284 A NATVBALI8T IN CELEBES ch. xi 



SO peaceful and quiet that we can hardly judge of the part 

 that women would play in the politics of the country, but 

 in some of the legends we have evidence which shows that 

 in the ' good old times ' women played a part in the affairs 

 of war and of the state. 



We have seen then that inMinahassa the marriage laws 

 are based on a system of patriarchy with cognate relation- 

 ship and inheritance. The man marries whom he pleases, 

 either within or without the tribe, brings his wife to live 

 in his house, and the property after bis death is divided 

 either between his widow and children in fair proportions 

 or is inherited as common property by the family he leaves. 

 Titles and dignities descend from the father to the eldest 

 son, and genealogies are traced through the males. 



Was this always the system in Minahassa ? Have we 

 any evidence to bring forward to show that the system 

 which now prevails, or rather prevailed at the time when 

 the Christian missionaries first appeared upon the scene, 

 was the original system of these Minahassa folk ? The 

 evidence that is forthcoming is definite and conclusive 

 enough to prove that it is but a modification of an earlier 

 and more primitive system which traced descent through 

 the female line. I will give just two examples of the kind 

 of evidence that guides us in these speculations. In the 

 first place we find that the Minahassers of the northern 

 districts trace their descent from a woman, Lumimuiit, and 

 that in the genealogies descent is traced in the female line 

 for at least two or three generations (p. 243). This shows 

 undoubtedly that they have received their cosmology from 

 a people who were in the habit of tracing their descent 

 habitually through the female line. Then again, the name 

 for the family is sanatotoan, which literally means those 

 ' who have sucked the same milk,' a term obviously ignor- 

 ing the man as the head of the household. It probably 



