24 Transactions. 



included his house and fences, as well as all his smaller goods. All that a 

 freeman made or caught, or obtained, or raised by agriculture, were his own ; 

 although his house, created by himself, was his own, yet if not on his own 

 land (rarely the case) he could not hold it against the owner of that spot, 

 unless such use had been openly allowed to him by the owner before all 

 (^ te aroaro o te tokomaha). So a plantation planted by himself, if not on 

 his own land (also a rare thing), he would have to leave after taking his crops, 

 on being ordered so to do ; but not so if he had originally, and with permis- 

 sion, felled the forest, or reclaimed that land from the wild ; in which case, he 

 would retain it for life, or as long as he pleased, and very likely his 

 descendants after him. To land, a man acquired a peculiar right in many 

 ways : — 



1. Definite. — {a.) By having been born on it, or, in their expressive language, 

 " where his na\'el string was cut," as his first blood (ever sacred in their eyes) 

 had been shed there, (h.) By having had his secundines buried there (this, 

 however, was much more partial), (c.) By a public invitation from the owner 

 to dwell on it. {d.) By having first cultivated it by permission, {e.) By 

 having had his blood shed upon it. [f.) By having had the body or bones of 

 his deceased father or mother, or uterine brother or sister, deposited or rested 

 on it. {g.) By having had a near relative killed or roasted on it. (li.) By 

 liaving been bitterly cursed in connection with that piece of land, i.e. — this 

 oven is for thy body, or head ; on that tree thy liver shall be fixed to rot ; thy 

 skull shall hold the cooked birds, or berries of this wood, {i.) Or by the 

 people of the district using for any purpose a shed which had been temporarily 

 put up there, and used by a chief in travelling. 



2. Indefinite. — (a.) By having been invited to come there by the chief with 

 a party to dwell {lit, having had their canoe in passing called to shore), (h.) 

 Through his wife by marriage ; but such wou.ld only be a quasi life-interest to 

 him, i.e., during her life and infancy of the children, as, in case of children, 

 they would take all their mother's right, (c.) By having assisted in conquer- 

 ing it. {d.) By having aided with food, a canoe, a spear, etc., an armed party 

 who subsequently became conquerors of it. All these equally applied, though 

 he should belong to a difierent tribe or sub-tribe. 



3. Beyond all these, however, was the right by gift or transfer, and by 

 inheritance, which, not unfrequently, was peculiar and private. This (which 

 has of late years been much contested, and too often, it is feared, by ignorant 

 and interested men, or by those who have too readily believed what the 

 talkative younger New Zealanders now say,) may clearly be proved beyond all 

 doubt : — (1.) By the acts of their several ancestors (great-grandfathers) to their 

 children, from whom the present sub-tribes derive their sub-tribal names, and 

 claim their boundaries ; such ancestors divided and gave those lands simply to 



