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CHAPTER II. 



SOCIAL DIVISIONS. 



1. The Tribe. 



General Remarks. — The tribe, village community, clan, 

 'and household, or fam.ily, are the most important social divi- 

 •sions among the majority of native peoples, and consequently 

 they must be described in connection with Mailu sociology. 

 Among the natives of that district the village community, 

 "the clan, and the family are all extremely important units, 

 and it would be impossible to give an account of the customs 

 •of the Mailu, or of their social life, without having drawn 

 a clear outline of these social groupings. The "tribe," on 

 the other hand, is a term which could scarcely be used when 

 dealing with the social institutions of one district. The 

 Mailu people, as a whole, possess a distinct cultural unity, 

 b)ut they by no means form one great social group bound by 

 ties of solidarity; thus the term "tribe" may be applied to 

 them to express the fact that they form one class in the 

 ethnological sense, but not that they are a unit in the same 

 sense. The formation of sm.aller groups within the "tribe" 

 — confederacies of several villages — is, and was in olden 

 da3'^s, of a much greater social importance than the cultural 

 uniformity of the whole district (see below, in this section). 



In this chapter T shall only give an outline of the social 

 ■organization of the village community, clan, and household, 

 and of the relations between the villages and village con- 

 federacies within the tribe. In order to understand thor- 

 oughly a form of social grouping it is necessary to see it in 

 its active, functional aspect; to see how it acts as a unit in 

 social life ; what are the internal relations of its members, 

 and what are its external relations with other groups. Such 

 data will be supplied throughout all the chapters of this 

 memoir in the detailed description of the different customs 

 and institutions when the sociological aspect of the various 

 •customs, ceremonies, and beliefs are considered. But to be 

 able to use the terms "tribe," "clan," "villags com^munity," 

 et€., it is necessary to give a preliminary definition of these 

 terms. 



The Mailu Tribe and the Relations between the Different 

 Villages. — As stated, the Mailu people as a whole have no 

 social solidarity. Nevertheless, their linguistic unity, their 

 local contiguity, and the identity of their material culture 

 and social institutions make it necessary to treat them as a 



