Kinship and Social Organisation

by W. H. R. Rivers

If, as shown in Diagram 5, E marries b, the wife or widow of his father’s father, he, who had previously been the elder brother of F and f, now comes to occupy the position of their father’s father, while d, the mother of E, will now come to stand to him in the relationship of son’s wife.

I need only mention here one of the features of the Buin system which can be accounted for by means of this marriage. The term mamai is used, not only for the elder sister and for the elder brother’s wife, but it is also applied to the father’s mother; that is, the wife of the elder brother is designated by the same term as the wife of the father’s father, exactly as must happen if E marries b, the wife of his father’s father. A number of extraordinary features from two Melanesian islands collected by two independent workers fit into a coherent scheme if they have been the result of a marriage in which a man gives one of his wives to his son’s son during his life, or in which this woman is taken to wife by her husband’s grandson when she becomes a widow. If the practice were ever sufficiently habitual to become the basis of the system of relationship, we can be confident that it is the former of these two alternatives with which we have to do.

If you are still so under the domination of ideas derived from your own social surroundings that you cannot believe in such a marriage, I would remind you that there is definite evidence from the Banks Islands that men used to hand over wives to their sisters’ sons. It is not taking us so much into the unknown as it might appear to suppose that they once also gave their wives to their sons’ sons.

I have taken this case somewhat out of its proper place in my argument because the evidence is so closely connected with that by means of which I have shown the relation between features of systems of relationship and peculiar forms of marriage in Melanesia. I have now to return to the more sober task of considering how far we are justified in inferring the former existence of marriage institutions when we find features of systems of relationship of which they would have been the natural consequence. It is evident that, whenever we find such a feature as common nomenclature for a grandmother and a sister or for a cross-cousin and a parent, it should suggest to us the possibility of such marriage regulations as those of Pentecost and the Banks Islands. But such common designations might have arisen in some other way, and in order to establish the existence of such forms of marriage in the past history of the people, we must have criteria to guide us when we are considering whether a given feature of the terminology of relationship is or is not a survival of a marriage institution.

I will return to the cross-cousin marriage for my examples. The task before us is to inquire how far such features of relationship as exist in Fiji, Anaiteum or Guadalcanar, in conjunction with the cross-cousin marriage, will justify us in inferring the former existence of this form of marriage in places where it is not now practised.

If there be found among any people all the characteristic features of a coastal Fijian or of an Anaiteum system, I think few will be found to doubt the former existence of the cross-cousin marriage. It would seem almost inconceivable that there should ever have existed any other conditions, whether social or psychological, which could have produced this special combination of peculiar uses of terms of relationship. It is when some only of these features are present that there will arise any serious doubt whether they are to be regarded as survivals of the former existence of the cross-cousin marriage.

One consideration I must point out at once. Certain of the features which follow from the cross-cousin marriage may be the result of another marriage regulation. In some parts of the world there exists a custom of exchanging brothers and sisters, so that, when a man marries a woman, his sister marries his wife’s brother. As the result of this custom the mother’s brother and the father’s sister’s husband will come to be one and the same person, and the father’s sister will become also the mother’s brother’s wife.

This form of marriage exists among the western people of Torres Straits,[17] and is accompanied by features of the system of relationship which would follow from the practice. The mother’s brother is classed with the father’s sister’s husband as wad-wam, but there is an alternative term for the father’s sister’s husband and there was no evidence that the mother’s brother’s wife was classed with the father’s sister. It seemed possible that the classing together of the mother’s brother and the father’s sister’s husband was not a constant feature of the system of relationship, but only occurred in cases where the custom of exchange had made it necessary. The case, however, is sufficient to show that two of the correspondences which follow from the cross-cousin marriage may be the result of another kind of marriage. If we accept the social causation of such features and find these correspondences alone, it would still remain an open question whether they were the results of the custom of exchange or of the marriage of cross-cousins. The custom of exchange, however, is wholly incapable of accounting for the use of a common term for the mother’s brother and the father-in-law, for the father’s sister and the mother-in-law, or for cross-cousins and brothers- or sisters-in-law. It is only when these correspondences are present that there will be any decisive reason for inferring the former existence of the cross-cousin marriage.

The first conclusion, then, is that some of the features found in association with the cross-cousin marriage are of greater value than others in enabling us to infer the former existence of the cross-cousin marriage where it no longer exists. Next, the probability that such features as I am considering are due to the former presence of the cross-cousin marriage will be greatly heightened if this form of marriage should exist among people with allied cultures. An instance from Melanesia will bring out this point clearly.

In the island of Florida in the Solomons it is clear that the cross-cousin marriage is not now the custom, and I could discover no tradition of its existence in the past. One feature, however, of the system of relationship is just such as would follow from the cross-cousin marriage. Both the wife’s mother and the wife of the mother’s brother are called vungo.