124 Notes on the Customs of Mota, Banks Islands. 



not avoid him, excepting in that he will not sleep with 

 him. 



A man will not name his son's wife, but does not avoid 

 her. Parents whose children have intermarried will not 

 name one another, but do not avoid. 



The objection to using the person's name extends to every 

 part of his name. Thus Leveveg, having a son-in-law called 

 Matevagqoe, could not use the word for pig, which is qoe. 

 Hardly any one will mention his own name. 



This avoiding and not naming relatives by marriage is 

 reciprocal, and is ascribed to a feeling of shyness and re- 

 spect, " an inward trembling." 



[These customs are of world-wide prevalence. Mutatis mutandis, they 

 may be said to be general throughout the South Sea Islands and Australia, as 

 well as among many American, Asiatic, and African tribes. 



In Fiji brother and sister are strictly tabooed. They will not even speak to 

 one another. Mr. Codrington informs me that this is the rule at Lepers' 

 Island also, though not at Mota. 



Sir John Lubbock attributes these customs to the former prevalence of 

 marriage by capture; but the facts will not fit in with this theory. — L. F.] 



6. Adoption. 



There is no notion of a milk tie. An infant is often 

 adopted, either from pity or relationship, on the death of its 

 mother. When adopted in infancy, the child is carefully 

 kept in ignorance of its adoption, and becomes in all respects 

 one of the family, whether it be of the adopted mother's 

 veve or not. If the adopted child becomes aware of his 

 real parentage, he will very likely go away; and such a dis- 

 covery causes great unhappiness. If the child be adopted 

 at an age such as enables him to understand the transaction, 

 he lives as one of the family, but does not break his natural 

 ties, or lose his own inheritance, nor does he necessarily suc- 

 ceed to his adoptive father's. The closeness of the relation 

 in such cases depends upon affection and circumstances. 



[It is manifest that the Mota custom does not amount to full adoption. This, 

 however, is found in other South Sea Island groups. I do not think it is a 

 purely Fijian custom, though it seems to prevail among some of the tribes 

 who have been intimately connected with the Tongans, and may have learned 

 it from them. A man will adopt the child of his deceased brother. The Rev. 

 F. Langham, chairman of the Wesleyan Mission in Fiji, informed me of a 

 case in which a man deliberately proposed to his wife that she should strangle 

 her own child in order to suckle that of his deceased brother, whose wife also 

 had died. This, however, is quite distinct from adoption proper, which brings 

 into the household a member of another household. In the case in point the 

 child was of its paternal uncle's ownVuv^le (household), and, according to the 

 Fijian system of relationship, the paternal uncle was its father equally with 

 its own father. — L. F.] 



