Kinship. 171 



loose and vague, wanting in that precision wliicli is found in 

 our own terms, and most certainly giving forth no hint of a 

 sacred obligation. This is exactly what we do find. 



The Fijian term wati, which is common to both sexes, 

 like our " spouse," is very far from expressing our idea of 

 conjugal relationship. It means nothing more than " one 

 with whom I may cohabit." A Fijian rarely uses it in 

 speaking of his wife. He seems to be withheld from using 

 it by a sense of shame, and usually speaks of her as Nonggu 

 Alewa, my woman. Precisely similar is the Tongan terra 

 Unoho, and the Kamilaroi Gulia. The Hawaiian has Kana 

 for husband, and Wahine for wife ; but these terms mean 

 no more than male and female. The Tongan Unoho tells a 

 tale from which we instinctively shrink ; but it is so 

 strikingly illustrative of my subject, and so fearfully 

 expressive of degradation, that I cannot pass it by, even 

 though I must apologise for dragging it into light and 

 exposing its shame. 



Unoho is compounded of two words, Unu and Oho. 

 Unu=insero. Oho :=vehem enter admoveo ; and with a 

 causative prefix, Unoho is used as a verb to express the act 

 of taking the sow to the boar. Whence, we see that there 

 is not the faintest hint of the sanctity of the marriage tie 

 in this word. It is nothing more than a brutal expression 

 of sexual intercourse. 



Next we have the fact that the term Wati, or spouse, is 

 used by a man to designate his brother's wives as well as 

 his own. He thus addresses not only the wives of his own 

 brothers according to our system, but those also of all the 

 men who are his brothers according to the Turanian system, 

 i.e., the sons of his father's brothers, and those of his 

 mother's sisters. A woman thus addresses the husbands of 

 all the women who are her sisters, according to the Turanian 

 system. In this fact we have conclusive evidence of the old 

 license under that system, and we see this evidence surviving 

 in the terms of kinship, though the practice which it records 

 was long since prohibited by the advance into polygamy. 

 The terms used when the practice was allowed have long, 

 survived the practice. 



In one of the Fijian tribes, I found "my brother's wife" 

 a male speaking, and "my sister's husband" a female speak- 

 ing, rendered by N(jnggu Ndaku, my back. This term, how- 

 ever, is used interchangeably with Watinggu, my spouse. In 

 another tribe, speaking a dialect widely differing from that 



