ABSTRACT
ALL Tale genealogical connexions go back to the fact of procreation. Hence the relations of parents and children are the focal point of the whole kinship system. The affective discrimination of own parents and owns children are the psychological counterpart of the differentiation of descent lines within the lineage and of segments within the family. Mother's rights have the moral basis and sanctions, at bottom, as paternal rights and duties, this is not so overt in native thought or practice. A father's rights and duties have no legal sanctions in Tale society. Underlying all changes in status due to the extinction of particular social relationships are changes in property relations which include, for the Tallensi, both rights over people and rights over material objects and economic resources. A proxy father who has no brothers alive is at liberty to use his rights over faar in an arbitrary manner and to his personal advantage.
