DEVELOPMENT OF THE “FAMILY.”
Mr. M’Lennan has remarked, in relation to the curious customs of
capturing women for wives found among peoples in all parts of the
world, that “in almost all cases the form of capture is the symbol
of a group-act—of a siege, or a pitched battle, or an invasion of a
house by an armed band, while in a few cases only, and these much
disintegrated, it represents a capture by an individual. On the one
side are the kindred of the husband; on the other the kindred of the
wife.”[250] Whatever may be the true explanation of the origin of
exogamy, with which the custom referred to is connected, there can be
no doubt of the truth of the statement that the wife-capture is now
usually, although it sometimes has relation solely to the individual,
the symbol of a group-act. This may not be in the sense intended by
Mr. M’Lennan, who looks upon exogamy and polyandry as referable to
one and the same cause, and who regards “all the exogamous races as
having originally been polyandrous.”[251] The phenomena of wife-capture
prove conclusively, however, that the family group to which the woman
belonged possessed, or thought themselves entitled to, certain rights
over her—rights of which they resisted the invasion, whether by an
individual alone, or by a group of persons, or by an individual aided
by the other members of a group. It is important to notice that the
groups in question appear to consist, not of strangers to each other,
or to the man or woman more immediately concerned, but of persons
bound together by certain ties of blood. This is shown to be so by the
fact that the capture is atoned for by the payment to the relations
of the woman of the marriage-price, if this has not been agreed on
beforehand.[252] It is required, moreover, by the conclusion arrived at
by Mr. M’Lennan, that the tribes among whom the system of wife-capture
prevails are chiefly those whose marriages are governed by the law
of exogamy.[253] By exogamy is meant the practice of marrying out of
the tribe or group of kindred,[254] and it is founded on a prejudice
against marriage with kinsfolk.[255] There is some uncertainty as
to the nature of M’Lennan’s primitive group, but, judging from his
statement that “promiscuity, producing uncertainty of fatherhood, led
to the system of kinship through mothers only,”[256] we may suppose
that it consisted of a number of persons, all of whom, as the result
of promiscuity, were related by blood. The first division into which
he classes uncultured peoples, according to their marriage-rules, is
that where tribes are separate, and all the members of the tribes are,
or feign themselves to be, of the same blood.[257] Mr. Morgan very
properly criticises this definition, which, he says, “might answer for
a description of a gens; but the gens is never found alone, separate
from other gentes. There are several gentes intermingled by marriage
in every tribe composed of gentes,”[258] a fact which would seem to
distinguish the primitive group of M’Lennan, although consisting of
consanguinei, from a gens or clan proper. Moreover, as Mr. Morgan
shows, exogamy has relation to a rule or law of a gens, considered
as “the unit of organisation of a social system,” and therefore the
gens (of which, as an institution, the rules are prohibition of
intermarriage in the gens, and limitation of descent in the female
line[259]), or rather the family from which it has sprung, may be
regarded as the earliest social group of which we have any knowledge.
It is of the greatest importance to the discovery of the nature of the
primitive human family to understand the origin of the gens or clan.
As defined by Morgan, it is “a body of consanguinei descended from
the same common ancestor, distinguished by a gentile name, and bound
together by affinities of blood.” Mr. Morgan affirms that the gens
originated in three principal conceptions, “the bond of kin, a pure
lineage through descent in the female line, and non-intermarriage in
the gens.”[260] The most essential feature is that of tracing kinship
through females only, and the discovery of the origin of this custom
will throw light on that of the clan-institution itself, and therefore
on the nature of the primitive family.
