Such a mode of making peace seems to have been adopted in case of civil war between divisions of the same tribe, especially when waged with no prospect of either party completely mastering the other, and with the consideration of preventing both suffering such serious loss as would render them unable to cope with a common foe.
Also, in cases of adultery a piece of land would be demanded by the injured person; and his demand would be respected, for such was the proper compensation for the injury—land for the woman. But then a stratagem was sometimes employed, for when the injured man went to take profession, he might find his right opposed by some of the owners of the land who had purposely absented themselves from the conference whereat it was [pg 93] given up. And this unfair practice has sometimes been seized on as a precedent in their dealings with the Pakeha; for they have too often shown a readiness to sell lands to which they had only a joint right with many others, knowing well that those others would repudiate their act.
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.