Ancient society

by Lewis Henry Morgan

CHAPTER III. - THE PUNALUAN FAMILY.

The Punaluan Family supervened upon the Consanguine.—Transition, how produced.—Hawaiian Custom of Punalua.—Its probable ancient Prevalence over wide Areas.—The Gentes originated probably in Punaluan Groups.—The Turanian System of Consanguinity.—Created by the Punaluan Family.—It proves the Existence of this Family when the System was formed.—Details of System.—Explanation of its Relationships in their Origin.—Table of Turanian and Ganowanian Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity.

The Punaluan family has existed in Europe, Asia, and America within the historical period, and in Polynesia within the present century. With a wide prevalence in the tribes of mankind in the Status of Savagery, it remained in some instances among tribes who had advanced into the Lower Status of barbarism, and in one case, that of the Britons, among tribes who had attained the Middle Status.

In the course of human progress it followed the consanguine family, upon which it supervened, and of which it was a modification. The transition from one into the other was produced by the gradual exclusion of own brothers and sisters from the marriage relation, the evils of which could not forever escape human observation. It may be impossible to recover the events which led to deliverance; but we are not without some evidence tending to show how it occurred. Although the facts from which these conclusions are drawn are of a dreary and forbidding character, they will not surrender the knowledge they contain without a patient as well as careful examination.

Given the consanguine family, which involved own brothers and sisters and also collateral brothers and sisters in the marriage relation, and it was only necessary to exclude the former from the group, and retain the latter, to change the consanguine into the punaluan family. To effect the exclusion of the one class and the retention of the other was a difficult process, because it involved a radical change in the composition of the family, not to say in the ancient plan of domestic life. It also required the surrender of a privilege which savages would be slow to make. Commencing, it may be supposed, in isolated cases, and with a slow recognition of its advantages, it remained an experiment through immense expanses of time; introduced partially at first, then becoming general, and finally universal among the advancing tribes, still in savagery, among whom the movement originated. It affords a good illustration of the operation of the principle of natural selection.

The significance of the Australian class system presents itself anew in this connection. It is evident from the manner in which the classes were formed, and from the rule with respect to marriage and descents, that their primary object was to exclude own brothers and sisters from the marriage relation, while the collateral brothers and sisters were retained in that relation. The former object is impressed upon the classes by an external law; but the latter, which is not apparent on the face of the organization, is made evident by tracing their descents.[463] It is thus found that first, second, and more remote cousins, who are collateral brothers and sisters under their system of consanguinity, are brought perpetually back into the marriage relation, while own brothers and sisters are excluded. The number of persons in the Australian punaluan group is greater than in the Hawaiian, and its composition is slightly different; but the remarkable fact remains in both cases, that the brotherhood of the husbands formed the basis of the marriage relation in one group, and the sisterhood of the wives the basis in the other. This difference, however, existed with respect to the Hawaiians, that it does not appear as yet that there were any classes among them between whom marriages must occur. Since the Australian classes gave birth to the punaluan group, which contained the germ of the gens, it suggests the probability that this organization into classes upon sex once prevailed among all the tribes of mankind who afterwards fell under the gentile organization. It would not be surprising if the Hawaiians, at some anterior period, were organized in such classes.

Remarkable as it may seem, three of the most important and most wide-spread institutions of mankind, namely, the punaluan family, the organization into gentes, and the Turanian system of consanguinity, root themselves in an anterior organization analogous to the punaluan group, in which the germ of each is found. Some evidence of the truth of this proposition will appear in the discussion of this family.

As punaluan marriage gave the punaluan family, the latter would give the Turanian system of consanguinity, as soon as the existing system was reformed so as to express the relationships as they actually existed in this family. But something more than the punaluan group was needed to produce this result, namely, the organization into gentes, which permanently excluded brothers and sisters from the marriage relation by an organic law, who before that, must have been frequently involved in that relation. When this exclusion was made complete it would work a change in all these relationships which depended upon these marriages; and when the system of consanguinity was made to conform to the new state of these relationships, the Turanian system would supervene upon the Malayan. The Hawaiians had the punaluan family, but neither the organization into gentes nor the Turanian system of consanguinity. Their retention of the old system of the consanguine family leads to a suspicion, confirmed by the statements of Mr. Bingham, that own brothers and sisters were frequently involved in the punaluan group, thus rendering a reformation of the old system of consanguinity impossible. Whether the punaluan group of the Hawaiian type can claim an equal antiquity with the Australian classes is questionable, since the latter is more archaic than any other known constitution of society. But the existence of a punaluan group of one or the other type was essential to the birth of the gentes, as the latter were essential to the production of the Turanian system of consanguinity. The three institutions will be considered separately.

I. The Punaluan Family.

In rare instances a custom has been discovered in a concrete form usable as a key to unlock some of the mysteries of ancient society, and explain what before could only be understood imperfectly. Such a custom is the Pŭnalŭa of the Hawaiians. In 1860 Judge Lorin Andrews, of Honolulu, in a letter accompanying a schedule of the Hawaiian system of consanguinity, commented upon one of the Hawaiian terms of relationship as follows: “The relationship of pŭnalŭa is rather amphibious. It arose from the fact that two or more brothers with their wives, or two or more sisters with their husbands, were inclined to possess each other in common; but the modern use of the word is that of dear friend, or intimate companion.” That which Judge Andrews says they were inclined to do, and which may then have been a declining practice, their system of consanguinity proves to have been once universal among them. The Rev. Artemus Bishop, lately deceased, one of the oldest missionaries in these Islands, sent to the author the same year, with a similar schedule, the following statement upon the same subject: “This confusion of relationships is the result of the ancient custom among relatives of the living together of husbands and wives in common.” In a previous chapter the remark of Mr. Bingham was quoted that the polygamy of which he was writing, “implied a plurality of husbands and wives.” The same fact is reiterated by Dr. Bartlett: “The natives had hardly more modesty or shame than so many animals. Husbands had many wives, and wives many husbands, and exchanged with each other at pleasure.”[464] The form of marriage which they found created a punaluan group, in which the husbands and wives were jointly intermarried in the group. Each of these groups, including the children of the marriages, was a punaluan family; for one consisted of several brothers and their wives, and the other of several sisters with their husbands.