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Maori and Polynesian: their origin, history and culture

The Land-hunger of the Maoris implies a Large — Population to dispute their Possession of the — Country

The Land-hunger of the Maoris implies a Large
Population to dispute their Possession of the
Country

(8) Another argument against the six canoes finding an empty country to land in is the extraordinary persistency of the Maori passion for land. Hunger for land never appears unless there is too little of it to go round the population. It is seldom or never a feature of primitive culture. It was natural for the Polynesians to have it after they had been so long settled in their islets as to overcrowd them and to resort to infanticide and emigration. And it was natural, therefore, for the immigrants by the six canoes to claim, each for his family or clan, as far as he could see inland, as tradition tells. But that the passion should continue after they found that they had vast areas quite empty for every tribe is not in accordance with common sense. Nothing but a hard and long struggle with aborigines for its possession can explain the extraordinary importance always attached by the Maoris to land and its inheritance. Their accurate preservation of the page 235genealogies, and the purity of married life in contrast to the license before marriage, originate and have their basis in landed inheritance. Without any claimants for it but the new-comers themselves, in such wide territories landed properties would have fallen into the background, and these features of the life would have become subordinate.