Mr. M’Lennan finds the origin of kinship through females only in the
uncertainty of paternity, arising from the fact that, in primitive
times, a woman was not appropriated to a particular man for his wife,
or to men of one blood as wife.[261] The children, although belonging
to the horde, remain attached to their mothers, and the blood tie
observed between them would, as promiscuity gave place to polyandry
of the ruder kind in which the husbands are strangers in blood to
each other, become developed into the system of kinship through
females.[262] An earlier writer, Bachofen, was so much struck with
certain social phenomena among the ancients, that he believed women
to have, at an early period, been supreme, not only in the family but
in the state. He supposed that woman revolted against the primitive
condition of promiscuity, and established a system of marriage, in
which the female occupied the first place as the head of the family,
and as the person through whom kinship was to be traced. This movement,
which had a religious origin, was followed by another resulting from
the development of the idea that the mother occupied a subordinate
position in relation to her children, of whom the father was the true
parent. Mr. M’Lennan very justly objects to this theory that, if
marriage was, from the beginning, monogamous, kinship would have been
traced through fathers from the first.[263] He adds that “those signs
of supremacy on the woman’s part were the direct consequences (1) of
marriage _not_ being monogamous, or such as to permit of certainty
of fatherhood; and (2) of wives not as yet living in their husband’s
houses, but apart from them, in the homes of their own mothers.”[264]
The meaning of this is, that the phenomena referred to by Bachofen
were due to the former prevalence of a system of polyandry, such as
still exists among the Nairs of Southern India. It is very improbable,
however, that kinship through the female only could have had the origin
supposed by Mr. M’Lennan. According to him one cause of the supremacy
of woman referred to by Bachofen was the fact of wives living apart
from their husbands in the homes of their own mothers. This custom
must, therefore, have preceded the supremacy of woman, assuming this
to have existed, and the tracing of kinship through females which gave
rise to it. We must believe that originally women lived alone with
their daughters (and their sons also, until these set up a separate
establishment for themselves, taking with them probably their favourite
sisters, as with the Nairs at the present day),[265] there being no
male head of the family. If, however, we trace our steps back in
thought to the most primitive period of human existence, we shall see
that such a domestic state as that here supposed cannot have been the
original one. Among savages there is never that subordination of the
man to the woman which we should have to assume. We cannot suppose that
the primeval group of mankind consisted of a woman and her children,
and if the woman had a male companion we cannot doubt, judging from
what we know of savage races, that he would be the head and chief
of the group. The very notion, however, of the family group having
a male as well as a female head is inconsistent with Mr. M’Lennan’s
theory, and we must trace the origin of female kinship as a system to a
different source from the polyandry to which he ascribed it.
The idea of a special relationship subsisting between a woman and
her children might no doubt be originated during the period when the
men of a group, “in the spirit of indifference, indulged in savage
promiscuity,”[266] if such a condition of things ever existed, but that
alone would not be sufficient to establish kinship through females
only. It may be questioned, indeed, whether there ever was a time
when the uncertainty of paternity, which Mr. M’Lennan’s whole theory
requires, was so pronounced as to prevent kinship through males being
acknowledged. Mr. Morgan agrees with Mr. M’Lennan so far as to say
that, “prior to the gentile organisation, kinship through females was
undoubtedly superior to kinship through males, and was doubtless the
principal basis upon which the lower tribal groups were organised.”
He affirms truly, however, that “descent in the female line, which is
all that ‘kinship through females only’ can possibly indicate,” is
only the rule of a gens, and that relationship through the father is
recognised as fully as that through the mother.[267] I have elsewhere,
however, given reasons for believing that this statement does not go
far enough, and that the earliest forms of the classificatory system of
relationships, on which Mr. Morgan bases his special theory, require
actual kinship, and not relationship merely, through the male quite as
fully as through the female.
It is surprising that Mr. Morgan says little as to the origin of
descent in the female line. He says: “The gens, though a very ancient
social organisation founded upon kin, does not include all the
descendants of a common ancestor. It was for the reason that, when the
gens came in, marriage between single pairs was unknown, and descent
through males could not be traced with certainty. Kindred were linked
together chiefly through the bond of their maternity.”[268] We have
here apparently two reasons stated for the establishment of kinship
through females, the absence of marriages between single pairs, and
the uncertainty of paternity. Both of these conditions are found by
Mr. Morgan to exist in the consanguine family groups which he supposes
to have been formed when promiscuity ceased. The Polynesian peoples,
among whom he finds traces of the consanguine family, have preserved
the recollection of female kinship, although, according to Mr.
Morgan, the gens is unknown to them.[269] The classificatory system
of relationships, the origin of which he traces to the consanguine
family, can, however, receive a totally different interpretation, and
the existence of that family itself is very doubtful. Further, the
difficulty of tracing descent through males, which Mr. Morgan supposes,
is the result only of the polyandrous unions his theory requires, and
if they ever really existed they could supply no further explanation
of the origin of female kinship than the polyandry of the Nairs. He
would have done better to have sought to connect it, as Mr. M’Lennan
does, with the special relation supposed to exist between a mother and
her child.
