The history of human marriage

by Edward Westermarck

As for ancient peoples, Bachofen has adduced from the works of classical writers evidence for the uterine line having prevailed among several of them. But, to quote Sir Henry Maine, “the greatest races of mankind, when they first appear to us, show themselves at or near a stage of development in which relationship or kinship is reckoned exclusively through males.”[567] Several writers have, it is true, endeavoured to prove that, among the primitive Aryans, descent was traced through females only;[568] but the evidence does not seem to be conclusive. Much importance has been attributed to the specially close connection which, according to Tacitus, existed between a sister’s children and their mother’s brothers;[569] but Dr. Schrader observes that, in spite of this prominent position of the maternal uncle in the ancient Teutonic family, the patruus distinctly came before the avunculus, the agnates before the cognates, in testamentary succession. He also suggests that, when the head of a household died, the women of his family passed under the guardianship of the eldest son, and that a woman’s children had therefore, quite naturally, a peculiarly intimate relation to their maternal uncle.[570] It is safe to say with Professor Max Müller, that we can neither assert nor deny that in unknown times the Aryans ever passed through a metrocratic stage.[571]

Even if it could be proved—which is doubtful—that, in former times, a system of “kinship through females only,” fully developed, prevailed among all the peoples whose children take the mother’s name and are considered to belong to her clan, though succession runs in the male line, we should still have to account for the fact that a large number of peoples exhibit no traces of such a system.[572] And to them belong many of the rudest races of the world—such as the aborigines of Brazil, the Fuegians, Hottentots, Bushmans, and several very low tribes in Australia and India. The inference that “kinship through females only” has everywhere preceded the rise of “kinship through males,” would, then, be warranted only on condition that the cause, or the causes, to which the maternal system is owing, could be proved to have operated universally in the past life of mankind. From Mr. McLennan’s point of view, such an inference would be inadmissible, as he cannot prove the former occurrence of a universal stage of promiscuity or polyandry, leading to uncertain paternity—the cause to which he attributes that system.

Yet it is far from being so inconceivable as Mr. McLennan assumes, that “anything but the want of certainty on that point could have long prevented the acknowledgment of kinship through males.”[573] Paternity, as Sir Henry Maine remarks, is “matter of inference, as opposed to maternity, which is matter of observation.”[574] Hence it is almost beyond doubt that the father’s participation in parentage was not recognized as soon as the mother’s.[575] Now, however, there does not seem to be a single people which has not made the discovery of fatherhood. In reply to my question whether the Fuegians consider a child to descend exclusively or predominantly from either of the parents, Mr. Bridges certainly writes that, according to his idea, they “consider the maternal tie much more important than the paternal, and the duties connected with it of mutual help, defence, and vengeance are held very sacred.” But it is doubtful whether this refers to the mere physiological connection between the child and its parents. Dr. Sims informs me that, among the Bateke, the function of both parents in generation is held alike important, and the Waguha of West Tanganyika, as Mr. Swann states, also recognize the part taken by both. The same is asserted by Archdeacon Hodgson concerning certain other tribes of Eastern Central Africa, though, among them, children take the name of the mother’s tribe. Again, the Naudowessies, according to Carver, had the very curious idea that their offspring were indebted to their father for their souls, the invisible part of their essence, and to the mother for their corporeal and visible part; hence they considered it “more rational that they should be distinguished by the name of the latter, from whom they indubitably derive their being, than by that of the father, to which a doubt might sometimes arise whether they are justly entitled.”[576] Moreover, it seems as if the father’s share in parentage, once discovered, was often exaggerated. Thus, referring to some tribes of New South Wales, Mr. Cameron tells us that, although the father has nothing to do with the disposal of his daughter, as she belongs to the clan of her mother’s brother, they “believe that the daughter emanates from her father solely, being only nutured by her mother.”[577] Indeed, Mr. Howitt has found in every Australian tribe, without exception, with which he has acquaintance, the idea that the child is derived from the male parent only. As a black fellow once put it to him, “The man gives the child to a woman to take care of for him, and he can do whatever he likes with his own child.”[578] Again, Mr. Cousins writes that, according to Kaffir ideas, a child descends chiefly, though not exclusively, from the father; and the ancient Greeks, as well as the Egyptians[579] and Hindus,[580] maintained a similar view. Nay, Euripides states distinctly that, in his day, the universally accepted physiological doctrine recognized only the share taken by the father in procreation, and Hippocrates, in combating this opinion, and contending that the child descended from both parents, seems to admit that it was a prevalent heresy.[581] Finally, it seems probable that the custom known under the name of “La Couvade”—that is, the odd rule, prevalent among several peoples in different parts of the world, requiring that the father, at the birth of his child, shall retire to bed for some time, and fast or abstain from certain kinds of food—implies some idea of relationship between the two.[582]

Admitting, however, that there was a time when fatherhood, in the physiological sense of the term, was not discovered, I do not think that the preference given to the female line is due to this fact. If the denomination of children and the rules of succession really were in the first place dependent on ideas of consanguinity, it might be expected that a change with reference to the latter would be followed by a change in the former respect also. But the ties of blood have exercised a far less direct influence on the matter in question than is generally supposed, the system of “kinship through females only” being, properly speaking, quite different from what the words imply.

