Page:Kinship and social organisation.djvu/81

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SOCIAL ORGANISATION
69

the Hawaiian. Though the mother's brother was classed in nomenclature with the father, there was a term for the sister's son, but it was so little used that in a superficial survey it would have escaped notice. Its use was so exceptional that many of the islanders were doubtful about its proper meaning. In other parts of the Solomons where the clan-organisation persists, but where the regulation of marriage by genealogical relationship is equally, if not more, important, the systems of relationship show intermediate characters. Thus, in the island of Florida the mother's brother was distinguished from the father and there was a term by means of which to distinguish cross-cousins from other kinds of cousin, but the father's sister was classed with the mother, and it was habitual to ignore the proper term for cross-cousins and to class them in nomenclature with brothers and sisters and with cousins of other kinds, as in the Hawaiian system. One influential man even applied the term for father to the mother's brother; it was evident that a change is even now in progress which would have to go very little farther to make the Florida system indistinguishable in structure from that of Hawaii.

Among the western Papuo-Melanesians of New Guinea, again, the systems of relationship come very near to the Hawaiian type, and with this character there is associated a very high degree of importance of the regulation of marriage by genealogical relationship and a vagueness of clan-