It is therefore probable that totem-sib institutions did not all emanate from one origin, but developed independently several times. The question then becomes, how often, and where?
The evidence for America has been reviewed in another connection (§ [185]). It can be summarized in the statement that at least two of the three sib areas[19] of North America, and probably the two principal ones of South America, seem to have resulted from a single culture growth which perhaps centered at one time, although subsequently superseded, in the middle sector of the double continent. This movement may have had first a patrilinear and then a matrilinear phase, though at no great interval of time. The third North American area may have got its patrilinear sib institutions from the same source but probably developed its matrilinear ones locally as a subsequent growth. If so, this would be an instance of convergence on the same continent—a rather rare phenomenon.
For Australia, New Guinea, and Melanesia, the geographical proximity is so close as to suggest a single origin for the whole area. Patrilinear and matrilinear descent are both found in Australia as well as Melanesia. This fact has been interpreted as the result of an earlier patrilineal and a later matrilineal phase of diffusion. It is interesting that this conclusion parallels the tentative one independently arrived at for America, although in both hemispheres further analysis and distributional study must precede a positive verdict.
In the principal other sib area, Africa, the reckoning is so prevailingly patrilineal, that the few cases of matrilineate can scarcely be looked upon as anything but secondary local modifications. As to whether the totemism and exogamy of Africa can be genetically connected with those of Australia-Melanesia, it is difficult to decide. The more conservative attitude would be to regard them as separate growths, although so many cultural similarities have been noted between western Africa and the area that stretches from Indo-China to Melanesia, as to have raised suspicions of an actual connection (§ [270]). Yet even if these indications were to be confirmed, thus sweeping most or all the Old World sib institutions into a single civilizational movement, the distinctness of this from the parallel development of the New World would remain.
It is significant that in the three successive continents of America, Oceania, and Africa the patrilinear and matrilinear phases of the sib type of society exist side by side, and that the same duality even holds for each of the separate areas in America. That is, the Northwest American sib area includes matrilinear as well as patrilinear tribes; the Southwest area includes both; and so on.
A similar tendency toward geographical association is found in other phases of social structure: the clan and moiety, and again totemism and exogamy.
The clan or multiple form of sib organization is logically distinct from the moiety or dual form. Under the plural system, a person, being of clan A, may marry at will into clans B, C, D, E, F. Three of his four grandparents would normally be of other clans than his own, but of which they were members, would vary in each individual case. In a patrilineal society, one member of clan A would have his maternal uncles of clan B; the next, of clan C; a third, perhaps of clan F; according to the choices which their fathers had made of wives.
Under the dual system, however, a member of moiety A may just as well be regarded as having a wife of moiety B prescribed or predestined for him as being forbidden an A wife. Two of his grandparents, say his father’s father and his mother’s mother, are inevitably of his own moiety, the two others of the opposite one. Every possible kinsman—his maternal uncle, his cross cousin, his father-in-law, his wife’s brother-in-law, his daughter’s son—has his moiety affiliation foreordained. Where descent is paternal, for instance, everybody knows that his future mother-in-law must be of his own moiety. Evidently the effect of this dual system on the relations between kinsfolk, on social usages, on the individual’s attitude of mind toward other individuals, should normally tend to be profoundly different from the influence of a multiple clan system. On theoretical grounds it might seem likely that the dual and multiple schemes had nothing to do with each other, that they sprang from distinct psychological impulses.
Yet such a belief would be ungrounded, as the facts of distribution promptly make clear. In every multiple sib area of any moment, moieties also occur, and vice versa. In the California-Southwest region, for instance, tribes like the Miwok are divided into moieties only, the Mohave and Hopi into clans only, the Tewa and Cahuilla into moieties subdivided into clans. So in the Eastern, the Plains, and the Northwest areas of North America, clan tribes and moiety tribes live side by side; whereas as soon as these regions are left behind, there are vast districts—much of Mexico, Texas, the Great Basin and Plateau, northern Canada and the Arctic coast—whose inhabitants get along without either clans or moieties. So again in Melanesia and in Australia ([Fig. 29]), the two types of organization exist side by side, while most of Polynesia, Asia, and Europe are void of both. Only Africa shows some development of multiple clan institutions but no moieties. In short, as soon as areas of some size are considered, they prove in the main to be of two kinds. Either they contain both clan tribes and moiety tribes, or they contain neither. That is, the clan institution and the moiety institution are correlated or associated in geography, as patrilinear and matrilinear descent are correlated, which indicates a community of origin for them.
A similar relation exists between exogamic units, be they moieties or clans, and totemism. The first constitutes a scheme of society, a method of organization; the second, a system of symbolism. Sibs are social facts, totems a naming device with magico-religious implications. There is no positive reason why they should be associated. They are not always associated. There are American tribes like the Navaho and Gros Ventre that live under unilateral and exogamic institutions without totems. Placenames or nicknames distinguish the groups. In Australia, the Arunta possess unilaterally reckoning exogamic groups as well as totems, but the two are dissociated; a person takes his group by descent, his totem wholly irrespective of this according to place of birth or conception. In Africa there are no less than six tribes or series of tribes in which exogamy and totemism are thus dissociated; a person takes his totem from his father, his exogamic unit from his mother, so that the two ordinarily do not coincide for parent and child. Exogamy and totemism, then, are theoretically separate factors.