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Great families of Polynesia: inter-island links and marriage patterns

Definitions of the family ape much the same the world over depending upon the purpose of the person doing the defining. Families are either groups of people eating or living together or they are related by blood as in nuclear and extended families. For present purposes, families are genealogical groupings taking their name or designation from an apical ancestor or founder.

In the main, Polynesian families tend to be patrilineal rather than matrilineal though family headship frequently passed to and through first-born or otherwise high-ranking women.(1) This is often difficult to detect in genealogies where personal names are not necessarily related to gender or where such names have been replaced by the most popular designations or titles. By great families I refer to the ruling and priestly families holding the highest titles in the major groups of islands inhabited by the speakers of Polynesian languages.

From any survey of Polynesian traditional history it becomes clear that the major island groups were not totally separated from one another, though voyages between some of them would only have been possible during exceptional weather conditions caused periodically by the El Nino phenomenon, and sometimes they would have been isolated for long periods because of some other cause of a halt in migratory movements. Certainly the genealogies suggest that many of the ruling families had common ancestors, and homelands were important except in Samoa and Tonga where a strong myth of autochthonous origin was encouraged. What is also clear is that the people thought of themselves in tribal or clan terms united by a common homeland, a common cult and, in some islands and districts, a common canoe tradition.

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