278 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



responsible, and may even be taken in pledge for them. 

 But she cannot pledge them for her debts without the 

 authority of her brother, or other the eldest etioco? 

 Among the Ga of the Gold Coast the uncles or aunts, 

 especially if older than the mother, can take the 

 children away, make use of them, pledge or give them 

 in marriage at their pleasure. 2 



On the other side of the Indian Ocean and en many 

 of the Pacific islands the alien character of husband 

 and father is as strongly marked as in any African 

 tribe. On Yaluit, one of the Marshall Islands, there is 

 no distinction between legitimate and illegitimate 

 children. On Nauru, another of the same group, 

 although fatherright has begun to develop and has 

 succeeded in excluding illegitimate children from their 

 mother's inheritance, motherright is still so strong that 

 when a man is slain his children are excluded from the 

 weregeld, which falls to his brothers and sisters. 3 In 

 the Talauer Islands of the East Indies in case of the 

 wife's adultery compensation is made on the part of the 

 guilty man to her parents. Among the aboriginal 

 tribes of Manipur "on the death of a wife her father 

 demands munda (literally bone-money} from the 

 husband, or if he be dead the late husband's nearest 

 relative. On the death of a child munda is also 

 demanded by the wife's father." 4 In the case of two 

 of these tribes, the Kukis and the Kabui Nagas, the 

 sum payable on a wife's death is the same as that 



i Journ. Afr. Soc. i. 411; Clozel and Villamur, 399. The 

 Brignans are a stage nearer to full fatherright. The maternal 

 uncle's right among them does not arise until the father's death 

 (Ibid. 461). 2 Globus, xciv. 137. 



3 Kohler, Zeits. vergl. Rechtsw. xiv. 423, 422, citing authorities. 



*/. A. L xvi. 138, 355. 



