Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/54

Rh have to return to his maternal kinsmen practically all the material benefits they had received from him during his lifetime. In any case, a good deal of discontent and friction and many roundabout methods of settlement are involved in this dual play of paternal affection and matrilineal authority: the chief's son and his maternal nephew can be described as predestined enemies.

This theme will recur in the progress of the following narrative. In discussing consent to marriage, we shall see the importance of paternal authority and the functions of the matrilineal kinsmen. The custom of cross-cousin marriage is a traditional reconciliation of the two opposing principles. The sexual taboos and prohibitions of incest also cannot be understood without a clear grasp of the principles discussed in this section.

So far we have met To'uluwa, his favourite wife Kadamwasila, whose death followed on the village tragedy, their son Namwana Guya'u, and his enemy Mitakata, son of the chief's sister, and these we shall meet again, for they were among my best informants. We shall also become acquainted with the other sons of the chief, and of his favourite wife, and with some of his maternal kinsmen and kinswomen. We shall follow several of them in their love affairs, and in their marriage arrangements; we shall have to pry into their domestic scandals, and to take an indiscreet interest in their intimate life. For all of them were, during a long period, under ethnographic observation, and I obtained much of my material through their confidences, and especially from their mutual scandal-mongering.

Rh