W.H.R.Rivers

“ 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. ”

“ It is an almost universal feature of the classificatory system that the children of brothers are classed with the children of sisters. A man applies the same term to his mother's sister's children which he uses for his father's brother's children, and the use of this term, being the same as that used for a brother or sister, carries with it the most rigorous prohibition of marriage. ”

“ 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 we pay regard to the social functions associated with relationship, it is our own system, rather than the classificatory, which is open to the reproach that its relationships carry into them no rights and duties. ”

“ There were certain features which brought relatives separated by two generations into one category; the mother's mother, for instance, received the same designation as the elder sister; the wife's mother the same as the daughter; the wife's brother the same as the daughter's son. The only conclusion I was then able to formulate was that these features were the result of some social institution resembling the matrimonial classes of Australia, which would have the effect of putting persons of alternate generations into one social category. ”

“ In this part of the world the classificatory system has been the seat of a process of simplification starting from the almost incredible complexity of Pentecost and reaching the simplicity of such systems as those of Eddystone or Mekeo. This process has gone hand in hand with one in which the regulation of marriage by some kind of clan-exogamy has gradually been replaced by a mechanism based on relationship as traced by means of pedigrees. ”

“ Thus, a man will not only apply the term "father" to all the brothers of his father, to all the sons' sons of his father's father, and to all the sons' sons' sons of his father's father's father, to all the husbands of his mother's sisters and of his mother's mother's granddaughters, etc., but he will also apply the term to all the members of his father's clan of the same generation as his father and to all the husbands of the women of the mother's clan of the same generation as the mother, even when it is quite impossible to show any genealogical relationship with them. ”

“ When, further, the social condition which Morgan was led to formulate was one of general promiscuity developing into group-marriage, conditions bitterly repugnant to the sentiments of most civilised persons, it is not surprising that he aroused a mass of heated opposition which led, not merely to widespread rejection of his views, but also to the neglect of lessons to be learnt from his new discovery which must have received general recognition long before this, if they had not been obscured by other issues. ”

“ In one island, Merlav, these relatives have all their possessions in common, and it is the duty of one to help the other in any difficulty, to warn him in danger, and, if need be, to die with him. If one dies, the other has to help to support his widow and has to abstain from certain foods. Further, there are a number of curious regulations in which the sanctity of the head plays a great part. A man must take nothing from above the head of his brother-in-law, nor may he even eat a bird which has flown over his head. ”