Descent of Land.
1. Male children succeed to their father’s land, female children to their mother’s land.
So says the proverb—“Nga tamariki tane ka whai ki te ure tu, nga tamariki wahine ka whai ki te u-kai-po.” “Male children follow after the male, female children follow after the breast fed on at night.”
2. If a female marries a man of another tribe—he tangata ke—she forfeits all right to land in her mother’s tribe.
So says the proverb—“Haere atu te wahine, haere marokore.” “The woman goes, and goes without her smock.”
3. The children of a female married to a man of a stranger tribe have no right of succession to land in their mother’s tribe.
So says the proverb—“He iramutu tu ke mai i tarawahi awa[65]”—“A nephew or niece standing apart on the other side of the river.”
But there is a provision which can be applied to modify this last rule. If the brothers of the woman ask for one or more of the children—their [iramutu]—to be given up to their care, and they are thus, as it were, [pg 94] adopted by their uncles, they become reinstated in the tribal rights which their mother had forfeited.