It has, however, been suggested that, in olden times, the natural guardian of the children was not the father, but the maternal uncle.[193] This inference has been drawn chiefly from the common practice of a nephew succeeding his mother’s brother in rank and property. But sometimes the relation between the two is still more intimate. “La famille Malaise proprement dite—le Sa-Mandei,—” says a Dutch writer, as quoted by Professor Giraud-Teulon, “consiste dans la mère et ses enfants: le père n’en fait point partie. Les liens de parenté qui unissent ce dernier à ses frères et sœurs sont plus étrois que ceux qui le rattachent à sa femme et à ses propres enfants. Il continue même après son mariage à vivre dans sa famille maternelle; c’est là qu’est son véritable domicile, et non pas dans la maison de sa femme: il ne cesse pas de cultiver le champ de sa propre famille, à travailler pour elle, et n’aide sa femme qu’accidentellement. Le chef de la famille est ordinairement le frère aîné du côté maternel (le mamak ou avunculus). De par ses droits et ses devoirs, c’est lui le vrai père des enfants de sa sœur.”[194] As regards the mountaineers of Georgia, especially the Pshaves, M. Kovalevsky states that, among them, “le frère de la mère prend la place du père dans toutes les circonstances où il s’agit de venger le sang répandu, surtout au cas de meurtre commis sur la personne de son neveu.”[195] Among the Goajiro Indians,[196] the Negroes of Bondo,[197] the Barea, and the Bazes,[198] it is the mother’s brother who has the right of selling a girl to her suitor. Touching the Kois, the Rev. John Cain says, “The maternal uncle of any Koi girl has the right to bestow her hand on any one of his sons, or any other suitable candidate who meets with his approval. The father and the mother of the girl have no acknowledged voice in the matter. A similar custom prevails amongst some of the Komâti (Vaiśya) caste.”[199] Among the Savaras in India, the bridegroom has to give a bullock not only to the girl’s father, but to the maternal uncle;[200] whilst among the Creeks, the proxy of the suitor asked for the consent of the uncles, aunts, and brothers of the young woman, “the father having no voice or authority in the business.”[201]
But such cases are rare. Besides, most of them imply only that the children in a certain way belong to the uncle, not that the father is released from the obligation of supporting them. Even where succession runs through females only, the father is nearly always certainly the head of the family. Thus, for instance, in Melanesia, where the clan of the children is determined by that of the mother, “the mother is,” to quote Dr. Codrington, “in no way the head of the family. The house of the family is the father’s, the garden is his, the rule and government are his.”[202] Nor is there any reason to believe that it was generally otherwise in former times. A man could not of course be the guardian of his sister’s children, if he did not live in close connection with them. But except in such a decidedly anomalous case as that of the Malays, just referred to, this could scarcely happen unless marriages were contracted between persons living closely together. Nowadays, however, such marriages are usually avoided, and I shall endeavour later on to show that they were probably also avoided by our remote ancestors.
It might, further, be objected that the children were equally well or better provided for, if not the fathers only, but all the males of the tribe indiscriminately were their guardians. The supporters of the hypothesis of promiscuity, and even other sociologists, as for instance Herr Kautsky,[203] believe that this really was the case among primitive men. According to them, the tribe or horde is the primary social unit of the human race, and the family only a secondary unit, developed in later times. Indeed, this assumption has been treated by many writers, not as a more or less probable hypothesis, but as a demonstrated truth. Yet the idea that a man’s children belong to the tribe, has no foundation in fact. Everywhere we find the tribes or clans composed of several families, the members of each family being more closely connected with one another than with the rest of the tribe. The family, consisting of parents, children, and often also their next descendants, is a universal institution among existing peoples.[204] And it seems extremely probable that, among our earliest human ancestors, the family formed, if not the society itself, at least the nucleus of it. As this is a question of great importance, I must deal with it at some length.
Mr. Darwin remarks, “Judging from the analogy of the majority of the Quadrumana, it is probable that the early ape-like progenitors of man were likewise social.”[205] But it may be doubted whether Mr. Darwin would have drawn this inference, had he taken into consideration the remarkable fact that none of the monkeys most nearly allied to man can be called social animals.
