The men 1 and 2 were brothers, and each had a wife by betrothal (tippa-malku). I assume that, at some ceremony, 5 and 2, and 6 and 1, became pirrauru, and further, that in accordance with the common practice they lived in a family of four. (Native Tribes, p. 181.) I have always found difficulty in explaining the relationships which arise out of this double marriage, and I shall therefore use the terms husband and wife where a man and a woman have been allotted to each other, either by betrothal (tippa-malku), gift, or by the kandri ceremony as pirrauru.
Thus 1 is the husband of 5, but he is also the husband of 6, and 2 is likewise the husband of 6 and 5. The men 1 and 2 are therefore husbands in common of the women 5 and 6.
We may now go a step further. The man 9 is the son of the woman 5, but he has two fathers, who are the "group-husbands" of his mother. Now, to use Mr. Thomas's term, we have a physiological fact as to the fatherhood of either or both of these men. They are both properly regarded as the ngaperi of both 9 and 11, and the only distinction which is made, so far as I know, is that the man 1 is the ngaperi, and the man 2 is the ngaperi-waka of 9. The same considerations will show that the men 2 and 1 are the fathers in common of the man 11.
The filial relations naturally follow from the marital and parental relations. Thus the men 9 and 11 are the sons (ngatamura) of both 1 and 2, and while 5 and 6 are the "own" mothers of 9 and 11 respectively, they stand in the relation of ngandri to 11 and 9. Moreover, since 9 and 11 have the same fathers, they are necessarily brothers.
Here we may see in actual existence the relationships which justify the observation which I have made in my Native Tribes (p. 162), that all the children of two or
