According to Colonel Mallery, the Ute Indians indicate "mother" by placing the index finger in the mouth (497a. 479). Clark describes the common Indian sign as follows: "Bring partially curved and compressed right hand, and strike with two or three gentle taps right or left breast, and make sign for female; though in conversation the latter is seldom necessary. Deaf mutes make sign for female, and cross hands as in their sign for baby, and move them to front and upwards" (420. 262). Somewhat similar is the sign for "father": "Bring the compressed right hand, back nearly outwards, in front of right or left breast, tips of fingers few inches from it; move the hand, mostly by wrist action, and gently tap the breast with tips of fingers two or three times, then make sign for male. Some Indians tap right breast for 'father,' and left for 'mother.' Deaf-mutes make sign for male, and then holding hands fixed as in their sign for baby, but a little higher, move the hands to front and upwards" (420. 167).
Interesting is the following statement of Mr. Codrington, the well-known missionary to the Melanesians:—
"In Mota the word used for 'mother' is the same that is used for the division [tribe?] veve, with a plural sign ra veve. And it is not that a man's kindred are so called after his mother, but that his mother is called his kindred, as if she were the representative of the division to which he belongs; as if he were not the child of a particular woman, but of the whole kindred for whom she brought him into the world." Moreover, at Mota, in like fashion, "the word for 'consort,' 'husband,' or 'wife,' is in a plural form ra soai, the word used for members of a body, or the component parts of a canoe" (25. 307-8).
Mother-Right.
Since the appearance of Bachofen's famous book on the matriarchate, "mother-right," that system of society in which the mother is paramount in the family and the line of inheritance passes through her, has received much attention from students of sociology and primitive history.
Post thus defines the system of mother-right:—
"The matriarchate is a system of relationship according to which the child is related only to his mother and to the persons connected with him through the female line, while he is looked upon as not related to his father and the persons connected with him through the male line. According to this system, therefore, the narrowest family circle consists not, as with us to-day, of father, mother, and child, but of mother, mother's brother, and sister's child, whilst the father is completely wanting, and the mother's brother takes the father's place with the sister's children. The real father is not the father of his own children, but of his nephews and nieces, whilst the brother of his wife is looked upon as father to his children. The brothers and sisters of the mother form with her a social group, to which belong also the children of the sisters, the children of the daughters of the sisters, etc., but not the children of the brothers, the children of the sisters' sons, etc. With every husband the relationship ceases" (127. I. 13-14).
The system of mother-right prevails widely over the whole globe; in some places, however, only in fragmentary condition. It is found amongst nearly all the native tribes of America; the peoples of Malaysia, Melanesia, Australia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, the Dravidian tribes of India; in Africa it is found in the eastern Sahara, the Soudan, the east and west coast, and in the centre of the continent, but not to the exclusion, altogether, of father-right, while in the north the intrusion of Europeans and the followers of Islam has tended to suppress it. Traces of its former existence are discovered among certain of the ancient tribes of Asia Minor, the old Egyptians, Arabs, Greeks, Romans, Teutons, the Aryans of India, the Chinese, Japanese, etc.
Mother-right has been recognized by many sociologists as a system of family relationship, perhaps the most widespread, perhaps the most primitive of all. Dr. Brinton says:—
"The foundation of the gentile system, as of any other family life, is … the mutual affection between kindred. In the primitive period this is especially between children of the same mother, not so much because of the doubt of paternity, as because physiologically and obviously, it is the mother in whom is formed, and from whom alone proceeds, the living being" (412. 47).