Settlers established custom for female relatives, reportedly (9)

'settlers' is the definition.
(I know that Habitants is a settlers)

'established custom for female relatives reportedly' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'custom' could be 'habit' (habit is a kind of custom) and 'habit' is present in the answer.
The remaining letters 'ants' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).

Can you help me to learn more?