returned to Māori, although not always to its original owners. Some "returned" areas were then purchased by the Crown. Several claims have been lodged with both the Waitangi Tribunal and the New Zealand Government since the 1990s seeking compensation for confiscations enacted under the Land Settlement Act. The tribunal, in its reports on its investigations, has concluded that although the land confiscation legislation was legal, every confiscation by the government breached the law, by both failing to provide sufficient evidence there was rebellion within the designated areas and also including vast areas of land, such as uninhabitable mountain areas, which there was no prospect of settling. Submissions by the Crown in the 1999 Ngāti Awa investigation and a 1995 settlement with Waikato-Tainui included an acknowledgement that confiscations from that tribe were unjust and a breach of the Treaty of Waitangi. Ten deeds of settlement were signed by the Crown and iwi in 2012, concluding with a $6.7 million redress package to a Waikato River iwi for "breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi that left the tribe virtually landless". Background to legislation Since the outbreak of the First Taranaki War at Waitara in March 1860, the New Zealand Government had been engaged in armed conflict with Māori who refused to sell their land for colonial settlement or surrender the "undisturbed possession of their lands and estates" the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi had promised them. By mid-1863 the costs of fighting the war were continuing to mount – in 1861–62 the colonial defence vote was £8031, while the British Government spent about £400,000 – and the government still found itself unable to quash Māori resistance. In May 1863, weeks before the outbreak of the Second Taranaki War, Charles Brown, the Superintendent of Taranaki, wrote: "It would be rightful to confiscate from the tribes which should fight against us, territories of sufficient value to cover fully all the cost of the war." Three days later Governor Sir George Grey and his ministers signed an agreement that a disputed block of land between Tataraimaka and Omata in Taranaki would be confiscated and Waitara Māori hostile to the government were warned they also risked confiscation of their land. Premier Alfred Domett's ministry immediately began expanding their plans for mass confiscations. In June the ministry was planning a line of defence posts between Auckland and Ngāruawāhia, clearing "all hostile natives" north of the line and confiscating