Mr. Herbert Spencer shows how this idea may have arisen. Unlike the
other writers I have referred to, he does not think that promiscuity in
the relation of the sexes ever existed in an unqualified form.[270] He
thinks, indeed, that monogamy must have preceded polygamy, although,
owing to the extension of promiscuity, and the birth of a larger number
of children to _unknown_ fathers than to _known_ fathers, a habit would
arise of thinking of _maternal_ kinship rather than of _paternal_, and
where paternity was manifest children would come to be spoken of in
the same way.[271] Mr. Spencer adds, that the habit having arisen, the
resulting system of kinship in the female line would be strengthened by
the practice of exogamy.[272] The defect of this explanation lies in
its requiring uncertain paternity, and I shall show that the system of
female kinship has not arisen from the simple association in thought of
a child with its mother in preference to its father. It is, moreover,
inconsistent with the fact mentioned by Mr. Spencer himself, that
where the system of female kinship now subsists “male parentage is
habitually known.”[273] It is true that he supposes male kinship to be
disregarded, but this conclusion appears to me not to be supported by
sufficient evidence.
That there may have been a short period of barbarism in which the
intercourse between the sexes was unrestrained by any law of marriage
is possible. Probably, as female chastity before marriage is even
now but slightly regarded among most uncultured peoples, all sexual
alliances were allowable, so long as the rule as to consanguinity
was not infringed, and so long as no offspring resulted from the
alliance,[274] where this was entered into without the consent of
parents. This consent would be necessary in all cases where such
alliances were formed by females for marital purposes, and the sanction
required would be that of the family head at the early period we
are treating of. Judging from what we observe among modern savages
we cannot doubt that self-interest chiefly would govern the father
in connection with his daughter’s marriage. He would make certain
requisitions as the price of his consent. Whether the marriage was to
be a permanent or a terminable engagement, the father would stipulate
that his daughter should continue to live with or near him, and that
her children should belong to the family group of which he is the
head. In this case not only would the children form part of the family
to which their mother belonged, but the husband himself would become
united to it, and would be required to labour for the benefit of his
father-in-law.
A custom still prevalent among the New Zealanders may be cited in
illustration. The Reverend Richard Taylor says: “Sometimes the father
simply told his intended son-in-law he might come and live with his
daughter; she was thenceforth considered his wife, he lived with his
father-in-law, and became one of his tribe or _hapu_ to which his wife
belonged, and in case of war was often obliged to fight against his
own relatives.” Mr. Taylor adds, that so common is the custom of the
bridegroom going to live with his wife’s family, that it frequently
occurs; when he refuses to do so, she will leave him, and go back to
her relatives.[275] When the wife left her father’s house to reside
with her husband he had to purchase the privilege by giving her
father and other relations handsome presents.[276] As among the New
Zealanders, children belonged to their father’s family, the fact of
the wife going to reside among her husband’s relations meant the loss
by her father’s family of the children. The presents may, therefore,
be supposed to represent the price given by a man for his wife’s
offspring to her relations. This opinion is confirmed by reference to
the marriage customs of a West African people. Mr. John Kizell, in his
correspondence with Governor Columbine, respecting his negotiations
with the chiefs in the River Sherbro, says: “The young women are not
allowed to have whom they like for a husband; the choice rests with
the parents. If a man wishes to marry the daughter, he must bring
to the value of twenty or thirty bars to the father and mother; if
they like the man, and the brother likes him, then they will call all
their family together, and tell them, ‘we have a man in the house who
wishes to have our daughter; it is that which makes us call the family
together, that they may know it.’ Then the friends inquire what he has
brought with him? the man tells them. They then tell him to go and
bring a quantity of palm wine. When he returns, they again call the
family together; they all place themselves on the ground, and drink the
wine, and then give him his wife. In this case, all the children he has
by her are his, but if he gives nothing for his wife, then the children
will all be taken from him, and will belong to the woman’s family; he
will have nothing to do with them.”[277]
Mr. Taylor says that the ancient and most general way of obtaining a
wife among the New Zealanders was “for the gentleman to summon his
friends, and make a regular _taua_, or fight, to carry off the lady
by force, and ofttimes with great violence.”[278] A fight also took
place if, when a girl was given in marriage, the friends of another man
thought he had a greater right to her, or if she eloped with some one
contrary to her father’s or brother’s wish. Even if all were agreeable,
“it was still customary for the bridegroom to go with a party, and
appear to take her away by force, her friends yielding her up after
a feigned struggle; a few days afterwards, the parents of the lady,
with all her relatives, came upon the bridegroom for his pretended
abduction; after much speaking and apparent anger, it ended with his
making a handsome present of fine mats, &c., and giving an abundant
feast.”[279] In this case the affair ended in the same manner as the
African marriage already referred to, and the idea was no doubt the
same in both—the giving of compensation to the parents and relations
of the woman for the loss sustained by them through her offspring
being removed from the family group; probably the widespread custom of
pretended forcible marriage was originally connected with the rights
of the woman’s relations, although sometimes the capture is due to the
desire to obtain for nothing what could otherwise be acquired only by a
purchase fee.