There may be several reasons for naming children after the mother rather than after the father, apart from any consideration of relationship. Especially among savages, the tie between a mother and child is much stronger than that which binds a child to the father.[583] Not only has she given birth to it, but she has also for years been seen carrying it about at her breast. Moreover, in cases of separation, occurring frequently at lower stages of civilization, the infant children always follow the mother, and so, very often, do the children more advanced in years. Is it not natural, then, that they should keep the name of the mother rather than that of a father whom they scarcely know? Mr. Belt tells us that the men and women even of the christianised lower classes of Nicaragua often change their mates, and the children, in such cases remaining with the mother, take their surname from her.[584] According to Swann, the Creeks conferred the honour of a chief on the issue of the female line, because it was impossible to trace the right by the male issue, women only exceptionally having more than two children by the same father.[585] And touching the Khasias, one of the few tribes in India among whom the female line prevails, Dr. Hooker states that they have a very lax idea of marriage, divorce and exchange of wives being common and attended with no disgrace; “the son therefore often forgets his father’s name and person before he grows up, but becomes strongly attached to his mother.”[586]

Speaking of certain negro tribes, Winterbottom suggested long ago that the prevalence of the female line was to be explained by the practice of polygyny,[587] and Dr. Starcke has recently called attention to the same point.[588] The Rev. D. Macdonald likewise remarks, in his account of the Efatese of the New Hebrides, that the idea that children are more closely related to the mother than to the father is an idea perfectly natural among a polygynous people.[589] It is a customary arrangement in polygynous families that each wife has a hut for herself, where she lives with her children; but even where this is not the case, mother and children naturally keep together as a little sub-family. No wonder, then, if a child takes its name after the mother rather than after the father. This is the simplest way of pointing out the distinction between the issue of different wives, a distinction which is of special importance where it is accompanied by different privileges as to succession. It is worth noticing that, among the Negroes, who are probably the most polygynous race in the world, the female line is extremely prevalent; whereas, among the Hill Tribes of India, who are on the whole, monogamists, children, with few exceptions, take the name of the father. With reference to the Basutos, a Bechuana tribe, Mr. Casalis observes that the authority of the eldest maternal uncle preponderates to excess, especially in polygynous families, where the children have no strong affection for their father.[590]

Further, among several peoples a man, on marrying, has to quit his home, and go to live with his wife in the house of her father, of whose family he becomes a member. This is a common practice among several of the North American tribes,[591] and prevailed, in the southern part of the New World, among the Caribs.[592] In some parts of Eastern Central Africa, also, a man who marries a full grown girl “immediately leaves his own village and proceeds to build a house in the village of his wife.”[593] Among the Sengirese, according to Dr. Hickson, the man always goes to his wife’s house, unless he be the son of a rajah, in which case he may do as he pleases.[594] Dr. Hooker tells us that, among the Khasias, “the husband does not take his wife home, but enters her father’s household, and is entertained there.”[595] And in Sumatra, in the mode of marriage called “ambel anak,” the father of a virgin makes choice of some young man for her husband, who is taken into his house to live there in a state between that of a son and that of a debtor.[596]

According to Dr. Starcke, this custom is due to the great cohesive power of the several families, which causes them to refuse to part with any of their members. “Since men are more independent,” he says, “they are also less stationary; they can no longer attract the women to themselves, and are therefore attracted by them.[597] Under such circumstances, there is nothing astonishing in the fact that children are named after the mother’s tribe or clan, which is the case in all the instances just given of peoples among whom the husband has to settle down with his father-in-law. Indeed, Dr. Tylor has found that, whilst the number of coincidences between peoples among whom the husband lives with the wife’s family and peoples among whom the maternal system prevails, is proportionally large, the full maternal system never appears among peoples whose exclusive custom is for the husband to take his wife to his own home.[598] And it is a remarkable fact that where both customs—the woman receiving her husband in her own hut, and the man taking his wife to his—occur side by side among the same people, descent in the former cases is traced through the mother, in the latter through the father.[599] In Japan, should there be only daughters in the family, a husband is procured for the eldest, who enters his wife’s family, and, at the same time, takes its name.[600]

Again, as to the rules of succession, Dr. Starcke has set forth the hypothesis that they are dependent on local connections, those persons being each other’s heirs who dwell together in one place. Among the Iroquois, for instance, at the death of a man, his property is divided among his brothers, sisters, and mother’s brothers, whilst the property of a woman is transmitted to her children and sisters, but not to her brothers. “Owing to the faculty of memory,” Dr. Starcke says, “childhood and youth involve a young man in such a web of associations that he afterwards finds it hard to detach himself from them. The man who, when married, has lived as a stranger in the house of another, clings to the impressions of his former home, and his earlier household companions become his heirs. But the brother who has wandered elsewhere stands in a more remote relation to his sister than do the sisters and the children living with her in the parental home, and he is therefore excluded from the inheritance.”[601]

Though agreeing, in the main, with Dr. Starcke’s hypothesis, I do not think it affords a complete explanation of the matter. It certainly accounts for the fact that, under the maternal system, it is just the nearest relatives on the mother’s side who are a man’s heirs, to the exclusion of other members of the clan. But, if succession really depended upon local relations only, or upon the remembrance of such relations in the past, it would be the most natural arrangement, where father and children lived together till the latter were grown up, for the father to be succeeded by his son. It seems probable that the causes which make children take their mother’s name, have also directly exercised some influence upon the rules of succession; but I am inclined to believe that the power of the name itself has been of the highest importance in that respect.