You wonderful, wonderful people! I have looked at this family in the past and put it in the too hard basket.
I have records of Sarah's son looking through the land courts and talking about land between Gisborne and Napier but the enquiries were all done under Sarah's name so nothing came up.
I am at the moment laid up after surgery and when I got the original enquiry very quickly put up what details I had and thought maybe they can go further thinking no more of it.
Now you have come back with this wonderful info.
I don't know much about contacting the Maori Courts. Would this be in person, if so I am immobile for approx 1 month more so will look into it when I can.
EDITED
Hello
For a start, start with your computer at your side. Use the search or advance search options on the NZ Archives ARCHWAY site. Court records [files] should then be found, but remember that pre WW1 Maori names, could be spelt many ways depending upon who was writing down the name, and if they had any understanding of how Maori express kinship. It was quite common for the early converts to Christianity to take up a biblical "Christian" name and also just a nick name. There was no consistancy and so, if lucky you will often see an a k a name recorded, you can further search into.
Search for all the posibilities you can think of and sift through the results.
Because of typo's and imperfect printing, search engines do NOT always find all the hits that a naked eye can recognise, so all forms of searching take a lot of time, and a bit of luck. Searching will keep you otherwise occupied.
A recent 600 newspaper clippings search of mine, produced many alternative spellings for the subjects of my first delve into Maori heritage history 1865 - 1910. So best of luck.
Once you have a few key names then check them out on the Maori Land on line site.
Alan.
PS Records so far found for one subject; Hohaia [Josiah] NGAHIWI, have had the surmame spelt as Ngahiwi - Ngaiwi - Hga Hiwi - Ngapiha.