It was possible for either the paternal or maternal family to evolve from this confused system of kinship, based at first apparently on the promiscuity of brothers and sisters; but it was the latter which at first arose, and in the time of Cook the rank and dignity of the chiefs were transmitted in the female line.[965] A singular custom noticed by Cook in the Society Isles may perhaps be interpreted in the sense of maternal filiation. They spoke of the transmission of the title and dignity of the chiefs to their first-born, and that even at the moment of birth. As soon as the wife of a chief had given birth to a son, the father was reckoned as deposed, and became a simple regent; he owed homage to his son, and might not remain in his presence without uncovering to the waist.[966] At Tonga maternal filiation was well established; rank was transmitted by the women, who sometimes even reigned,[967] and the father was not counted as the parent of his child.[968]
Of late years, and manifestly under European influence, the familial system has become modified in Polynesia. At Tonga masculine filiation is being substituted by degrees for feminine filiation.[969] The Maoris of New Zealand have also adopted agnatic filiation, but this new system still jars against ancient usages, which formerly harmonised with the maternal family.
This evolution of the family in Polynesia has probably had for its starting-point a confused promiscuity, and afterwards a system of classification of relations, in which real and fictitious ties were hardly distinguished from each other. With the slight importance attached to real consanguinity might very naturally coexist a great facility to practise adoption. This was abused to such a degree in the Marquesas Islands that it was not uncommon to see aged persons getting themselves adopted by children, and even animals were adopted also. Thus a chief had adopted a dog, to which he had ceremoniously offered ten pigs and some precious ornaments; he had him constantly carried by a kikino; and at the banquets of the chiefs, the animal had his appointed place by the side of his adoptive father.[970] There was no distinction generally made between the real and the adoptive parent,[971] and we may hence conclude that the degrees and bonds of kinship were not well distinguished.
IV. The Family among the Mongols.
The family of the Polynesians, and more especially of the Hawaians, may well have been, as L. Morgan supposes, the primitive familial type of the American Redskins. It has for its basis a marriage which is at once polyandric and polygynic, between groups of sisters and corresponding groups of brothers, and it results quite naturally in a system of kinship by classes, holding real consanguinity very cheap.
It seems probable that analogous systems of kinship may have been adopted by the greater number of the Asiatic Mongols. This may at least be inferred from the fragmentary but significant accounts with which explorers have supplied us. Among the Yourak Samoyedes, it is forbidden to marry a woman of the same tribe (or rather clan).[972] The people among the Kalmucks are subject to restrictions of the same kind in regard to marriage, which must not take place within three or four degrees of kinship. The great men, however, for whom the laws are more lenient in all countries, sometimes obtain immunity from these inconvenient obligations, but the populace is very much shocked at their laxity. “Great men and dogs,” they say, “have no kin.” Nevertheless, the sons of the great men, who often also marry their sisters-in-law, always take a wife in another clan.[973] Kinship by classes surely existed among the Mongols only a few centuries ago, for Baber, the founder of the Mongol Empire of Delhi, speaks in his Memoirs of one of his lieutenants, named Lenguer Khan, who possessed a whole tribe of maternal uncles, the Djendjouhah, forming a people who lived in the mountains of the Punjaub.[974]
V. The Evolution of the System of Kinship by Classes.
These facts, and the inferences they suggest, enable us to solve a difficulty which has embarrassed an eminent sociologist, L. Morgan, to whom we owe our acquaintance with the details of the curious systems of kinship by classes prevailing among the Polynesians and the Redskins.
Morgan, in comparing, term for term, the denominations indicating kinship among the Iroquois-Senecas and the Tamils of India, found them identical as to meaning and number, and he admits, but not without hesitation, that there has been, in both races, a parallel and spontaneous evolution.[975] This way of explaining ethnic similarities is certainly in general very legitimate. At first sight it often appears trustworthy, and saves the trouble of inventing fantastic migrations. In thousands of cases men of every period, every country, every race have conducted themselves in the same way, had the same ideas, realised the same inventions, adopted the same practices, without knowing each other, without even supposing the existence of the other peoples, and this simply because all of them were part of the great human family. But between the Mongoloids of North America, their cousins of Northern Asia, and the Hawaians, there is probably the bond of a distant and common origin, and, besides this, the nomad Mongols of Asia have more than once penetrated into India. Up to the present time, half-savage Mongol tribes occupy entire regions of the Himalaya. Mongols and Tamils have had wide and long communications with each other during prehistoric ages; it has therefore been possible for them to borrow mutually their system of kinship. There exists quite a chain of peoples, including the Tamils of India, the least civilised Mongols, the American Redskins, and lastly the greater number of the Polynesians, all of whom have formerly adopted, or still practise systems of kinship, based, not on consanguinity, but on a classification more or less fictitious.
The fact is interesting; but it is somewhat bold to attach to it, as Morgan has done, a universal value, and to pretend that all human races have passed through this phase of kinship by classes. Even in the countries where this familial form prevails, it is subject to more than one exception, and it is probable that each great human type, having had its special centre of creation, has evolved physically and psychically in its own manner, sometimes unconsciously imitating the others, but quite as often deviating from them, according as the environment, the difficulties to be overcome, and the necessities of the struggle for existence imposed on it such or such a line of conduct.