Like the Tetun of Wehali, the Ata Tana ’Ai of central east Flores form a “female” enclave centred on the ritual domain of Tana Wai Brama. Within this enclave, a population of approximately 4,500 persons acknowledges a single source and unlike the surrounding population, recognizes genetrix — rather than genitor — lines of origin. E. Douglas Lewis in his recent book, People of the Source (1988), has provided a brilliant and thorough-going analysis of this remarkable society. My purpose here is merely to attempt to sketch elements of this ethnography in order to make comparisons with the other societies — particularly the Tetun — that I have so far considered.

In extending this analysis to this sixth case, we move a further “linguistic distance” from the other societies in this comparison. The Mambai, Ema, Rotinese, Atoni Meto and Wehali Tetun all speak languages that are more closely related to each other than any of these languages is to that of the Ata Tana ’Ai. Similar sociological structures are evident as are the general idioms that describe these structures but specific linguistic cognates, although they exist, are less immediately apparent.

Among the Tana ’Ai origin groups are known as sukun. These groups are appropriately described as “clans”. Tana Wai Brama consists of four such sukun plus a central founding sukun, the sukun pu’an. This “source clan” presides over an order of precedence among the constituent clans that is believed to have been maintained since the founding of the domain.

Sukun are, in turn, divided into houses (lepo) consisting of consanguineally-related women (and their brothers). The inheritance of land, possessions and ritual rights passes from mother to daughter. Lepo, too, are ordered by precedence based on the categories of “elder/younger” (wue/wari) sister. There is a lepo pu’an, “source house”, in each sukun. This is the highest ranking house in order of precedence within the sukun.

Men pass between lepo. As among the southern Tetun, an exchange of wealth at marriage does not occur. In a certain sense, marriage itself is not significant. It is not marked as a special event. There is no exchange or formal ceremony. What is marked, however, as among the southern Tetun, is the return of a child of a man who has served as progenitor in another lepo. This is referred to as the return of the “father’s forelock” (ama ‘lo’en) and is described as the return of the “father’s blood”. This exchange is marked by the payment of wealth in the form of a fixed quantity of elephant tusks and gongs (to’o-balik). This is, in some ways, the equivalent to “bridewealth” in societies such as Roti. Those who make the payment are called “the mother and father who buy and pay” (ina ama baha boter). Instead of creating a progenitor relationship of the sort that bridewealth establishes, this payment plants a new genitrix within the order of precedence of the sukun. A woman who is returned in this fashion is called an “ancestral mother” (ina puda) and she is seen as the founder of a new house in the clan. Again, as among the southern Tetun, such a woman may marry her FZS who is referred to as “elder” (wue) in a wue/wari relationship.^[5]

Initially, the woman given as “father’s forelock” and her descendants are tudi manu, “knife chicken” to the house that paid the wealth for her. This status is altered only when they in their turn pay to’o-balik to obtain the return of a “father’s forelock” and thus become ina ama baha boter in their own right.

Exchanges do not end at this point. An ina puda line continues to acknowledge as sukun pu’an, “source clan”, the clan from which their “ancestral mother” originated. Four generations later this line is supposed to return a woman (DDDD) “to replant the ancestral mother in the source clan”. This woman as mula puda founds a new house in close relationship to the house from which the ina puda originated. She is expected to marry a son of the house of the “source clan” and this group returns half of the to’o-balik they received when the original ina puda was given. This then ends the cycle in which two lepo or their immediate replacement lepo have in the course of four generations each “planted” a woman as genitrix in the other. The botanic markers of relationships of origin are as clearly articulated among the Ata Tana ’Ai as in the other societies of the region.

Perhaps, however, the most significant evidence of the difference in the conception of progenitor lines between a society like Roti (or Sikka) and that of the Ata Tana ’Ai is in the performance of the mortuary ceremonies. On Roti, for example, these ceremonies are the occasion for payments to the progenitor line for its essential ritual services. Mortuary rituals can not be performed without the progenitors. In contrast, among the Ata Tana ’Ai, the lepo of the deceased makes all of the arrangements, provides all the goods necessary for burial, and feeds all of the guests — a majority of whom are members of the lepo itself (Lewis 1988:120). Performances, however, require an opposed mutuality and for this purpose, each clan is paired with a clan from another domain. The opposite paired clan comes from outside the domain to perform specific ritual services at the time of burial. The emphasis in these ceremonies is on the integration of the spirit of the deceased into the lepo. On Roti, such ceremonies can not be initiated by an origin group until the last payments for the deceased have been made to the progenitors.