Namau - Marriage and Family

Marriage. Traditionally, Namau marriages were polygynous and marriages were often arranged while the potential spouses were still quite young. Wife stealing was also not uncommon and was a source of conflict that led easily to open hostilities between groups. Bride-wealth was required, and postmarital residence was patrilocal. Wife exchange appears to have been common in traditional Namau society. Divorce does not appear to have been an option for women, and husbands were held to be fully within their rights in beating their wives. Relationships among cowives were frequently not peaceful. Among the other social and cultural changes occurring by the 1950s was a dissolution of the old marriage system and its connections with the descent system. Nowadays Individuals have much freedom in contracting marriages and the nuclear family is of central importance.

Domestic Unit. In the past cowives shared a single dwelling, but each had her own partitioned section in which she and her young children ate and slept. Women worked in their own gardens and cooked for their own children. In recent decades, the nuclear family has become a residential and work unit.

Inheritance. Heritable property passes from parents to children, with sons inheriting their fathers' shell ornaments, canoes, pigs, and dogs, and daughters their mothers' tools and personal effects.

Socialization. During their early years, children are largely cared for and disciplined by their mothers. In the past, a series of initiation rites served as the vehicle by which older children, especially boys, were taught the skills, practices, and lore of adulthood. At about 8 years of age boys were taken on a journey upriver to be initiated into the Totemic groups of their patrilineal clans. At about 13, boys of the same patrician underwent a period of seclusion and Ceremony in a specially built ravi, after which they took on the status of warriors.