and Harewood was forced or bribed to take a group of hundreds of Māori to the Chatham Islands. To ensure his compliance, his chief mate was held hostage on Matiu / Somes island. There was no Māori occupation on Matiu / Somes from about 1840. Archaeological sites At the northern end of the island on a site with steep cliffs there was the Te Moana–a–kura pā which contained terraces and middens. Haowhenua pā was built in the middle of the island, where the quarantine station was sited but the only remaining sign of occupation was a midden. The midden, which was underneath the hospital building, was uncovered and excavated during building work in 1999. Faunal remains included shellfish (species from the mainland), fish and bird bones. European history At various times throughout the 19th and 20th centuries the island hosted quarantine facilities for both human immigrants and animals, and enemy alien internees during wartime. Human quarantine In 1868 the island was declared a quarantine ground and used to isolate passengers from a ship carrying smallpox. When the immigrant ship England arrived in 1872 carrying several passengers with smallpox, passengers and crew were quartered in makeshift accommodation on the island. On other occasions, new arrivals would spend ten minutes in a smokehouse of chlorine, potassium nitrate and sulphur fumes for de-lousing. Forty-five people are known to be buried on the island, mostly immigrants who arrived in the 1870s. In 1971 individual gravestones were removed from the overgrown cemetery and replaced with a large memorial. In January 2000 four of the old headstones were retrieved from storage and placed next to the communal memorial. Animal quarantine The use of the island as an animal quarantine facility is recorded as early as 1864, when James Sellars quarantined sheep.In 1889 Matiu / Somes Island was declared as the first animal quarantine station in New Zealand. In 1892 the government established a Department of Agriculture to protect New Zealand's farming industry, and in 1893 passed the Stock Act. The Stock Act 1893 gave the Department of Agriculture power to quarantine all live animals arriving in the country, so it built permanent animal quarantine facilities on Matiu / Somes Island (in 1893) and at other locations for this purpose. In 1916, aliens interned on the island built stables for the quarantine station. In 1968 a maximum security animal quarantine station was built. It closed in 1995