What those rights are may be ascertained from the information given us
by Mr. Morgan as to the privileges and obligations associated with the
membership of a gens. Among them is an obligation not to marry in the
gens, mutual rights of inheritance of the property of deceased members,
and reciprocal obligations of help, defence, and redress of injuries.
“The functions and attributes of the gens,” says Morgan, “gave vitality
as well as individuality to the organisation, and protected the
personal rights of its members,”[280] who, as being connected by the
ties of blood relationship, may be regarded as forming an enlarged
family group, or rather a fraternal association based on kinship.
The gens would, however, form too large a group for ordinary social
purposes, and a smaller group would be composed of those more
immediately allied by blood. Thus, although theoretically the effects
of a deceased person were distributed among his gentile relations,
yet Morgan admits that “practically they were appropriated by the
nearest of kin.”[281] Among the Iroquois, if a man died leaving a
wife and children, his property was distributed among his gentiles in
such a manner that his sisters and their children, and his maternal
uncles, would receive the most of it. His brothers might receive a
small portion. An analogous rule prevailed when a woman died. The
property remained in the gens in either case,[282] although its
division was restricted to a small number of gentiles. It could not
have been otherwise where the members of the gens are numerous or
widely distributed. The same principle would apply in relation to
rights over children, who in a low social stage are looked upon in
the light of property. Among the aborigines of America each gens had
personal names that were used by it alone, and, says Morgan, a gentile
name conferred of itself gentile rights. Now, although a child was not
fully christened until its birth and name had been announced to the
council of the tribe, its name was selected by its mother with the
concurrence of her nearest relatives. Morgan says nothing of any right
of the gens over the marriage of its members, and it would seem not to
have any voice in the matter. The formation of the alliance is usually
left to the two individuals more immediately concerned or to their near
relations,[283] and the marriage price belongs to the parents and near
kin of the wife. This, in the absence of the marriage price, would be
the case also with the children born of her marriage, on the principle
that “children are the wealth of savages.” Reference to the custom of
blood revenge confirms the view that, for certain purposes, a smaller
family group than the gens is recognised by the peoples having that
organisation. Mr. Morgan thinks the practice of blood revenge had “its
birthplace in the gens,” which was bound to avenge the murder of one
of its members. He says further that it was “the duty of the gens of
the slayer, and of the slain, to attempt an adjustment of the crime
before proceeding to extremities.” It rested, however, with the gentile
kindred of the slain person to decide whether a composition for the
crime should be accepted, showing that they were considered the persons
more immediately concerned. The crime of murder is, as Mr. Morgan says,
“as old as human society, and its punishment by the revenge of kinsmen
is as old as the crime itself.”[284] This is hardly consistent with
the preceding statement that the practice of blood revenge had its
birthplace in the gens. It preceded the development of the gens, and
originated with the smaller family group which, as we have seen, is
more immediately connected with property and children and the marriage
of its female members. Those who are liable to the obligations of the
law of blood revenge in any particular case must be identified, and, as
they can hardly comprise all the members of the gens, we must suppose
them to be restricted to the smaller group consisting of near blood
relations. Judging from what we know of the habits of the Australian
aborigines in relation to the _lex talionis_, we cannot doubt that the
persons subject to retaliation in any particular case are well defined.
The example of the Polynesian Islanders, who are said not to have risen
to the conception of the gens, shows that before this was developed,
not only was the _lex talionis_ recognised, but the law of marriage
and the rights of parents over their children were fully established.