The solitary life of the Orang-utan has already been noted. As regards Gorillas, Dr. Savage states that there is only one adult male attached to each group;[206] and Mr. Reade says expressly that they are not gregarious, though they sometimes seem to assemble in large numbers.[207] Both Mr. Du Chaillu[208] and Herr von Koppenfels[209] assure us likewise that the Gorilla generally lives in pairs or families.
The same is the case with the Chimpanzee. “It is seldom,” Dr. Savage says, “that more than one or two nests are seen upon the same tree or in the same neighbourhood; five have been found, but it was an unusual circumstance. They do not live in ‘villages’.... They are more often seen in pairs than in gangs.... As seen here, they cannot be called gregarious.”[210] This statement, confirmed or repeated by Mr. Du Chaillu[211] and Professor Hartmann,[212] is especially interesting, as the Chimpanzee resembles man also in his comparatively slight strength and courage, so that a gregarious life might be supposed to be better suited to this animal.
Mr. Spencer, however, has pointed out that not only size, strength, and means of defence, but also the kind and distribution of food and other factors must variously co-operate and conflict to determine how far a gregarious life is beneficial, and how far a solitary life.[213] Considering, then, that, according to Dr. Savage, the Chimpanzees are more numerous in the season when the greatest number of fruits come to maturity,[214] we may almost with certainty infer that the solitary life generally led by this ape is due chiefly to the difficulty it experiences in getting food at other times of the year.
Is it not, then, most probable that our fruit-eating human or half-human ancestors, living on the same kind of food, and requiring about the same quantities of it as the man-like apes, were not more gregarious than they? It is likely, too, that subsequently, when man became partly carnivorous, he continued, as a rule, this solitary kind of life, or that gregariousness became his habit only in part. “An animal of a predatory kind,” says Mr. Spencer, “which has prey that can be caught and killed without help, profits by living alone: especially if its prey is much scattered, and is secured by stealthy approach or by lying in ambush. Gregariousness would here be a positive disadvantage. Hence the tendency of large carnivores, and also of small carnivores that have feeble and widely-distributed prey, to lead solitary lives.”[215] It is, indeed, very remarkable that even now there are savage peoples who live rather in separate families than in tribes, and that most of these peoples belong to the very rudest races in the world.[216]
“‘The wild or forest Veddahs,’” Mr. Pridham states, “build their huts in trees, live in pairs, only occasionally assembling in greater numbers, and exhibit no traces of the remotest civilization, nor any knowledge of social rites.”[217] According to Mr. Bailey, the Nilgala Veddahs, who are considered the wildest, “are distributed through their lovely country in small septs, or families, occupying generally caves in the rocks, though some have little bark huts. They depend almost solely on hunting for their support, and hold little communication even with each other.”[218]
In Tierra del Fuego, according to Bishop Stirling, family life is exclusive. “Get outside the family,” he says, “and relationships are doubtful, if not hostile. The bond of a common language is no security for friendly offices.”[219] Commander Wilkes states likewise that the Fuegians “appear to live in families and not in tribes, and do not seem to acknowledge any chief;[220]” and, according to M. Hyades, “la famille est bien constitutée, mais la tribu n’existe pas, à proprement parler.”[221] Each family is perfectly independent of all the others, and only the necessity of common defence now and then induces a few families to form small gangs without any chief.[222] The Rev. T. Bridges writes to me, “They live in clans, called by them Ucuhr, which means a house. These Ucuhr comprise many subdivisions; and the members are necessarily related. But,” he continues, “the Yahgans are a roving people, having their districts and moving about within these districts from bay to bay and island to island in canoes, without any order. The whole clan seldom travels together, and only occasionally and then always incidentally is it to be found collected. The smaller divisions keep more together.... Occasionally, as many as five families are to be found living in a wigwam, but generally two families.” Indeed, in ‘A Voice for South America,’ Mr. Bridges says that “family influence is the one great tie which binds these natives together, and the one great preventive of violence.”[223]