Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/171

Rh his tabooed or holy character, and by his possession of the dreaded weather magic through which he can make or mar the prosperity of the whole country. The smaller chiefs have usually only a few villages to draw upon; the smallest merely the other component parts of their own settlement. In every case their power and status depend entirely on their privilege of polygamy and on the exceptionally rich dowry due to a woman who marries a chief.

This account though short and necessarily incomplete will yet be sufficient to indicate the enormous and manifold influence of marriage and polygamy on the constitution of power and on the whole of social organization in the Trobriands.

Turning now to the domestic aspect of polygamy, let us consider the steps by which a chief acquires his several wives. It will be best to take a specific instance; that of To'uluwa, for example. He began his sexual life in the ordinary way, passing through the stages of complete freedom, then of a liaison in the bukumatula; and finally of a permanent attachment. His first choice fell on Kadamwasila, of the clan of Lukwasisiga, the sub-clan Kwaynama of Osapola village (see pl. 4 and diag. in ch. iv, sec. 5). It was quite a suitable match, for this Rh