These are, therefore, not dependent on the gens, but are incidental
to a simpler group of blood relations—that on which the gens itself
is based. The idea of “brotherhood” is at the foundation of all these
early social organisations. Mr. Morgan says, in relation to the
Iroquois _phratry_, that “the phratry is a brotherhood, as the term
imports, and a natural growth from the organisation into gentes. It
is an organic union or association of two or more gentes of the same
tribe for certain common objects. These gentes were usually such as had
been formed by the segmentation of an original gens.”[285] So also,
a gens forms a fraternal association, as it consists of “a body of
consanguinei descended from the same common ancestor, distinguished by
a gentile name, and bound together by affinities of blood.”[286] If we
trace the ascent until we come to the common ancestor, we shall have a
group of kinsmen who compose the simplest form of “brotherhood,” that
of a parent and his or her children. Originally this would be a mother
and her daughters, as when the sons formed marriage associations the
daughters only and their children would be left under the parental
roof. It is evident, therefore, that the primitive family cannot have
originated within the gens or clan. On the contrary, the clan was based
on the family or group of kinsmen, without which it could not have
existed. Moreover, it by no means follows that, because the common
ancestor of the members of the gens or clan was a female, the primitive
group of kinsmen had not a male as well as a female head. Considered
as a “fraternal association,” the father may have been excluded, but
for the purposes of the brotherhood it was of no importance whether
paternity was certain or uncertain. The result would have been the
same in either case. For other than brotherhood purposes kinship to
the father may have been fully recognised. The obligations of the
_lex talionis_, the right to property, and the control of children in
marriage, may have concerned only the kinsmen by the mother’s side, but
those on the father’s side may have been equally affected by the law of
marriage. That such was the case I have sought to establish elsewhere,
as evidenced by the classificatory system of relationships, and that
view is confirmed by various facts showing that kinship by the male
side is fully recognised among savages.
I have already had occasion to refer to Mr. M’Lennan’s admission
that, if “marriage was, from its beginning, monogamous, kinship would
certainly (human nature being as it now is) have been traced through
fathers, if not indeed through fathers only, from the first.”[287] Mr.
Herbert Spencer, although apparently thinking that promiscuity in the
relations of the sexes was originally extensive, yet supposes that it
was accompanied by monogamic connections of a limited duration. He
says that “always the state of having two wives must be preceded by
the state of having one,” and he looks upon the preference for the
maternal kinship rather than paternal kinship as a habit, arising from
the fact that the former is observed in all cases, whilst the latter
is inferable only in some cases.[288] Mr. Spencer’s admission that
where the system of female kinship now subsists, “male parentage is
habitually known, though disregarded,” greatly weakens his position,
the more so as we are not told why or when it is disregarded.[289] Mr.
Morgan goes far towards supplying an explanation of the fact, although
his theory is defective. He affirms that gentile kin were superior
to other kin only because it conferred the rights and privileges of
a gens, and not because no other kin was recognised. “Whether in or
out of the gens, a brother was recognised as a brother, a father as
a father, a son as a son, and the same term was applied in either
case without discrimination between them.”[290] Mr. Morgan does not,
however, admit of certainty of paternity, although he states that “they
did not reject kinship through males because of uncertainty, but gave
the benefit of the doubt to a number of persons—probable fathers being
placed in the category of real fathers, probable brothers in that of
real brothers, and probable sons in that of real sons.”[291] This
explanation is plausible but insufficient, if, as Mr. Morgan says,
descent in the female line is only a rule of a gens.[292] In this case,
female descent cannot have existed before the gens, and recognition of
kinship through the father may have subsisted prior to the formation
of the gens, together with that of the relationship between mother
and child on which such descent is founded. This would seem to be
required by the facts mentioned by Mr. Morgan in relation to the social
institutions of the American aborigines. He says “an Indian tribe is
composed of several gentes developed from two or more, all the members
of which are intermingled by marriage, and all of them speak the same
dialect. To a stranger the tribe is visible and not the gens.”[293]
Originally, therefore, the tribe consisted of two gentes, that is
of the descendants from two female common ancestors, and, as the
gentes are not visible to a stranger, we must suppose that the tribe
originally represented the male head of the primitive family group to
which the female common ancestors belonged. On this supposition the
primitive group consisted of a male and two females, the former being
the recognised representative of the group, although the descent of its
members is traced through the latter. This view is quite consistent
with the explanation I have elsewhere given of the classificatory
system of relationship, which undoubtedly requires the full recognition
for certain purposes of blood relationship through both the father and
the mother.
