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home, but they can be called on at any time to perform services for their mother's relatives, and if one of these required continuous economic assistance the father would hand over one of his children for this purpose. Moreover, in pre-Administration days a man could redeem himself or one of his children from slavery by giving in exchange one of his sister's children. In cases of murder also, the murdered man was replaced by one of the murderer's uterine relatives.
It is permissible for a man to dissolve his sister's marriage if he thinks that she is not being properly treated, and until recently it was the rule that in such a case the children followed the mother. Inheritance was and is by matriliny.
We may conclude, therefore, that matriarchal principles were, until the advent of the Fulani, predominant among the Bungnu.
The Bungnu employ the Mambila term sho in the sense of religious cult. They use the same rites as the Mambila in connection with the cult of the dead, which they describe as Sho Furu. They have the Mambila tutelary genius known as Garmau. They call the Ngub Sho charm "Nan" and the sacred jiro grass "jura". They deny that they ever practised cannibalism, but they were headhunters. Their clothing and weapons are the same as those of the Mambila.
The Magu group differ principally from the Kamkam group in that inheritance is patrilineal. A man could, however, in former times, use his sister's children as pawns. But if he did this he was required to compensate the father of the children by giving him a gift of twenty hoes. A father could not pawn his own children unless his wife was a slave, and the reason given was that when a man marries a woman he does not buy her. The mother's relatives, in fact, were regarded as the real owners of the children.
In both the Kamkam and Magu groups marriage with close relatives on both sides of the family is forbidden. The cross- cousin marriage found among a number of neighbouring tribes is not practised. The junior but not the senior form of levirate marriage is practised among the Magu group; and it is permissible to inherit and marry a father's or paternal uncle's widows, but not those of a maternal uncle.
In the Magu group the Sho Kuru rites of the Mambila and