackay, Alexander Turnbull Library; AHNZ mod

Ref. 1880: Death of Chief Tainui, AHNZ

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