Mutual avoidance of mother and son, of father and daughter, and of brother and sister in the Caroline Islands. Similar customs of avoidance between mothers and sons, between fathers and daughters, and between brothers and sisters are observed by the natives of the Caroline Islands, and the writer who records them assigns the fear of incest as the motive for their observance. “The prohibition of marriage,” he says, “and of sexual intercourse between kinsfolk of the same tribe is regarded by the Central Caroline natives as a divine ordinance; its breach is therefore, in their opinion, punished by the higher powers with sickness or death. The law influences in a characteristic way the whole social life of the islanders, for efforts are made to keep members of families of different sexes apart from each other even in their youth. Unmarried men and boys, from the time when they begin to speak, may therefore not remain by night in the huts, but must sleep in the fel, the assembly-house. In the evening their meal (âkot) is brought thither to them by their mothers or sisters. Only when a son is sick may his mother receive him in the hut and tend him there. On the other hand entrance to the assembly-house (fel) is forbidden to women and girls except on the occasion of the pwarik festival; whereas female members of other tribes are free to visit it, although, so far as I could observe, they seldom make use of the permission. Unmarried girls sleep in the huts with their parents.
“These restrictions, which custom and tradition have instituted within the family, find expression also in the behaviour of the members of families toward each other. The following persons, namely, have to be treated with respect—the daughters by their father, the sons by their mother, the brothers by their sisters. In presence of such relations, as in the presence of a chief, you may not stand, but must sit down; if you are obliged on narrow paths to pass by one of them you must first obtain permission and then do it in a stooping or creeping posture. You allow them everywhere to go in front; you also avoid to drink out of the vessel which they have just used; you do not touch them, but keep always at a certain distance from them; the head especially is deemed sacred.”[88.1]
Mutual avoidance of male and female cousins in some tribes. In all these cases the custom of mutual avoidance is observed by persons of opposite sex who, though physically capable of sexual union, are forbidden by tradition and public opinion to have any such commerce with each other. Thus far the blood relations whom a man is forbidden to marry and compelled to avoid, are his own mother, his own daughter, and his own sisters. But to this list some people add a man’s female cousins or at least certain of them; for many races draw a sharp line of distinction between cousins according as they are children of two brothers or of two sisters or of a brother and a sister, and while they permit or even prefer marriage with certain cousins, they absolutely forbid marriage with certain others. Now, it is highly significant that some tribes which forbid a man to marry certain of his cousins also compel him to adopt towards them the same attitude of social reserve which in the same or other tribes a man is obliged to observe towards his wife’s mother, his own mother, and his own sisters, all of whom in like manner he is forbidden to marry. Mutual avoidance of male and female cousins in New Ireland. Thus among the tribes in the central part of New Ireland (New Mecklenburg) a male and a female cousin, the children of a brother and a sister respectively, are most strictly forbidden by custom to marry each other; indeed this prohibition is described as the most stringent of all; the usual saying in regard to such relations is, “The cousin is holy” (i tábu ra kókup). Now, in these tribes a man is not merely forbidden to marry his female cousin, the daughter of his father’s sister or of his mother’s brother; he must also avoid her socially, just as in other tribes a man must avoid his wife’s mother, his own mother, his own daughter, and his own sisters. The cousins may not approach each other, they may not shake hands or even touch each other, they may not give each other presents, they may not mention each other’s names; but they are allowed to speak to each other at a distance of some paces. These rules of avoidance, these social barriers erected between cousins, the children of a brother and a sister respectively, are interpreted most naturally and simply as precautions intended to obviate the danger of a criminal intercourse between persons whose sexual union would be regarded by public opinion with deep displeasure. Indeed the Catholic missionary, to whom we are indebted for the information, assumes this interpretation of the rules as if it were too obvious to call for serious discussion. He says that all the customs of avoidance “are observed as outward symbols of this prohibition of marriage”; and he adds that “were the outward sign of the prohibition of marriage, to which the natives cleave with genuine obstinacy, abolished or even weakened, there would be an immediate danger of the natives contracting such marriages.”[90.1] It seems difficult for a rational man to draw any other inference. If any confirmation were needed, it would be furnished by the fact that among these tribes of New Ireland brothers and sisters are obliged to observe precisely the same rules of mutual avoidance, and that incest between brother and sister is a crime which is punished with hanging; they may not come near each other, they may not shake hands, they may not touch each other, they may not give each other presents; but they are allowed to speak to each other at a distance of some paces. And the penalty for incest with a daughter is also death by hanging.[90.2]
