Guadalcanal - Kinship



Kin Groups and Descent. Descent is reckoned matrilineally. Kaoka speakers recognize five dispersed matrilineal clans, said to have been created through the marriages of the five sons and five daughters of Koevasi, the culture heroine. Each daughter then became the founding ancestress of one of the clans. Localized subclans constitute the core population of each hamlet. Among the people of the interior, there are two matrimoieties, each consisting of a number of constituent matrilineal clans. A male does not usually take up Residence in the territory of his clan until a few years after Marriage, with the construction of his second house, so many of a hamlet's young adult males are, in fact, the sons of clan Members but not clan members themselves.

Kinship Terminology. Among the interior people, a relatively straightforward Hawaiian system is found. Among the Kaoka speakers, the terms for parallel and cross cousins are the same, but they are terminologically differentiated from siblings.

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