The Pelew Islanders of the South Sea have customs in many respects the same as those of the Khasi tribes. They preserve strict maternal descent, and like the Khasis, the deities of all the clans are goddesses. The life and social habits of the people have been described by Kubary, a careful and sympathetic observer, for long resident in the island.[91] The tribes are divided into exogamous clans, and intermarriage between any relations on the mother’s side is unlawful. These clans are grouped together in villages and the life is of a communal character. Each village consists of about a score of clans, and forms with its lands a petty independent state. [91] _Die socialen Einrichtungen der Pelauer. Die Religion, de Pelauer._ Mr. Frazer, _Golden Bough_, Part IV, _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_, pp. 387 _et seq._, summarises the account of Kubary. See also Waitz-Gerland, Vol. V, Part II, p. 106 _et seq._, and an account of the Pelews given by Ymer. Again we find the maternal system intimately connected with religious ideas, and it is interesting to recall what was said by Bachofen: “Wherever gynæcocracy meets us the mystery of religion is bound up with it, and lends to motherhood an incorporation in some divinity.” Among these Islanders every family traces its descent from a woman--the common mother of the clan. And for this reason the members worship a goddess and not a god. In the different states there are, besides other special deities, usually a goddess and a god, but as these are held to be derived directly from a household-goddess, it is evident that here, as among the Khasis, goddesses are older than the gods. This is shown also by the names of the goddesses. There is another fact of interest: some women are reputed to be the wives of the gods, they are called _Amalalieys_ and have a great honour paid to them, while their children pass for the offspring of the gods. The reverence paid to the ancestral goddesses is explained by Mr. Kubary as arising from the importance of women in the clans. “The existence of the clan depends entirely on the life of the women, and not at all on the life of the men. If the women survive, it is no matter though every man in the clan should perish, for the women will, as usual, marry men of another clan, and their offspring will inherit their mother’s clan, and thereby prolong its existence. Whereas if the women of the clan die out the clan necessarily becomes extinct, even if every man in it should survive; for the men must, as usual, marry women of another clan, and their offspring will inherit their mother’s clan and not the clan of the father, which accordingly, with the death of the father, is wiped off the community.”