Mutual avoidance of certain male and female cousins among the Baganda; marriage or sexual intercourse forbidden between these cousins under pain of death. Amongst the Baganda of Central Africa in like manner a man was forbidden under pain of death to marry or have sexual intercourse with his cousin, the daughter either of his father’s sister or of his mother’s brother; and such cousins might not approach each other, nor hand each other anything, nor enter the same house, nor eat out of the same dish. Were cousins to break these rules of social avoidance, in other words, if they were to approach each other or hand each other anything, it was believed that they would fall ill, that their hands would tremble, and that they would be unfit for any work.[90.3] Here, again, the prohibition of social intercourse was in all probability merely a precaution against sexual intercourse, for which the penalty was death. And the same may be said of the similar custom of avoidance which among these same Baganda a man had to observe towards his wife’s mother. “No man might see his mother-in-law, or speak face to face with her; she covered her face, if she passed her son-in-law, and he gave her the path and made a detour, if he saw her coming. If she was in the house, he might not enter, but he was allowed to speak to her from a distance. This was said to be because he had seen her daughter’s nakedness. If a son-in-law accidentally saw his mother-in-law’s breasts, he sent her a barkcloth in compensation, to cover herself, lest some illness, such as tremor, should come upon him. The punishment for incest was death; no member of a clan would shield a person guilty thereof; the offender was disowned by the clan, tried by the chief of the district, and put to death.”[91.1]
Marriage between certain cousins forbidden among some South African tribes but allowed among others. The prohibition of marriage with certain cousins appears to be widespread among African peoples of the Bantu stock. Thus in regard to the Bantus of South Africa we read that “every man of a coast tribe regarded himself as the protector of those females whom we would call his cousins, second cousins, third cousins, and so forth, on the father’s side, while some had a similar feeling towards the same relatives on the mother’s side as well, and classified them all as sisters. Immorality with one of them would have been considered incestuous, something horrible, something unutterably disgraceful. Of old it was punished by the death of the male, and even now a heavy fine is inflicted upon him, while the guilt of the female must be atoned by a sacrifice performed with due ceremony by the tribal priest, or it is believed a curse will rest upon her and her issue.… In contrast to this prohibition the native of the interior almost as a rule married the daughter of his father’s brother, in order, as he said, to keep property from being lost to his family. This custom more than anything else created a disgust and contempt for them by the people of the coast, who term such intermarriages the union of dogs, and attribute to them the insanity and idiocy which in recent times has become prevalent among the inland tribes.”[91.2]
Marriage between cousins allowed in some African tribes on condition that an expiatory sacrifice is offered. Among the Thonga, a Bantu tribe about Delagoa Bay, marriages between cousins are as a rule prohibited, and it is believed that such unions are unfruitful. However, custom permits cousins to marry each other on condition that they perform an expiatory ceremony which is supposed to avert the curse of barrenness from the wife. A goat is sacrificed, and the couple are anointed with the green liquid extracted from the half-digested grass in the animal’s stomach. Then a hole is cut in the goat’s skin and through this hole the heads of the cousins are inserted. The goat’s liver is then handed to them, quite raw, through the hole in the skin, and they must tear it out with their teeth without using a knife. Having torn it out, they eat it. The word for liver (shibindji) also means “patience,” “determination.” So they say to the couple, “You have acted with strong determination. Eat the liver now! Eat it in the full light of the day, not in the dark! It will be an offering to the gods.” Then the family priest prays, saying: “You, our gods, So-and-so, look! We have done it in the daylight. It has not been done by stealth. Bless them, give them children!” When he has done praying, the assistants take all the half-digested grass from the goat’s stomach and place it on the wife’s head, saying, “Go and bear children!”[92.1] Among the Wagogo of German East Africa marriage is forbidden between cousins who are the children of two brothers or of two sisters, but is permitted between cousins who are the children of a brother and sister respectively. However, in this case it is usual for the wife’s father to kill a sheep and put on a leather armlet, made presumably from the sheep’s skin; otherwise it is supposed that the marriage would be unfruitful.[92.2] Thus the Wagogo, like the Thonga, imagine that the marriage of cousins is doomed to infertility unless an expiatory sacrifice is offered and a peculiar use made of the victim’s skin. Again, the Akikuyu of British East Africa forbid the marriage of cousins and second cousins, the children and grandchildren of brothers and sisters. If such persons married, they would commit a grave sin, and all their children would surely die; for the curse or ceremonial pollution (thahu) incurred by such a crime cannot be purged away. Nevertheless it sometimes happens that a man unwittingly marries a first or second cousin; for instance, if a part of the family moves away to another district, it may come about that a man makes the acquaintance of a girl and marries her before he discovers the relationship. In such a case, where the sin has been committed unknowingly, the curse can be averted by the performance of an expiatory rite. The elders take a sheep and place it on the woman’s shoulders; there it is killed and the intestines taken out. Then the elders solemnly sever the intestines with a sharp splinter of wood taken from a bush of a certain sort (mukeo), “and they announce that they are cutting the clan kutinyarurira, by which they mean that they are severing the bond of relationship which exists between the pair. A medicine man then comes and purifies the couple.”[93.1] In all these cases we may assume with a fair degree of probability that the old prohibition of marriage between cousins is breaking down, and that the expiatory sacrifice offered when such a marriage does take place is merely a salve to the uneasy conscience of those who commit or connive at a breach of the ancient taboo.
