Observing the care manifested for a sister’s children among various tribes, certain writers have declared that the relationship existing between a child and its mother’s brother is more important than any other—that the brother is practically the head of his sister’s family. However, if we bear in mind the relative positions of the sexes in primitive groups, that women controlled their homes, and that all the rights of succession were traced through them, we shall doubtless be led to the conclusion that mothers themselves were the real heads of their own families, and that although they may have delegated to their brothers, who until marriage were permitted to reside with them, certain manly offices, they nevertheless reserved to themselves the exclusive right to the control and management of their own households. As the land belonged to the gens, and as the gentes were controlled by women, mothers were absolutely independent.
Each child received a name soon after birth, but at the age of sixteen or eighteen this name was discarded and another adopted. Special rights were thus conferred and specified obligations were imposed. On receipt of this name, the incumbent took upon himself all the duties and responsibilities devolving upon a member of the group and by it was entitled to all its rights and privileges. The greatest precautions were taken with respect to the adoption of names. The office of naming the different members belonged to the female relations and the chiefs. We are informed that the mother might, if she chose, transfer her child to another gens. This was accomplished by simply giving it the name of the gens in which she desired its adoption. It is claimed that among the Shawnees and Delawares the mother claimed the right to transfer her child to another gens than her own.[98] It would seem from this, that among certain tribes, the mother, if she desires, may transfer her child to the gens of its father. It is observed, however, that the transference of a child from its mother’s gens is a “wide departure from archaic usages, and exceptional in practice.”
It has been shown that under early usages wealth was never transferred from the gens in which it originated; but later, when property began to be claimed by individuals, and wealth was amassed in the hands of males, it is not unlikely that mothers, considering only the future welfare of their children, in case the father was rich and powerful, would occasionally take advantage of their established privileges to remove their children to his gens, in order that they might share in his possessions.
Something of the humanity practised in early groups may be observed in the custom of adoption, which, at a certain stage in their development, prevailed among them. In the earlier ages of gentile institutions, women and children taken prisoners in war, were usually adopted into some gens. Adoption not only conferred gentile rights, but also the nationality of the tribe. A person adopted into a gens was treated ever afterwards as though born within the group. “Slavery which in the Upper Status of barbarism became the fate of the captive, was unknown among tribes in the Lower Status in the aboriginal period.”[99]
According to Mariner:
It is customary in the Tonga Islands for women to be what they call mothers to children or grown-up young persons who are not their own, for the purpose of providing them, or seeing that they are provided, with all the conveniences of life.[100]
According to Mr. E. J. Wood, among the Kaffirs, although the men inherit the property, their influences being in the ascendency, every woman has someone who acts as her father whether her own father be living or not. Kaffir law provides for the protection of all women, and so long as a male relation lives a girl has a protector. It goes even farther than this, and protects women who have been bereft of all their male relations. For such as these provision is made for their adoption into other groups, in which case, although they are received as dependents, they are protected as daughters.[101]
This practice of adoption is observed among various peoples. Among certain tribes in which descent is traced through women, a woman offers her breast to the person she is adopting, this being the strongest symbol of the unity of blood. Thus may be noted the fact that the fundamental idea, or principle, of tribal life is maternity, or the maternal instinct—that the uniting force which binds a child to its mother is the one which is supposed to unite the various members of a primitive group. So strongly has the maternal instinct as a binding principle taken root, that among certain peoples even where the manner of reckoning descent and the rights of succession have been changed from the female to the male line, whenever an individual wishes to be adopted into a gens he takes the hand of the leader of the group and sucking one of his fingers, declares himself to be his child by adoption; henceforth the new father is bound to assist him as far as he can.[102] Adoption “by the imitation of nature” was practised by the Romans down to the time of Augustus.
It has been observed that under the matriarchal system the mother was the only recognized parent, hence, when the father began to assume the rights and prerogatives which had hitherto belonged only to her, in order to make valid his claim, it was thought proper for him to go through various of the preliminaries attendant on childbirth.
Of all the forms practised among lower races there is none, perhaps, which is more singular than is that of putting the father instead of the mother to bed in the event of the birth of a child. Concerning this custom, Mr. Tylor quotes from Klemm the following: