Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/276

 a62 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

the Eastern than among the Western islanders and those he presents from them are notably less complete. He attributes his difficulty and the imperfection to inexperience, as he worked first among the easterners. We believe his success in this line among the Western islanders phenomenal and exceptional and that the ethnographer can rarely expect to reach it. The importance of genealogies and the advantages of collecting them are unquestionable. Mr. Rivers has shown the value of them in sociological study as no other in- vestigator has done. To know the exact relationships of the people in a village or a tribe is to hold the key to many a problem in belief, magical practice, marriage rules, property rights, etc.

The subject of social organization in the Eastern Islands is more difficult than in the Western Islands. There exists a system of ex- ogamy of which the village is the unit. There was perhaps an earlier totemic organization but it is difficult to prove the fact. There are now four groupings of people: (a) the grouping in villages, important in marriage regulations; (&) grouping in dis- tricts, geographical; (c) a dual grouping into beisam le and sagareb le (/e=people) ; {d) grouping of people bearing animal names. One naturally guesses at once that this last is totemic, but there is no good evidence of it. But a small part of the population be- longs to these animal-name groups, of which there are but three or four. These groups are related to certain dances, but are not demonstrably totemic. The grouping into beisam and sagareb ap- pears to have been introduced from the Western Islands and New Guinea; the divisions are related to magical practices and Haddon appears to think that even if introduced they may have fitted into an earlier dual organization. The district grouping appears to be older than the village organization, which has probably grown out of it. If this is so, the districts must formerly have been the units of social organization and marriage kinship and descent were regulated in accordance with them.

Out of the many interesting facts presented in the book the most important are those relative to magic, to death, and to re- ligion. We shall close this notice with a brief reference to magical practices. Magic is a considerable element in the life of this people and is practiced in various forms. One of the most curious is a treatment of disease by passes and strokes. The patient must keep his eyes closed throughout the treatment; no spectators are per- mitted, even the practitioner's assistant withdrawing; there is no