22 Transactions. — Miscellaneoiis. 



others are often misleading when we apply them to a race 

 whose customs are known to us. Too much is taken for 

 granted ; many assertions are too general. In " The Primitive 

 Family," by C. N. Starcke, we read, " The tribe is endoga- 

 mous, but the clan or sub-tribe is exogamous — i.e., a person 

 must always marry out of the sub-tribe." This statement, as 

 we have seen, does not apply to the Maori of New Zealand. 

 The same writer says, " No people are exogamous as a tribe, 

 only clans or sub-tribes are so." It is quite certain that no 

 Maori tribe was exogamous ; neither were the sub-tribes. 



As a consequence of the Maori recognition of both agnatic 

 and uterine filiation, it follows that property is inherited 

 through both parents, as also is rank and prestige. Pro- 

 perty inherited consists principally of land interests. Hence 

 it follows that the native claims to land are often most in- 

 tricate and difficult to adjudicate upon, as our Native Land 

 Court Judges know full well. The children born of exo- 

 gamous marriages were entitled to an interest in the lands 

 of both parents, providing that such lands were occupied by 

 them. In such cases it is the custom to live for some time 

 at one place, cultivating food there, and utilising the various 

 natural products of the land, and then to go and live on other 

 lands wherein the person is interested. Thus both claims are 

 kept up, according to Maori custom. 



One kind of exogamous marriage among the Maori w^as 

 the result of their frequent intertribal wars, in which many of 

 the conquered people were enslaved. It was by no means 

 uncommon for a native, even the chiefs, to marry a slave 

 wife, and the children of such an union would inherit their 

 father's rank and property. They would continue to live as 

 members of their father's tribe, by whom they would be 

 better treated and more honoured than they would be by 

 their mother's tribe should they return to it ; for on that 

 side the degrading stigma of slavery would lie upon them — 

 there were, in fact, dead to the mother's tribe. 



When the Tuhoe Tribe expelled Ngati-manawa from Te 

 Whaiti that stricken people took refuge with the Kahungunu 

 Tribe, to whom they paid a tribute of preserved birds, i^'c, 

 for being allowed to dwell in those parts. However, they got 

 into trouble with one tribal section of tlieir overlords, and 

 were in sore straits, wlien a Tuhoe chief went and brouglit the 

 remnant away to Rua-tahuna. Here many of Tuhoe wished 

 to slay them, but several chiefs of Tuhoe, in order to save the 

 lives of the fugitives, gave some of them women of the Tuhoe 

 Tribe as wives. Hence the refugees were safe, and through 

 those women are the Tuhoe and Ngati-manawa Tribes con- 

 nected. 



Andrew Lang, in his "Custom and Myth," says, "On 



