Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/212

180 I do not know whether I quite understand Mr. Thomas when he asks whether I will "admit that group-motherhood as well as group-marriage existed"? Following from what I have just said, I do not see any objection to the term "group-motherhood" to include the "actual mother and all her sisters, who are together the group-wives of the father of a child."

This I think will give my reply to a further elaboration of the same idea of a "group-mother" analogous to that of a "group-father" at page 303.

Referring to the Dieri term ngaperi, Mr. Thomas says at p. 303 as follows "… Ngaperi clearly does not mean father in our sense, but refers to status in the family, if Dr. Howitt's statement is correct. It seems, however, that ngaperi is applied to all the brothers, own or tribal, of the primary spouse; if this is so, the term ngaperi-waka has nothing to do with the pirrauru relationship at all. … Out of Dr. Howitt's own mouth I am able to quote words which show that ngaperi and ngaperi-waka do not refer to physical fatherhood."

The essence of this criticism is in the last lines, and I remember a case in point where a Dieri woman was asked who was the father of one of her children, to which she replied "my noas," this term being used in the sense of husbands. Now, assuming her to be the woman 5 in Diagram 1, then the man 1 would be the ngaperi and the man 2 the ngaperi-waka. To these may be added other "pirauru-husbands" whom she acquired at the times when the people were re-allotted in batches by the kandri ceremony. All those "husbands" are the "noas."

I think that this shows that the terms ngaperi and ngaperi-waka both refer to physical fatherhood, and that the ngaperi-waka has something to do with pirrauru marriage.

The fact that all the brothers of the man who is the