Like the inner circle, the outer circle varies considerably in extent. Rengger states that many of the Indian races of Paraguay are too proud to intermarry with any race of a different colour, or even of a different stock.[2112] In Guiana and elsewhere, Indians do not readily intermix with negroes, whom they despise.[2113] Among the Isthmians of Central America, “marriage was not contracted with strangers or people speaking a different language”;[2114] and in San Salvador, according to Palacio, a man who had intercourse with a foreign woman was killed.[2115] Mr. Powers informs us of a Californian tribe who would put to death a woman for committing adultery with or marrying a white man;[2116] and among the Barolongs, a Bechuana tribe, the same punishment was formerly inflicted on any one who had intercourse with a European.[2117] Among the Kabyles, “le mariage avec une négresse n’est pas défendu en principe; mais la famille s’opposerait à une pareille union.”[2118]
The Chinese, according to Mr. Jamieson, refuse marriage with the surrounding barbarous tribes, with whom, as a rule, they have no dealings, either friendly or hostile.[2119] The black and fairer people of the Philippines have from time immemorial dwelt in the same country without producing an intermediate race;[2120] the Bugis of Perak have kept themselves very distinct from the people among whom they live;[2121] and, in Sumatra, it is a rare thing for a Malay man to marry a Kubu woman.[2122] The Munda Kols severely punish a girl who is seduced by a Hindu, whereas intercourse with a man of their own people is regarded by most of them as quite a matter of course.[2123] And, in Ceylon, even those Veddahs who live in settlements, although they have long associated with their neighbours, the Sinhalese, have not yet intermarried with them.[2124]
Count de Gobineau remarks that not even a common religion and country can extinguish the hereditary aversion of the Arab to the Turk, of the Kurd to the Nestorian of Syria, of the Magyar to the Slav.[2125] Indeed, so strong, among the Arabs, is the instinct of ethnical isolation, that, as a traveller relates, at Djidda, where sexual morality is held in little respect, a Bedouin woman may yield herself for money to a Turk or European, but would think herself for ever dishonoured if she were joined to him in lawful wedlock.[2126]
Marriages between Lapps and Swedes very rarely occur, being looked upon as dishonourable by both peoples. They are equally uncommon between Lapps and Norwegians, and it hardly ever happens that a Lapp marries a Russian.[2127] At various times, Spaniards in Central America, Englishmen in Mauritius, Frenchmen in Réunion and the Antilles, and Danish traders in Greenland, have been prevented by law from marrying natives.[2128] Among the Hebrews, during the early days of their power and dominion, marriages with aliens seem to have been rare exceptions.[2129] The Romans were prohibited from marrying barbarians; Valentinian inflicted the penalty of death for such unions.[2130] Tacitus was of opinion that the Germans refused marriage with foreign nations,[2131] and the like seems to have been the case with the Slavs.[2132]
Among several peoples marriage very seldom, or never, takes place even outside the territory of the tribe or community. This is the case with many tribes of Guatemala,[2133] the Ahts,[2134] Navajos,[2135] and Pueblos.[2136] In the village of Schawill, in Southern Mexico, according to Mr. Stephens, “every member must marry within the rancho, and no such thing as a marriage out of it had ever occurred. They said it was impossible, it could not happen.... This was a thing so little apprehended that the punishment for it was not defined in their penal code; but being questioned, after some consultations, they said that the offender, whether man or woman, would be expelled.”[2137] Speaking of the Chaymas in New Andalusia, among whom marriages are contracted between the inhabitants of the same hamlet only,[2138] v. Humboldt says, “Savage nations are subdivided into an infinity of tribes, which, bearing a cruel hatred toward each other, form no intermarriages, even when their languages spring from the same root, and when only a small arm of a river, or a group of hills, separates their habitations.”[2139] This holds good especially for several of the Brazilian tribes.[2140] In ancient Peru it was not lawful for the natives of one province or village to marry those of another.[2141]
In Equatorial Africa, according to Mr. Du Chaillu, the non-cannibal tribes do not intermarry with their cannibal neighbours, whose peculiar practices are held in abhorrence.[2142] Barrow states that the Hottentots always marry within their own kraal;[2143] and a Bushman woman would regard intercourse with any one out of the tribe, no matter how superior, as a degradation.[2144] Among the Hovas, the different tribes, clans, and even families as a rule do not intermarry, as Mr. Sibree says, “in order to keep landed property together, as well as from a strong clannish feeling.”[2145] Mr. Swann informs me that, among the Waguha, of West Tanganyika, marriages out of the tribe are avoided, though not prohibited; and Archdeacon Hodgson writes that this is very often the case in Eastern Central Africa.
