198 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 184 
wife, father’s mother’s brother’s wife, etc. m. sp., and probably w. sp., 
also. 
HOUSEHOLD GROUP AND FAMILY 
By “household group” I mean those individuals who live and eat 
together in a house. ‘‘Family’’ here refers to the nuclear family com- 
posed of husband, wife, and their children. In some instances these 
two groups may be identical, but in many cases they are not. As we 
have seen, many adults in Sia do not have spouses, either because 
they have never married or have been widowed; they always live with 
others; no one lives alone. Some unmarried women bear and rear 
children; they, too, live with others. In general, I believe it fair to 
say that the household group, rather than the nuclear family, is the 
basic economic unit of the community; the members of the household 
obtain their food, clothing, and other necessities from this group, and 
all who are able to do so contribute to the subsistence of the group. 
It should go without saying that mutual aid takes place also between 
households. Here are a few examples of household groups (I am not 
using the real names of the individuals involved) : 
(1) In 1957: Pablo, a man in his seventies, has been a widower for 
several years; he had one child who died. Anna, 23, a daughter of a 
sister, or half sister, of Pablo lives with him and keeps house for him; 
she is unmarried, but has two or three children. 
(2) In 1941: JPP, a very old man, blind, a widower, the head of a 
medicine society, owns the house; his wife, who bore some 10 children, 
died many years ago; PP, 41 years old, a son of JPP, has never mar- 
ried; one daughter, Pt, and three sons—JB, S, and F—of Is, a daugh- 
ter of JPP. Pt is unmarried but has a baby; JB, S, and F were with- 
out spouses at the time; and, lastly, Js, a half sister of Pt. JPP does 
virtually no work; he is too old, and blind besides. JB is a ‘“‘good 
worker’; S and F are young “but they eat the most.” Pt does the 
housework for the whole household. Js, who is only 9 years old, helps 
Pt take care of her baby and does a little work. Is, a daughter of 
JPP, and her husband Sj—the parents of Pt, JB, S, and F—used to 
live in JPP’s house, also, while Pt was away at school. But when Pt 
returned Is and Sj moved into a house that he had built. 
(3) In 1941: JS, a widower in his sixties, and his daughter LS, 
unmarried, who has a daughter, GS, who also is unmarried but has 
ason. JS supports the family, with the women doing the housework. 
Their house became so dilapidated as to be untenable so they moved 
into the home of AG, husband, and MG, wife, and their three children ; 
MG is a daughter of JS. But JS is having a new house built, and 
when it is finished he and his daughter, granddaughter, and great 
grandson will move into it. 
