26 Transactions. 



occupying the taken district, to the utter exclusion of its original owners or 

 other tribes ; thus, in a war of the celebrated Hongi, he drove all the tribes 

 out of the Auckland district into "Waikato, and even as far as Taranaki ; but 

 though the whole district thereby became his, yet, as he did not occupy it, the 

 conquered tribes, on his return to the North, came back to their own lands ; 

 and we found them in occupation when Auckland was established as an 

 English settlement. Again, in the case of a tribe which had been conquered 

 and had become extinct, with the exception of those who had been made 

 slaves by the conquering party, these slaves could, by purchase, recover the 

 ownership of their tribal rights to land, or they could be liberated and return 

 to their own lands on a promise of allegiance to the conquerors, rendering 

 them any assistance, if required, in times of war, and supplying them, for the 

 first few years after their return, with a certain amount of rats, fish, and fern- 

 root ; and eventually, on presenting the conquerors with a greenstone battle- 

 axe (the mere pounamu), they were again allowed to be called a tribe, and 

 claim the lands of their fathers as though they had never been conquered. 



The claims in connection with lands given to a tribe for assistance rendered 

 in war are more complicated than any other. Although the land was given 

 to the leader of the tribe rendering such assistance, it did not thereby become 

 vested in that individual leader, inasmuch as the assisting tribe were seldom 

 alone, but had brought their allies, and, if these allies had lost any of their 

 chiefs in battle, each relative of the deceased chiefs had a claim in the land 

 thus given ; and each relative of any chief who had been killed, of the tribe to 

 whose leader the land was given, had also a claim. But the complication of 

 land claims does not end even here. It was necessary that the land given 

 should be occupied so that possession of it be retained, and as the assisted and 

 assisting tribes became related by intermarriage, the tribal lands of the 

 assisted tribe were claimed by the issue of these marriages, according to the laws 

 relating to the ownership of land as afiected by the marriage tie, so that after 

 a few generations their respective claims not unfrequently became the cause of 

 another war. An instance of this happened about four generations ago. One 

 of the northern tribes rendered assistance in time of war to a southern tribe, 

 now residing not far from Auckland, and a portion of land was given to the 

 northern tribe ; shortly afterwards the daughter of the southern chief was 

 taken in marriage by one of the chiefs of the northern tribe ; the two sisters 

 of this woman were married to chiefs of the southern tribe, and thereupon 

 their children's claims held good ; but when the time came for the ofispring of 

 the sister, who had married the northern chief, to give up their land, the 

 colonization of New Zealand had commenced, and land became a marketable 

 commodity. This ofispring retained their claims against all right and argu- 

 ment, and to this day there is a rankling feeling between the tribes concerned ^ 