The conclusion thus arrived at is confirmed by what we know of the
opinions entertained by peoples among whom the gentile organisation is
fully developed. Carver, as quoted by Sir John Lubbock, states that
among the Hudson’s Bay Indians, children always take the name of their
mother. The reason they give for this is, “that as their offspring are
indebted to the father for their souls, the invisible part of their
essence, and to the mother for their corporal and apparent part, it
is more rational that they should be distinguished by the name of
the latter, from whom they indubitably derive their being, than by
that of the father, to which a doubt might arise whether they are
justly entitled.”[294] The reason given by the Hudson’s Bay Indians
why children are called after their mothers shows that the system of
female kinship is quite consistent with the recognition of kinship
through the male. No doubt the mother is regarded by savages as having
a closer physical relationship to her child than their father, but it
is incredible to suppose that the latter could ever be looked upon as
having no closer relationship to it than a stranger in blood. If the
mother had several husbands the actual paternity may not be certain,
but, as the father must be one of several well-ascertained individuals,
the paternity is only rendered less certain, and the child may be
regarded as having several fathers, and claim kinship through them all.
If they are sons of the same father, that kinship will be with the same
persons as though its mother had but one husband. Under the conditions
I have supposed, however, where a woman takes, as her husband, a man
who lives with her among her own relations, there would not be any
uncertainty as to paternity, and therefore the stronger relationship
supposed between mother and child must have originated in the close
physical connection observed to subsist between them. This does not,
however, explain the origin of clan relationship based on kinship
through females only, which is connected with the fact of the members
of a woman’s clan possessing certain rights over her and her children.
These rights would not be affected, even if the primitive custom of
the woman continuing to live among her relations after marriage were
departed from. Before this took place, the system of female kinship
would have become firmly established, and it would be confirmed,
although it could not be originated, by the idea that, as the wife may
not be faithful to her husband, there is more certainty about maternity
than paternity.
The fact that a man’s heirs are usually his sister’s children, shows
that consanguinity is of great importance in the eyes of uncultured
peoples, and what has been advanced is quite sufficient to account for
that fact without assuming the existence of a state of promiscuity
in the relations between the sexes. Such a state is not consistent
with the abhorrence which even savages show to the marriage of
persons of near blood relationship, and it has no support at all in
the observed phenomena of savage life. The _punalua_ custom of the
Polynesian Islanders, which has its counterpart among the Todas of
the Neilgherries, and traces of which may perhaps be found, on the
one hand, in the fraternal polyandry of the Tibetans, and, on the
other hand, in the sororal polygamy of the North American aborigines,
is neither promiscuous nor incestuous in the proper sense of these
words. The possession by several brothers of wives in common, who may
themselves be sisters, or by several sisters of husbands in common, who
may be brothers, may, as I have elsewhere suggested, have originally
been due to the feeling that marriage has a spiritual as well as a
physical significance. Punalua was really an application of the idea
of brotherhood to marriage, and it is not surprising that, among
uncultured peoples, the having wives or husbands in common should be
considered a high mark of friendship.
It is important to notice that among the peoples who have developed or
perfected the gentile institution, a rule of which is descent in the
female line, the husband is the head of the household, and the wife
little more than a servant, so long as they continue to live together.
It is true, as Lahontan states,[295] that the wife has the same power
of divorce as the husband, but so long as she remains in his cabin
she is treated by him as a drudge and a mere child-bearer. As women
they have some influence in the tribe, but this is only when they have
children to give them dignity. The Polynesian Islanders not having
risen to the conception of a gens, it is, perhaps, not surprising
that woman is usually regarded by them as an inferior creature. Her
position as a woman is, however, better than that of a wife, in which
capacity she is cared for as little as among the American aborigines.
Her condition is mitigated only under the influence of the Areoi
Institution, and where she enters into the punaluan engagement. If
it is true, as Mr. Morgan states, that “the Australians rank below
the Polynesians, and far below the American aborigines,” we cannot
wonder that the position of woman among the Australian aborigines is
one of great inferiority. In fact, among them wives are considered as
articles of property, and not only do they suffer great privations,
but they are most barbarously treated. The last-named people practice
the simplest form of obtaining wives, that of capture by cunning and
personal violence, but in most of their tribes descent is in the female
line, and the gens or clan is developed more or less perfectly. And
yet the Australian aborigines possess marriage regulations which seem
formed for the express purpose of preventing the intermarriage of blood
relations, and which fully recognise kinship by the male line.