The mutual avoidance of male and female cousins is probably a precaution against a criminal intimacy between them. Thus the prohibition of marriage between cousins, and the rules of ceremonial avoidance observed in some tribes between persons who stand in that relationship to each other, appear both to spring from a belief, right or wrong, in the injurious effects of such unions and from a desire to avoid them. The mutual avoidance of the cousins is merely a precaution to prevent a closer and more criminal intimacy between them. If that is so, it furnishes a confirmation of the view that all the customs of ceremonial avoidance between blood relations or connexions by marriage of opposite sexes are based simply on a fear of incest.
The mutual avoidance between a man and his wife’s relations seems to be partly grounded on a fear of rendering the wife infertile. The theory is perhaps confirmed by the observation that in some tribes the avoidance between a man and his wife’s mother lasts only until he has had a child by his wife;[94.1] while in others, though avoidance continues longer, it gradually wears away with time as the man and woman advance in years,[94.2] and in others, again, it is observed only between a man and his future mother-in-law, and comes to an end with his marriage.[94.3] These customs suggest that in the minds of the people who practise them there is a close connexion between the avoidance of the wife’s relations and the dread of an infertile marriage. The Indians of Yucatan, as we saw, believe that if a betrothed man were to meet his future mother-in-law or father-in-law, he would thereby lose the power of begetting children. Such a fear seems to be only an extension by false analogy of that belief in the disastrous consequences of illicit sexual relations which we dealt with in an earlier part of this chapter,[94.4] and of which we shall have more to say presently.[94.5] From thinking, rightly or wrongly, that sexual intercourse between certain persons is fraught with serious dangers, the savage jumped to the conclusion that social intercourse between them may be also perilous by virtue of a sort of physical infection acting through simple contact or even at a distance; or if, in many cases, he did not go so far as to suppose that for a man merely to see or touch his mother-in-law sufficed to blast the fertility of his wife’s womb, yet he may have thought, with much better reason, that intimate social converse between him and her might easily lead to something worse, and that to guard against such a possibility it was best to raise a strong barrier of etiquette between them. It is not, of course, to be supposed that these rules of avoidance were the result of deliberate legislation; rather they were the spontaneous and gradual growth of feelings and thoughts of which the savages themselves perhaps had no clear consciousness. In what precedes I have merely attempted to sum up in language intelligible to civilized man the outcome of a long course of moral and social evolution.
These considerations perhaps obviate to some extent the only serious difficulty which lies in the way of the theory here advocated. The mutual avoidance between persons of the same sex was probably an extension by false analogy of the mutual avoidance between persons of different sexes. If the custom of avoidance was adopted in order to guard against the danger of incest, how comes it that the custom is often observed towards persons of the same sex, for example, by a man towards his father-in-law as well as towards his mother-in-law? The difficulty is undoubtedly serious: the only way of meeting it that I can suggest is the one I have already indicated. We may suppose that the deeply rooted beliefs of the savage in the fatal effects of marriage between certain classes of persons, whether relations by blood or connexions by marriage, gradually spread in his mind so as to embrace the relations between men and men as well as between men and women; till he had worked himself into the conviction that to see or touch his father-in-law, for example, was nearly or quite as dangerous as to touch or have improper relations with his mother-in-law. It is no doubt easy for us to detect the flaw in this process of reasoning; but we should beware of casting stones at the illogical savage, for it is possible or even probable that many of our own cherished convictions are no better founded.
The custom of mutual avoidance between near relations has probably had the effect of checking the practice of inbreeding. Viewed from this standpoint the customs of ceremonial avoidance among savages assume a serious aspect very different from the appearance of arbitrariness and absurdity which they are apt to present to the civilized observer who does not look below the surface of savage society. So far as these customs have helped, as they probably have done, to suppress the tendency to inbreeding, that is, to the marriage of near relations, we must conclude that their effect has been salutary, if, as many eminent biologists hold, long-continued inbreeding is injurious to the stock, whether animal or vegetable, by rendering it in the end infertile.[95.1] However, men of science are as yet by no means agreed as to the results of consanguineous marriages, and a living authority on the subject has recently closed a review of the evidence as follows: “When we take into account such evidence as there is from animals and plants, and such studies as those of Huth,[95.2] and the instances and counter-instances of communities with a high degree of consanguinity, we are led to the conclusion that the prejudices and laws of many peoples against the marriage of near kin rest on a basis not so much biological as social.”[96.1] Whatever may be the ultimate verdict of science on this disputed question, it will not affect the result of the present enquiry, which merely affirms the deep and far-reaching influence which in the long course of human history superstition has exercised on morality. Whether the influence has on the whole been for good or evil does not concern us. It suffices for our purpose to shew that superstition has been a crutch to morality, whether to support it in the fair way of virtue or to precipitate it into the miry pit of vice. To return to the point from which we wandered into this digression, we must leave in suspense the question whether the Australian savages were wise or foolish who forbade a man under pain of death to speak to his mother-in-law.