[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

1.,“
1
V
in
CHAPTER V .
KINSHIP ORGANIZATION IN NORTH, CENTRAL, AND
EAST MALEKULA
From the other districts of Malekula, lying to the north of
Lambumbu and Lagalag, and also along the east coast, very little
information was obtained concerning the groupings and behaviour
of kind.red and the regulation of marriage. Two diflerentlists
of kinship terms have been recorded from different parts of the
Big Nambas territory, and others exist from Senbarei district,
and from ‘the four small inland districts to the south of Lagalag
called Bangasa, Nesan, Niviar, and Uerik.
THE Bic NAMBAS
There are no records at all which give any certain information
about the kinship structure or the marriage regulations among
the Big Nambas. The evidence implies that the people are
divided into a number of local, patrilineal, exogamous clans, and
it is deï¬Ånitely stated that for a man and woman oi the same
clan to have sexual intercourse is an offence punishable with
death. Polygyny is practised, but almost exclusively by chiefs.
In Lagalag and Lambumbu important men may have as many
as from eight to twenty wives, but even this number is some-
times exoeeded by the chiefs of the Big Narnbas. Undoubtedly
this multiplicity of wives, like the multiplicity of boy lovers
(cf. p. 261) which a chief usually has, is closely bound up with
the economic lite of the people and the part which chiefs are
expected to play in it. .
. As has already been mentioned, the stretch of territory
occupied by the people who are called by the Europeans " the
Big Nambas â€ù is, in reality, inhabited by two or more distinct
tribes, which, although they have what we are probably correct
in regarding as fundamentally the same culture, possess distinct
dialects and certain cultural peculiarities. Of the two lists of
Big Nambas kinship terms which Deacon recorded, one comes
from the small district of Malua (whence, too, a genealogy has
I15
.i>.
L