this custom the mother's brother and the father's sister's husband will come to be one and the same person, and the father's sister will become also the mother's brother's wife.
This form of marriage exists among the western people of Torres Straits,[1] and is accompanied by features of the system of relationship which would follow from the practice. The mother's brother is classed with the father's sister's husband as wadwam, but there is an alternative term for the father's sister's husband and there was no evidence that the mother's brother's wife was classed with the father's sister. It seemed possible that the classing together of the mother's brother and the father's sister's husband was not a constant feature of the system of relationship, but only occurred in cases where the custom of exchange had made it necessary. The case, however, is sufficient to show that two of the correspondences which follow from the cross-cousin marriage may be the result of another kind of marriage. If we accept the social causation of such features and find these correspondences alone, it would still remain an open question whether they were the results of the custom of exchange or of the marriage of cross-cousins. The custom of exchange, however, is wholly incapable of accounting for the use of a common term for the mother's brother and the father-in-law, for the father's sister and the mother-in-law, or for cross-cousins and brothers- or sisters-
- ↑ Rep. Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. v., pp. 135 and 241.