In India there are several instances of tribe-or clan-endogamy.[2146] The Tipperahs and Abors, for example, view with abhorrence the idea of their girls marrying out of their own clan,[2147] and Colonel Dalton was gravely assured that, “when one of the daughters of Pádam so demeans herself, the sun and the moon refuse to shine, and there is such a strife in the elements that all labour is necessarily suspended, till by sacrifice and oblation the stain is washed away.”[2148] The Ainos not only despise the Japanese as much as the Japanese despise them, but are not very sociable even among themselves: one village does not like to marry into another.[2149] The same may be said of the Sermatta Islanders;[2150] whilst the Minahassers,[2151] the Dyaks,[2152] and the natives of New Guinea[2153] and New Britain,[2154] as a general rule, marry within their own tribe. Among the New Zealanders, according to Mr. Yate, “great opposition is made to any one taking, except for some political purpose, a wife from another tribe,” and marriage generally takes place between relatives.[2155] In Australia there are groups of tribes, so-called associated tribes, generally speaking the same dialect, who are in the habit of uniting for common defence and other purposes. Marriage between the members of associated tribes is the rule,[2156] but many tribes are mostly endogamous.[2157]
In ancient Wales, according to Mr. Lewis, marriage was to be within the clan.[2158] At Athens, at least in its later history, if an alien lived as a husband with an Athenian woman, he was liable to be sold as a slave, and to have his property confiscated; and, if an Athenian lived with a foreign woman, she was liable to like consequences, and he to a penalty of a thousand drachmæ.[2159] Marriage with foreign women was unlawful for all Spartans, and was made unlawful for the Heraclidæ by a separate rhetra.[2160] At Rome, any marriage of a citizen with a woman who was not herself a Roman citizen, or did not belong to a community possessing the privilege of connubium with Rome—which was always expressly conferred—was invalid; no legitimate children could be born of such a marriage.[2161] In early times it was even customary for a father to seek, for his daughter, a husband from his own gens, marriage out of it being mentioned as an extraordinary thing.[2162]
Prohibitions of intermarriage do not refer only to persons belonging to different nations or tribes; very often they relate also to persons belonging to different classes or castes of the same community. Yet in many, perhaps most, cases these prohibitions originally coincided. Castes are frequently, if not always, the consequences of foreign conquest and subjugation, the conquerors becoming the nobility, and the subjugated the commonalty or slaves. Thus, before the Norman conquest, the English aristocracy was Saxon; after it, Norman. The descendants of the German conquerors of Gaul were, for a thousand years, the dominant race in France; and until the fifteenth century all the higher nobility were of Frankish or Burgundian origin.[2163] The Sanskrit word for caste is “varna,” i.e., colour, which shows how the distinction of high and low caste arose in India. That country was inhabited by dark races before the fairer Aryans took possession of it; and the bitter contempt of the Aryans for foreign tribes, their domineering spirit, and their strong antipathies of race and of religion, found vent in the pride of class and caste distinctions. Even to this day a careful observer can distinguish the descendants of conquerors and conquered. “No sojourner in India,” says Dr. Stevenson, “can have paid any attention to the physiognomy of the higher and lower orders of natives without being struck with the remarkable difference that exists in the shape of the head, the build of the body, and the colour of the skin between the higher and the lower castes into which the Hindu population is divided.”[2164] This explanation of the origin of Indian castes is supported by the fact that it is in some of the latest Vedic hymns that we find the earliest references to those four classes—the Brahmans, the Kshatriyas, the Vaiśyas, and the Śudras—to which all the later castes have been traced back.[2165] The Incas of Peru were known as a conquering race; and the ancient Mexicans represented the culture-heroes of the Toltecs as white.[2166] Among the Beni-Amer, the nobles are mostly light coloured, while the commoners are blackish.[2167] The Polynesian nobility have a comparatively fair complexion,[2168] and seem to be the descendants of a conquering or superior race. “The chiefs, and persons of hereditary rank and influence in the islands,” says Ellis, “are, almost without exception, as much superior to the peasantry or common people, in stateliness, dignified deportment, and physical strength, as they are in rank and circumstances; although they are not elected to their station on account of their personal endowments, but derive their rank and elevation from their ancestry. This is the case with most of the groups of the Pacific, but particularly so in Tahiti and the adjacent islands.”[2169] Among the Shans, according to Dr. Anderson, “the majority of the higher classes seemed to be distinguished from the common people by more elongated oval faces and a decidedly Tartar type of countenance.”[2170] In America, at the time of the earliest European immigration, a kind of caste distinction arose, white blood being synonymous with nobility; and, in La Plata, Spaniards, Mestizoes, and Indians were separated from each other even in church.[2171]
As descendants of different ancestors, members of noble families keep up their separate position, and remain almost as foreigners to the people among whom they live. Speculating on the want of sympathy among the various classes in societies in which such distinctions are recognized, Count de Tocqueville says, “Each caste has its own opinions, feelings, rights, manners, and modes of living. Thus the men of whom each caste is composed do not resemble the mass of their fellow-citizens; they do not think or feel in the same manner, and they scarcely believe that they belong to the same human race.... When the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, who all belonged to the aristocracy by birth or education, relate the tragical end of a noble, their grief flows apace; whereas they tell you at a breath, and without wincing, of massacres and tortures inflicted on the common sort of people. Not that these writers felt habitual hatred or systematic disdain for the people; war between the several classes of the community was not yet declared. They were impelled by an instinct rather than by a passion; as they had formed no clear notion of a poor man’s sufferings, they cared but little for his fate.” Then, in proof of this, the writer gives extracts from Madame de Sévigné’s letters, displaying a cruel jocularity which, in our day, “the harshest man writing to the most insensible person of his acquaintance” would not venture wantonly to indulge in; and yet Madame de Sévigné was not selfish or cruel: she was passionately attached to her children, and ever ready to sympathize with her friends, and she treated her servants and vassals with kindness and indulgence.[2172]