A modern French writer of great authority, Fustel de Coulanges, affirms
that the ancient family was constituted chiefly by religion, the first
institution of which was marriage. The family gives rise to the gens,
and “with its elder and younger branches, its servants and dependents,
formed possibly a very numerous group of persons.” Such a family, says
de Coulanges, “thanks to the religion which maintained its unity,
thanks to its special privileges which rendered it indivisible, thanks
to the laws of protection which retained its dependents, formed in time
a widespread society under an hereditary chief.”[296] This view of
the primitive family possesses much truth, although it leaves out of
sight one of the most essential features of the family among uncultured
peoples. The same may be said in relation to the patriarchal family
of Sir Henry Maine. This writer says that “the earliest tie which
knitted men together in communities was consanguinity or kinship,” and
that “there was no brotherhood recognised by our savage forefathers,
except actual consanguinity regarded as a fact.”[297] He adds, that
“kinship, as the tie, binding communities together, tends to be
regarded as the same thing with subjection to a common authority.”
The notions of power and consanguinity are blended, a mixture of
ideas which is seen “in the subjection of the smallest group, the
family, to its patriarchal head.”[298] “This group,” says Sir Henry
Maine, “consists of animate and inanimate property, of wife, children,
slaves, land and goods, all held together by subjection to the despotic
authority of the eldest male of the eldest ascending line, the father,
grandfather, or even more remote ancestor. The force which binds the
group together is power. A child adopted into the patriarchal family
belongs to it as perfectly as the child naturally born into it, and
a child who severs his connection with it is lost to it altogether.”
The patriarchal family of Maine thus differs from the ancient family
of de Coulanges in its binding force, which in the one case is power,
and in the other religion, forces which are, nevertheless, reconciled
by the fact that the chief element in this religion is the ancestral
idea which is at the base of the patriarchal family. This view of
the nature of the ancient family would be complete if it provided
for the fact, revealed by the study of primitive institutions as
now exhibited among uncultured peoples, that descent was originally
traced by the female line in preference to the male line. The defect
thus revealed will, however, be removed if it can be shown, as I have
endeavoured to do, that descent through the male is, for certain
purposes, recognised equally with that through the female. Mr. Herbert
Spencer, in his “Principles of Sociology,” refers,[299] as follows,
to a suggestion made by Mr. Fiske, which contains an important truth
bearing on the subject of this paper: “Postulating the general law
that, in proportion as organisms are complex, they evolve slowly, he
infers that the prolongation of infancy which accompanied development
of the less intelligent primates into the more intelligent ones,
implied greater duration of parental care. Children, not so soon
capable of providing for themselves, had to be longer nurtured by
female parents, to some extent indeed by male parents, individually
or jointly; and hence resulted a bond holding together parents and
offspring for longer periods, and tending to initiate the family.
That this has been a co-operating factor in social evolution is very
probable.” The bond thus formed shows its influence even among the
lowest savages, in the natural affection which subsists between a
mother and her children, when these escape the not unusual fate of
infanticide. Natural affection is less operative with male parents, but
there are other feelings which have relation chiefly to male children
which tend to form an equally binding tie. Mr. Spencer remarks that
“to the yearnings of natural affection are added, in early stages
of progress, certain motives, partly personal, partly social, which
help to secure the lives of children, but which, at the same time,
initiate differences of status between children of different sexes.
There is the desire to strengthen the tribe in war; there is the wish
to have a future avenger on individual enemies; there is the anxiety
to leave behind one who shall perform the funeral rites and continue
oblations at the grave.”[300] These motives must have been influential
from the earliest period at which mankind consisted of more than a
few small and isolated groups, and, therefore, we must assume that
in these groups the male element was equally as strong as the female
element, if, indeed, they had not a male head. Mr. Spencer remarks
further that those motives, “strengthening as societies passed through
the earlier stages, gradually gave a certain authority to the claims
of male children, though not to those of females.”[301] These ideas
are quite inconsistent with the notion that the family group ever
consisted only of a female ancestor and her children, or that the
woman was originally the head of, and supreme in, the family. The
custom of tracing descent by the female line shows, however, that for
certain purposes the woman occupied an important position, although it
may, when the practice of wives going to reside among their husband’s
relations become established, have tended to confirm that of female
infanticide, as the children would be lost to the mother’s family
group. One of the motives referred to by Mr. Spencer would, after the
idea of special kinship through females had become established, affect
more especially the persons bound together by a maternal tie. Where
the gentile organisation is established the duty of revenging private
injuries is confined to the other members of the common gens. The
duty of defence against the external enemy belongs, however, to the
_tribe_, which here undoubtedly stands in the place of the original
family group, in which both male and female kinship, with their special
duties, was recognised, represented by its male head. This group we
must suppose, therefore, had much in common with Sir Henry Maine’s
patriarchal family. Under the head of the oldest living male ancestor,
it embraced wife or wives, children and dependents. The repugnance to
marriages between blood relations, which seems almost instinctive to
man, would prevent such alliances between the members of the group.
