This system of kinship in the familial clan is curious, because it holds real consanguinity very cheap, unhesitatingly confusing real with fictitious kinship, and thus forming classes of fictitious relations. It seems to prove the existence of an ancient period of promiscuity, during which there was scarcely any thought of determining with precision the degrees of consanguinity of individuals. Naturally, the first form of the family which was more or less vaguely outlined in the confused groups anterior to the familial clans, was the maternal family; but this system of filiation by classes is in no way incompatible with paternal filiation.
Up to the present time kinship in the female line prevails among most of the Redskin tribes. Certain of them, however, are evolving in the direction of masculine filiation, and this movement was already commencing at the close of the last century.[947] The transformation began with the chiefs and more powerful men. Among the Thlinkits of Russian America the great men already give the paternal name to their children; but the poorer people are still in the stage of uterine filiation.[948] Certain tribes have quite recently adopted the system of paternal filiation. It is owing to European influence that this change is operating, and its accomplishment is only a question of time. The Ojibways have only taken two generations to effect the adoption of agnatic filiation.[949] A similar evolution was spontaneously accomplished in the great states of Central America. In Peru maternal filiation was still in general use, but the paternal family was beginning to appear. In the mass of the nation, says Gomara, the heritage was transmitted to nephews and not to sons; but in the family of the Incas direct male descendants alone had the right to avail themselves of their origin, and sons inherited.[950] It seems that in Mexico the familial evolution may have been more advanced, for there it is always the paternal personality which predominates, and it is the father who dictates to the children rules of conduct and moral precepts. The mothers exhort their daughters to be submissive to their husbands, to obey them and strive to please them.
The familial customs which I have just described are general in America; they are not universal as regards exogamy, for Hearne tells us that many Chippeways frequently take to wife their sisters, daughters, and even mothers.[951] We know, on the other hand, that the Peruvian Incas married their sisters, and that throughout the Peruvian empire no one married outside the administrative district.
In some parts of America the diversity is still greater. The Caribs married their relatives, with the exception of sisters,[952] indiscriminately; the Indians of Guiana, on the contrary, practised totemic exogamy, like the Redskins.[953]
The Indians of Guatemala were unacquainted with maternal kinship. They willingly married their sisters, provided they were not children of the same father, and among them the children belonged to the class of the father even when the mother was a slave.[954] Among the Mayas descent was also reckoned in the male line.[955] In various savage tribes of Mexico the women did not inherit. Among the Ityas and in Yucatan the name of the child was formed by combining the names of the father and mother; the mother’s name, however, had the precedence.[956]
The monk Thevet relates that the Indians of Brazil already pushed the agnatic system, at least in theory, to its most extreme limits; for they affirmed, he says, that in procreation the part of the father is predominant, and that of the mother only secondary.[957] The general conclusion to be drawn from these very dissimilar facts is, that we should abstain from forming any absolute theories on these great sociological questions of marriage and the family, which are still so far from being elucidated.
III. The Family in Polynesia.
Filiation by the female line seems to be generally adopted, not only in Polynesia, but in many Melanesian or Micronesian archipelagoes. It has been found in the Fiji Islands, at Tonga and the Carolines,[958] etc. But exogamy, even the exogamy of the clan, after the American fashion, appears rare. It existed at Samoa, but in any case it seems not to have been a general custom.[959]
In New Zealand endogamy predominated, and marriage with a woman of another tribe was even prohibited, unless an important political motive could be given as an excuse.[960] Endogamy was also practised in the Hawaian Islands. In the Mulgrave Islands every marriage required the sanction of an assembly of all the friends and relatives, or rather of the whole clan,[961] for the interest of the community was involved in it.
In the Hawaian Islands there existed a confused kinship by classes, analogous to that of the familial clan among the Redskins, but much more gross. Group-marriage of brothers and sisters prevailed, but generally the brothers did not marry their own sisters. As for the names expressing the degrees of kinship, they were names of classes. The Hawaians had no words to express “father” or “mother.” They used the word “mkûa,” which signifies “parents.” To say “father,” they added the word “kana,” which signifies “male”: Mkûa kana, male parent. To say “mother,” they used the combination, Mkûa ouahina, female parent. There was no expression for “son” or “daughter.” They used the word keiki, child, or little one, to which they added kana or ouahina, as before, according as the child was male or female. The language had no terms for “brother” or “sister.”[962] The word employed to express “wives” is collective; it applies to the wife’s sister as well as to the wife proper, and signifies literally “female”; in the same way, for “husband” they used the word kana (male), and applied it also to the husband’s brother and sister’s husband. All the sisters of a woman were called “the wives of the husband of that woman,” even when they were not actually so.[963] The Hawaians had no expressions for “grandfather” or “grandmother.” Their word kapuna signifies an ancestor of any degree beyond the father and mother (mkûa). Neither had they any special denomination for “grandson” or “grand-daughter.” As brothers and sisters did not generally intermarry, the women called the husband or husbands of their sisters, not “husbands,” but “intimate companions” (punalua).[964]