Between 1844 and 1864, most of Te Waipounamu – 34.5 million acres – was ‘sold’ to the Crown in exchange for what Ngāi Tahu rakatira later described as the “crumbs that fell from the white man’s table.” In negotiating these ten large-scale land purchases Crown officials offered Ngāi Tahu miserly sums in payment, applied time pressure, described land boundaries with ambiguity, and threatened to purchase territory from other iwi who were not the rightful owners. For the first time since their signing in the mid-1800s, Kā Whakatauraki: The Promises brings together the Ngāi Tahu deeds, the ten contractual agreements by which the Crown acquired more than half the land mass of New Zealand to make it available for British colonisation.