MOTHERRIGHT 281 



Enough has now been said to exhibit the alien 

 position occupied among matrilineal peoples by the 

 father in regard to his children. Other aspects of the 

 social organisation will come under discussion here- 

 after. Meanwhile, it remains to complete the picture 

 by showing how the duties of head of the family are 

 fulfilled, and in whom the authority or, according to 

 the technical term, ftiepoiesi&s is vested. We have 

 seen that among many of the African peoples 

 the mother's brother has greater rights over a child 

 than the father, and that the duty of blood-revenge 

 falls to him, even against the father. Wherever 

 progress has been made in the organisation of the 

 family, and motherright is still the basis of organisa- 

 tion, as over perhaps the greater part of the African 

 continent, the supreme power is vested in the mother's 

 brother or maternal uncle. In Loango the uncle is 

 addressed as Tate (father). He exercises paternal 

 authority over his nephew, whom he can even sell. 

 The father has no power ; and if the husband and 

 wife separate the children follow the mother as 

 belonging to her brother. They inherit from their 

 mother ; the father's property on the other hand goes 

 at his death to his brother (by the same mother) or to 

 his sister's sons. 1 



The customs of the peoples of the Lower Congo are 

 the same. Around the missionary settlement of 

 Wathen a woman is married by means of a bride- 

 price, the bulk of which is paid to her mother's family, 

 though the father receives a portion. But the wife is 

 not bought as a slave is bought. The husband 

 acquires merely the right to her companionship, and 

 1 Bastian, Loango-Kitste^ i. 166. 



