We do not, perhaps, know any exogamous tribes in our sense of 'tribe;' a Dieri is not obliged to marry out of the Dieri, or an Urabunna out of the Urabunna. By 'tribe' here, it seems probable that Lord Avebury intends not a large local aggregate, but 'a very small community,' for he writes 'we have seen that, under the custom of communal marriage, a child was regarded as related to the tribe, but not specially to any particular father or mother. Such a 'state of things, indeed, is only possible in very small communities.' Now a tribe is a very large community. The members of such communities must have been poor observers if they did not discover the relation between a child and the woman who bore and, for several years, nursed it. But such 'tribes' are not tribes in the sense in which I use the word; they are rather 'groups of the same hearth.' Now it is easy to see how small groups of the same hearth became exogamous, namely through sexual jealousy, and sexual tabu, which would oblige the young males to wander away, or to get wives by capture, practices resulting, under the tabu, in the sacred rule of exogamy. This, however, is not Lord Avebury's theory of the origin of exogamy.
Lord Avebury's theory does not become more distinct when he says, 'In Australia, where the same family names' (totem names?) 'are common almost over the whole continent, no man may marry a woman whose family name' (totem name?) 'is the same as his own' (here the Arunta are an exception) 'and who belongs therefore to the same tribe' (p. 144). But surely, if the 'family names' are 'common almost over the whole continent,' a woman may well have the same 'family name' (say Emu) as a man, and yet need not be of his tribe. An Arunta Emu man and a Dieri Emu woman would have the same 'family name' (totem name), but would not, therefore, 'belong to the same tribe.' It even appears that Lord Avebury regards 'tribe' and 'clan' and 'family' as synonymous terms, for, in proof of the statement that people of the same 'family name' necessarily belong to the same 'tribe,' he quotes my late uncle, Mr. Gideon Scott Lang, 'No man can marry a woman of the same clan, though the parties be no way related according to our ideas.'[3] By 'clan' Mr. Lang here meant totem kin, and if Lord Avebury thinks 'clan' equivalent to 'tribe,' a 'tribe' must be a totem kin, which it is not; at least if we understand 'tribe' as a local aggregate of various totem kindreds.
These perplexities are caused by a vague terminology, and occurred naturally in a book of 1870, as they do in Mr. McLennan's own pioneer works. But in 1903 we must try to aim at closer and more exact distinctions and definitions, though we are still retarded and perplexed by the lack of truly scientific nomenclature. As far as I can perceive, Lord Avebury is apt to use 'family,' 'tribe,' 'clan,' and 'gens' as equivalents, while each of them, in various places, appears to be understood as denoting a totem kindred. Thus (p. 181) 'under a system of female descent combined with exogamy a man must marry out of his tribe,' where 'tribe' seems to mean 'totem kin.' Compare p. 187: 'another general rule, in America as elsewhere, is that no one may marry within his own clan or family,' where 'clan or family' like 'tribe' seems to mean 'totem kin.'
This use of terms makes it difficult for me to feel sure that I apprehend Lord Avebury's theory correctly. However I take it to be that, originally,'very small communities' ('tribes') lived in 'communal marriage.' Nobody knew who was the son of what father or of what mother, though, in a very small community one would expect the senior vigorous male or males to prevent son-and-mother, or brother-and-sister unions, by force, out of natural jealousy. This was not done, but some males wanted wives to themselves in private property, and got them by capture, paying 'compensation' in the license of the bridal night. But a man might fall in love with a lass in his own 'tribe' ('very small community') and want to keep her to himself (p. 111). 'Hence would naturally arise a desire on the part of many to extend the right of capture, which originally had reference only to women of a different tribe, and to apply it to all those belonging to their own.' Is 'tribe' still used of 'a very small community,' or is it here employed in the now more prevalent and much wider sense? If not, is the 'capture' now a mere ceremonial formula? Apparently 'tribe,' now and here, does mean (as elsewhere it does not) a large local aggregate, for we are next told of 'the division of Australian tribes into classes or gentes' (though a 'class' is one thing and a gens, if totem kin is meant, is another thing), and of the '1,000 miles of wives,' who, by the theory, are not individual wives of individual men. Such wives, special rights in such wives, were acquired 'originally by right of capture.'
But, when men possessed marital privileges, each 'over every woman not belonging to his own gens; sharing, of course, these privileges with every other man belonging to the same gens or class as himself' (p. 112), where is the individual right acquired by capture? It seems that each man, besides his '1,000 miles of wives' 'has his own individual wife ... by right of capture.' Now the Urabunna have no such individual wives, if, like Lord Avebury, we accept the statement of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen (p. 63). But the Arunta have such individual wives. Here it seems necessary for Lord Avebury, if he agrees with these authors, to prove that the Arunta, unlike the Urabunna, do demonstrably acquire their individual wives by capture. But no such demonstration is produced. Till proof is offered I am unable to appreciate the force of Lord Avebury's reasoning, while like Mr. Crawley, I doubt whether individual marriage does not exist among the Urabunna, the Piraungaru license not being, I conceive, a true survival of communal marriage, but a peculiar institution.
LORD AVEBURY ON RELATIONSHIPS
Analysing Mr. Morgan's collection of names for relationships, Lord Avebury (p. 182) says, 'in fact the idea of relationship, like that of marriage, was founded, not upon duty, but upon power.' We try to suggest that the classificatory names for relationships are, to a great extent, expressive of status, seniority, and mutual duties and services in the community—these duties and services themselves being gradually established by power—the power of the seniors. Yet some terms analysed by Lord Avebury have, linguistically, other sources. 'Wife,' in Cree, is 'part of myself,' dimidium animæ meæ, these twain are one flesh. Obviously this pretty term does not spring from 'communal marriage.' In Chocta, 'husband' is 'he who leads me,'—again not communal, but indicating the old-fashioned theory of wifely obedience. ('He who kicks me' would suffice, in some civilised quarters.) 'Daughter-in-law,' in Delaware, is 'my cook,' indicating service; and 'husband' is 'my aid through life,' showing the advanced Homeric, or Christian, view of marriage (pp. 180-181). 'Father' and 'Mother' in many African, European and Asian, Non-Aryan, Oceanic, Australian, and, really in Aryan languages, also often in America, are 'the easiest sounds which a child can pronounce indicating father and mother' (pp. 442-449). If babes could distinguish father and mother, these relationships, one thinks, could not have been unknown to adults. They may be, and are, extended in usage, so as to embrace what we call uncles and aunts and seniors of the kin, but this, I try to argue, does not necessarily imply that fatherhood and motherhood, owing to communal marriage, were long unknown.
The result of Lord Avebury's analysis of Mr. Morgan's tables of terms is to prove progress in the discrimination of degrees of kin, though ancient sweeping terms occasionally survive among races fairly advanced out of savagery. 'Relationship is, at first, regarded as a matter, not of blood, but of tribal organisation' (p. 208). Here I agree that words or terms for what we call relationship often do seem to denote status, duty, service, and intermarriageableness in the community. But I do not think that the ties of blood are thereby proved to have been unknown. Maternity could not be doubtful, especially where the mother nursed her child for several years.
Lord Avebury adds, 'the terms for what we call relationships are, among the lower races of men, mere expressions for the results of marriage customs, and do not comprise the idea of relationship as we understand it' (p. 210).
For this reason, I think, we must avoid the fallacy of arguing as if the terms did denote 'relationship as we understand it,' when we wish to prove a past of communal marriage. The terms indicate, in Lord Avebury's words, 'the connection of individuals inter se, their duties to one another, their rights, and the descent of their property.'