III. The Family in America.—The Redskin clans—Common dwellings—Rights and duties—Exogamy of the clan—Clans of the Pueblos—The family among the Indians of South America—Relationship among the Redskins—Communism—Maternal filiation—Distinction between the matriarchate and the maternal family—Origin of the ideas of relationship.
I. The Family.
I shall now attempt to retrace as clearly as I can the history of the evolution of the family, first of all ascertaining the facts that have been observed, and then using these facts as a touchstone to try the solidity of the various sociological theories that have been put forth on the subject. Among these theories, there are some which have been very favourably received, and not without reason. Insufficient as they might be, they reduced a chaos of facts into order, and contained a certain amount of truth. All of them are open to criticism and contest, both because they are the fruit of a too hasty generalisation, and because their authors have claimed for them a certainty which sociological facts do not easily bear out. Human groups have always lived as they could, without caring about theories; their social conduct inevitably results from a sort of compromise in the conflict between their appetites, their aptitudes, and the necessities dictated by their physical environment.
Before hazarding any general conclusions, I shall be careful, as before, to refer to comparative ethnography, and to interrogate the various human races, from the lowest to the most elevated. This inquiry will enable us to form a rough idea, with a certain approximation to truth, in regard to the probable evolution of the family in humanity. But in order to approach this subject with sufficient impartiality, it is absolutely necessary to clear our minds from all the current theories in regard to the family. There is, in fact, no theme which has inspired more empty oratorical lucubrations. The doctrine has been firmly held that the family, as we have it instituted in Europe and in European colonies, is the beau idéal, the sacred and immutable sociological type. Ethnography, however, and even history, teach us that the present familial type of Europe has not always existed, and that it is the result, like everything else, of a slow evolution; from whence it is reasonable to infer that it will still continue to be modified. But facts are more eloquent than reflections; I will therefore approach them, beginning with the lowest human races, the Melanesians.
II. The Family in Melanesia.
In my sketch of the family in the animal kingdom, I have already had occasion to remark that the family, such as we understand it, is not indispensable to the maintenance of societies, since the ants do without it in their republics, in which we find neither paternity nor maternity, in the sense we attach to them, but simply three classes of individuals, the breeders, the young, and the educators.
With these last, the working ants, by a paradoxical contradiction, maternal love has survived the atrophy of the generative function; it is even purified and widened, for it is lavished without partiality on all the young ones, which form the hope of the republic; and though thus diluted, it seems to have lost none of its energy.
Nothing at all similar is seen in inferior human societies, but the family is still, however, in a confused state; paternity, in the social sense of the word, does not exist; filiation is especially maternal, but the actual degrees of consanguinity are not well distinguished in detail; parenthood is not yet individual, but is constituted in groups.
In the present day we may still study this familial confusion in certain Australian tribes. We have seen that marriage, or what goes by that name, resulted in Tasmania, Australia, Bali, etc., from a violent and brutal rape, generally ratified by a compensation and a simulation of retaliation between the tribe of the woman and that of the ravisher.
Among the least savage tribes of Melanesia, this rape is often fictitious, in which case it is no more than a survival; but sometimes it is still real, and it surely must always have been so at the origin of the Australian societies. But however gross these societies may be, they are none the less the result of a long evolution. In the interior of Borneo there are still existing human beings compared with whom the Australians are civilised people. These absolutely primitive savages of Borneo are probably the remains of negroïd peoples, who must formerly have been the first inhabitants of Malaya. They roam the forests in little hordes, like monkeys; the man, or rather the male, carries off the female and couples with her in the thickets. The family passes the night under a large tree; the children are suspended from the branches in a sort of net, and a great fire is lighted at the foot of the tree to keep off the wild beasts. As soon as the children are capable of taking care of themselves, the parents turn them adrift as animals do.[873]