ABSTRACT
The lineage frame of organization, then, regulates the politico-jural statuses and relations of matrilineal kin to one another and to others. But it does not regulate all the social relations that are founded upon kinship and genealogical connections. There are intrinsic affective and moral components in the interpersonal relations of lineage kin. The nodal bond of mother and child implies self-sacrificing love and support on the one side, and lifelong trust and devotion on the other. The values mirrored in this relationship have their roots in the parental care bestowed on children, not in jural imperatives. Their observance is dictated by conscience, 1 not legality. The bonds of intimacy and solidarity between matri-siblings have the same foundation. And the ambivalence in these nuclear relationships which erupts, under the stress of moral prescriptions and jural demands, in suspicions of witchcraft, likewise and understandably, are fed from the same spring. Yet such is the overriding force of the lineage concept and structure that these interpersonal relations are themselves felt to be sanctioned by and contained within the lineage ambit. It is as if a mother's love for her child was authorized by her lineage status and commitments.