The male children, when they reached the age of manhood, would leave
the paternal roof, and obtain wives from other groups, with which they
would become associated on the principle of adoption, while, on the
other hand, young men from other groups would take their places as the
husbands of the female children. It would be during this primitive
period that the idea of a special relationship subsisting between a
mother and her children, on which the custom of tracing descent through
the female is founded, would become formed, as already mentioned.
The importance attached to female kinship would be increased by the
development of a fraternal feeling among the children of the same
mother, a feeling which would be strengthened if, as would probably
not seldom be the case, men, after some years of cohabitation with
their wives, left their children solely to the mother’s care. Under
the influence of these various ideas and circumstances the custom
of tracing kinship for certain purposes in the female line would be
developed by the time that the habit had been formed of wives leaving
their parents to reside among their husband’s family. As when this
took place, the custom would be firmly established under the influence
of polygamy, the development of the gentile organisation would almost
necessarily follow. The primitive idea of kinship through the father
would, however, still remain in full force with the attributes which
originally appertained to it—namely, the headship in the family group
of the eldest male ancestor, whose authority is practically represented
by the tribe, and the non-intermarriage of those thus connected.
FOOTNOTES:
[250] “Studies in Ancient History,” p. 444.
[251] Ditto, p. 181.
[252] “Studies in Ancient History,” pp. 54, 57.
[253] Ditto, pp. 104, 110.
[254] Ditto, p. 174.
[255] Ditto, p. 112.
[256] Ditto, p. 139.
[257] Ditto, p. 113.
[258] “Ancient Society,” p. 512.
[259] Ditto, p. 511.
[260] Ditto, p. 69.
[261] “Ancient History,” p. 124.
[262] Ditto, p. 139.
[263] _Loc. cit._, p. 418.
[264] _Loc. cit._, p. 419.
[265] M’Lennan, p. 150.
[266] M’Lennan, p. 134.
[267] “Ancient Society,” p. 516.
[268] “Ancient Society,” p. 67.
[269] Ditto, p. 60.
[270] “Principles of Sociology,” vol. i., p. 662.
[271] Ditto, p. 665.
[272] Ditto, p. 666.
[273] Ditto, p. 667.
[274] Lahontan, “Mémoires,” ii., pp. 144, _et seq._
[275] “Te Ika A Maui,” p. 357.
[276] Ditto, p. 337.
[277] “Sixth Report of the Directors of the African Institution”
(1812), p. 128.
[278] _Op. cit._, p. 336.
[279] Ditto, p. 536.
[280] “Ancient Society,” p. 71.
[281] “Ancient Society,” p. 75, 528.
[282] Ditto, p. 530.
[283] See Lafitau “Les Mœurs des Sauvages,” ii., p. 564, _et seq._
[284] See Lafitau, ii., p. 77, _et seq._
[285] “Ancient Society,” p. 88.
[286] Ditto, p. 63.
[287] “Ancient History,” p. 418.
[288] “Types of Sociology,” pp. 665, 669.
[289] Ditto, p. 667.
[290] “Ancient Society,” p. 516.
[291] Ditto, p. 515.
[292] Ditto, p. 516.
[293] “Ancient Society,” p. 103.
[294] “Travels in Northern America,” p. 378.
[295] “Memoirs,” ii., p. 150.
[296] “La Cité Antique” (6th Ed.), 1876, p. 133.
[297] “Early History of Institutions,” pp. 64, 65.
[298] Ditto, p. 68.
[299] P. 630, _note_.
[300] “Principles of Sociology,” p. 769.
[301] Ditto, p. 771.