Portuguese immigrants in America and Canada have certain institutions in their traditional socio-culture which are considered to act as preadaptive mechanisms in the migrant's settling-in process. This paper discusses one locale which has a large proportion of recent Portuguese immigrants, and emphasizes how women, in particular, are important in the formation of new networks, through the utilization of a well-known Portuguese technique of "making a cunha." The data are stated to suggest that in the migration process women are significant in the formation of both general and optative-set networks. The study is said to raise a number of questions such as: (1) whether there is bias in the data which minimizes the female role in network formation; (2) whether women play more important factorial roles during periods of instability and/or rapid cultural change; (3) how institutionally significant the cunha process is cross-culturally; and, (4) how the cunha process relates to patronage. (Author/AM)