Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/203

Rh wives. At the present day noa undoubtedly means no more than "marriageable." If Mr. Thomas reads the term "group-marriage" in the paragraph at page 189 as referring to a period of sexual license, which would be properly termed "modified promiscuity," it must be considered to have been prior to the noa relationship, and consequently there could not have been people who stood in the relation of noa to each other. Therefore Mr. Thomas's sentence is quite beside the mark. ThoughoutThroughout [sic] my paper I spoke of pirrauru as "group-marriage."

Mr. Thomas's remark makes it again necessary to refer to that relation. The noa system is based on the fact that whenever a child is born it becomes one of a group—which is male if the child is a boy, or female if a girl. These two groups are collectively and individually noa to each other, or, as Mr. Thomas in one place puts it, "marriageable."

If the child is a boy, then his noa group consists of himself and all his own and tribal brothers; such is also the analogous case of a girl, her group being composed of her own and tribal sisters.

The tribe is made up of such noa groups, and in tracing out the successive descents it becomes evident that the relations noa and kami alternate. A diagram will show how the noa and kami rule works out. It is impossible to form any idea of the numerical strength of such a group, for it must be remembered that intertribal marriages took place, and that therefore a noa group might find some of its members in one of the neighbouring tribes.

7m 1f

noa

8f 4m

2f

kami

5 f

3 m

noa

6 f