“3. Tribal system.—Tribe a congeries of family groups. * * * No connubium between persons whose family name points them out as being of the same stock.
“4. Tribal system.—Tribe in divisions. No connubium between members of the same divisions: connubium between some of the divisions; only partial connubium between others. * * *
“5. Tribal system.—Tribe in divisions. No connubium between persons of the same stock: connubium between each division and some other. No connubium between some of the divisions. Caste.
“Endogamy Pure. 6. Tribal (or family) system.—Tribes separate. All the members of each tribe of the same blood, or feigning themselves to be so. Connubium between members of the tribe: marriage without the tribe forbidden and punished.
“7. Tribal system indistinct.” * * * The italics are mine. Seven definitions of the tribal system ought to define the group called a tribe, with sufficient distinctness to be recognized.
The first definition, however, is a puzzle. There are several tribes in a tribal system, but no term for the aggregate of tribes. They are not supposed to form a united body. How the separate tribes fall into a tribal system or are held together does not appear. All the members of each tribe are of the same blood, or pretend to be, and therefore cannot intermarry. This might answer for a description of a gens; but the gens is never found alone, separate from other gentes. There are several gentes intermingled by marriage in every tribe composed of gentes. But Mr. McLennan could not have used tribe here as equivalent to gens, nor as a congeries of family groups. As separate bodies of consanguinei held together in a tribal system, the bodies undefined and the system unexplained, we are offered something altogether new. Definition 6 is much the same. It is not probable that a tribe answering to either of these definitions ever existed in any part of the earth; for it is neither a gens, nor a tribe composed of gentes, nor a nation formed by the coalescence of tribes.
Definitions 2d, 3d, 4th, and 5th are somewhat more intelligible. They show in each case a tribe composed of gentes, or divisions based upon kin. But it is a gentile rather than a tribal system. As marriage is allowed between the clans, thums, or divisions of the same tribe, “exogamy” cannot be asserted of the tribe in either case. The clan, thum, or division is “exogamous,” with respect to itself, but “endogamous” with respect to the other clans, thums, or divisions. Particular restrictions are stated to exist in some instances.
When Mr. McLennan applies the terms “exogamy” or “endogamy” to a tribe, how is it to be known whether it is one of several separate tribes in a tribal system, whatever this may mean, or a tribe defined as a congeries of family groups? On the next page (116) he remarks: “The separate endogamous tribes are nearly as numerous, and they are in some respects as rude, as the separate exogamous tribes.” If he uses tribe as a congeries of family groups, which is a tribe composed of gentes, then “exogamy” cannot be asserted of the tribe. There is not the slightest probability that “exogamy” ever existed in a tribe composed of gentes in any part of the earth. Wherever the gentile organization has been found intermarriage in the gens is forbidden. It gives what Mr. McLennan calls “exogamy.” But, as an equally general rule, intermarriage between the members of a gens and the members of all the other gentes of the same tribe is permitted. The gens is “exogamous,” and the tribe is essentially “endogamous.” In these cases, if in no others, it was material to know the group covered by the word tribe. Take another illustration (p. 42): “If it can be shown, firstly, that exogamous tribes exist, or have existed; and, secondly, that in ruder times the relations of separate tribes were uniformly, or almost uniformly, hostile, we have found a set of circumstances in which men could get wives only by capturing them.” Here we find the initial point of Mr. McLennan’s theory of wife stealing. To make the “set of circumstances” (namely, hostile and therefore independent tribes), tribe as used here must refer to the larger group, a tribe composed of gentes. For the members of the several gentes of a tribe are intermingled by marriage in every family throughout the area occupied by the tribe. All the gentes must be hostile or none. If the term is applied to the smaller group, the gens, then the gens is “exogamous,” and the tribe, in the given case, is seven-eighths “endogamous,” and what becomes of the “set of circumstances” necessitating wife stealing?
The principal cases cited in “Primitive Marriage” to prove “exogamy” are the Khonds, Kalmucks, Circassians, Yurak Samoyeds, certain tribes of India and Australia, and certain Indian tribes of America, the Iroquois among the number (pp. 75-100). The American tribes are generally composed of gentes. A man cannot marry a woman of the same gens with himself; but he may marry a woman of any other gens of his own tribe. For example, a man of the Wolf gens of the Seneca tribe of the Iroquois is prohibited from marrying a woman of the same gens, not only in the Seneca tribe, but also in either of the five remaining Iroquois tribes. Here we have Mr. McLennan’s “exogamy,” but restricted, as it always is, to the gens of the individual. But a man may marry a woman in either of the seven remaining Seneca gentes. Here we have “endogamy” in the tribe, practiced by the members of each gens in the seven remaining Seneca gentes. Both practices exist side by side at the same time, in the same tribe, and have so existed from time immemorial. The same fact is true of the American Indian tribes in general. They are cited, nevertheless, by Mr. McLennan, as examples of “exogamous tribes”; and thus enter into the basis of his theories.
With respect to “endogamy,” Mr. McLennan would probably refrain from using it in the above case: firstly, because “exogamy” and “endogamy” fail here to represent two opposite principles as they exist in his imagination; and, secondly, because there is, in reality, but one fact to be indicated, namely, that intermarriage in the gens is prohibited. American Indians generally can marry in their own or in a foreign tribe as they please, but not in their gens. Mr. McLennan was able to cite one fair case of “endogamy,” that of the Mantchu Tartars (p. 116), “who prohibited marriage between persons whose family names are different.” A few other similar cases have been found among existing tribes.