III. The Family in Polynesia.—Maternal filiation—Rarity of exogamy—Hawaian marriage—The terms of kinship—The father humbling himself to the male child—Adoption in Polynesia.
IV. The Family among the Mongols.—Familial exogamy among the Mongols—Kinship by classes—Evolution of kinship by classes.
V. The Clan and the Family.—The European family has not been the “cellule” of societies—The primitive clan.
I. The Clan among the Redskins.
In the preceding chapter we have seen the nature of Redskin exogamy, on which it has sometimes been attempted to construct theories of conjugal evolution applicable to the entire human race. As a matter of fact, the North American Indians marry within their tribe; they are therefore endogamous as regards the tribe, but they do not take their wives from their own clan, and consequently they are exogamous as regards this clan. But the clan being composed of real or supposed blood-relations, the exogamy of the Redskins is actually nothing more than our own prohibition, very much extended, of marriages within certain degrees of kinship.
There is really nothing here which resembles marriage by capture, so often classed with exogamy; but the latter may very easily co-exist with the former, and may even be the general rule in more savage tribes. It prevailed, we are told, among the Caribs[928] to such a degree that the wives did not speak the same language as their husbands.
How was the American tribe originally formed? Either consanguineous hordes have ranged themselves side by side, or, which is more probable, a horde, becoming too numerous, has swarmed. Analogous groups, proceeding from it, have formed large families, remaining all the while attached to the original stock, but constituting, nevertheless, distinct communities, confederated with each other and with the primitive clan, which at length became indistinguishable from the others. The whole of these clans taken together represent a tribe. If the clans are too numerous, they group themselves in twos, or threes, etc., within the bosom of the tribe, and thus form what in primitive Greece were called phratries, the bond between them being a lesser degree of kinship. At first, marriage was prohibited within the phratry, and afterwards exogamy was restricted to the clans. The clans composing the phratry had festivals in common, and considered themselves bound to aid each other in revenging wrongs.[929] The clan, or gens, is a group of persons united by a closer consanguinity, but in the female line. The children of the women of the clan remain in the clan of their mother. “The woman bears the clan,” say the Wyandot Indians,[930] just as our ancestors said, “The womb dyes the child.” Each clan has its totem (a tortoise, bear, eland, or fox, etc.). In the “long houses” of the Iroquois, or in the Pueblos, the members of each clan even had a common habitation, in which each family had its own cell; but the members of this cell-family belonged to different clans, as the husband was not of the same clan as his wife, and sometimes did not inhabit the same dwelling. We have heard it said many times that “the family is the social cellule.” Now this is evidently false in regard to the American tribe, and to all tribes that are organised on the same plan. In them it is the clan which is the social unit, or cellule, to keep to the metaphor favoured by H. Spencer, and it is feminine filiation which determines the kinship. What is this kinship in the female line in its details? That is what we must now proceed to inquire.
II. The Family among the Redskins.
The manner in which the different degrees of kinship are understood and named varies somewhat among the diverse Redskin tribes; but, in general, the similarity is very great, and great also is the confusion between real consanguinity and fictitious kinship. Among the Omahas, for example, five classes of kinship are recognised—1st, the nikie kinship, arising from a very distant common ancestor; 2nd, the clan kinship; thus the families whose tents adjoin each other when the tribe is assembled, are of this kinship; 3rd, kinship by the calumet dance—that is to say, by adoption; 4th, kinship by marriage, including the husband, wife, son, and daughter’s husband; 5th, kinship of blood-relation, including the clans of the mother, grandmother, and father.[931]
The Omahas admit, therefore, entire groups of so-called kinsfolk quite unknown in our individualist societies; and moreover, the adopted kinsmen are held exactly on the same footing as the others.