Ancient society

by Lewis Henry Morgan

If the organizations, for example, of the Yurak Samoyeds of Siberia (82), the Magars of Nepaul (83), the Munnieporees, Koupooees, Mows, Muram and Murring tribes of India (87), were examined upon the original evidence, it is highly probable that they would be found exactly analogous to the Iroquois tribes; the “divisions” and “thums” being gentes. Latham, speaking of the Yurak or Kasovo group of the Samoyeds, quotes from Klaproth, as follows: “This division of the kinsmanship is so rigidly observed that no Samoyed takes a wife from the kinsmanship to which he himself belongs. On the contrary, he seeks her in one of the other two.”[500] The same author, speaking of the Magars, remarks: “There are twelve thums. All individuals belonging to the same thum are supposed to be descended from the same male ancestor; descent from the same great mother being by no means necessary. So husband and wife must belong to different thums. With one and the same there is no marriage. Do you wish for a wife? If so, look to the thum of your neighbor; at any rate look beyond your own. This is the first time I have had occasion to mention this practice. It will not be the last: on the contrary, the principle it suggests is so common as to be almost universal.”[501] The Murring and other tribes of India are in divisions, with the same rule in respect to marriage. In these cases it is probable that we have tribes composed of gentes, with intermarriage in the gens prohibited. Each gens is “exogamous” with respect to itself, and “endogamous” with respect to the remaining gentes of the tribe. They are cited by Mr. McLennan, nevertheless, as examples of “exogamous” tribes. The principal Australian tribes are known to be organized in gentes, with intermarriage in the gens prohibited. Here again the gens is “exogamous” and the tribe “endogamous.”

Where the gens is “exogamous” with respect to itself, and “endogamous” with respect to the remaining gentes of the same tribe, of what use is this pair of terms to mark what is but a single fact—the prohibition of intermarriage in the gens? “Exogamy” and “endogamy” are of no value as a pair of terms, pretending as they do to represent or express opposite conditions of society. They have no application in American ethnology, and probably none in Asiatic or European. “Exogamy,” standing alone and applied to the small group (the gens), of which only it can be asserted, might be tolerated. There are no “exogamous” tribes in America, but a plenty of “exogamous” gentes: and when the gens is found, we are concerned with its rules, and these should always be stated as rules of a gens. Mr. McLennan found the clan, thum, division, “exogamous,” and the aggregate of clans, thums, divisions, “endogamous”; but he says nothing about the “endogamy.” Neither does he say the clan, division, or thum is “exogamous,” but that the tribe is “exogamous.” We might suppose he intended to use tribe as equivalent to clan, thum, and division; but we are met with the difficulty that he defines a “tribe [as] a congeries of family groups, falling into divisions, clans, thums, etc.” (114), and immediately (116) he remarks that “the separate endogamous tribes are nearly as numerous, and they are in some respects as rude, as the separate exogamous tribes.” If we take his principal definitions, it can be said without fear of contradiction that Mr. McLennan has not produced a single case of an “exogamous” tribe in his volume.

There is another objection to this pair of terms. They are set over against each other to indicate opposite and dissimilar conditions of society. Which of the two is the ruder, and which the more advanced? Abundant cautions are here thrown out by Mr. McLennan. “They may represent a progression from exogamy to endogamy, or from endogamy to exogamy” (115); “they may be equally archaic” (116); and “they are in some respects” equally rude (116); but before the discussion ends, “endogamy” rises to the superior position, and stands over toward civilization, while “exogamy” falls back in the direction of savagery. It became convenient in Mr. McLennan’s speculations for “exogamy” to introduce heterogeneity, which “endogamy” is employed to expel, and bring in homogeneity; so that “endogamy” finally gets the better of “exogamy” as an influence for progress.

One of Mr. McLennan’s mistakes was his reversal of the positions of these terms. What he calls “endogamy” precedes “exogamy” in the order of human progress, and belongs to the lowest condition of mankind. Ascending to the time when the Malayan system of consanguinity was formed, and which preceded the gens, we find consanguine groups in the marriage relation. The system of consanguinity indicates both the fact and the character of the groups, and exhibits “endogamy” in its pristine force. Advancing from this state of things, the first check upon “endogamy” is found in the punaluan group, which sought to exclude own brothers and sisters from the marriage relation, while it retained in that relation first, second, and more remote cousins, still under the name of brothers and sisters. The same thing precisely is found in the Australian organization upon sex. Next in the order of time the gens appeared, with descent in the female line, and with intermarriage in the gens prohibited. It brought in Mr. McLennan’s “exogamy.” From this time forward “endogamy” may be dismissed as an influence upon human affairs.

According to Mr. McLennan, “exogamy” fell into decay in advancing communities; and when descent was changed to the male line it disappeared in the Grecian and Roman tribes (p. 220). So far from this being the case, what he calls “exogamy” commenced in savagery with the gens, continued through barbarism, and remained into civilization. It existed as completely in the gentes of the Greeks and Romans in the time of Solon and of Servius Tullius as it now exists in the gentes of the Iroquois. “Exogamy” and “endogamy” have been so thoroughly tainted by the manner of their use in “Primitive Marriage,” that the best disposition which can now be made of them is to lay them aside.

2. Mr. McLennan’s phrase: “the system of kinship through females only.”

“Primitive Marriage” is deeply colored with this phrase. It asserts that this kinship, where it prevailed, was the only kinship recognized; and thus has an error written on its face. The Turanian, Ganowánian and Malayan systems of consanguinity show plainly and conclusively that kinship through males was recognized as constantly as kinship through females. A man had brothers and sisters, grandfathers and grandmothers, grandsons and granddaughters, traced through males as well as through females. The maternity of children was ascertainable with certainty, while their paternity was not; but they did not reject kinship through males because of uncertainty, but gave the benefit of the doubt to a number of persons—probable fathers being placed in the category of real fathers, probable brothers in that of real brothers, and probable sons in that of real sons.

After the gens appeared, kinship through females had an increased importance, because it now signified gentile kin, as distinguished from non-gentile kin. This was the kinship, in a majority of cases, made known to Mr. McLennan by the authors he cites. The children of the female members of the gens remained within it, while the children of its male members were excluded. Every member of the gens traced his or her descent through females exclusively when descent was in the female line, and through males exclusively when descent was in the male line. Its members were an organized body of consanguinei bearing a common gentile name. They were bound together by affinities of blood, and by the further bond of mutual rights, privileges, and obligations. Gentile kin became, in both cases, superior to other kin; not because no other kin was recognized, but because it conferred the rights and privileges of a gens. Mr. McLennan’s failure to discover this difference indicates an insufficient investigation of the subject he was treating. With descent in the female line, a man had grandfathers and grandmothers, mothers, brothers and sisters, uncles, nephews and nieces, and grandsons and granddaughters in his gens; some own and some collateral; while he had the same out of his gens with the exception of uncles; and in addition, fathers, aunts, sons and daughters, and cousins. A woman had the same relatives in the gens as a man, and sons and daughters in addition, while she had the same relatives out of the gens as a man. Whether in or out of the gens, a brother was recognized as a brother, a father as a father, a son as a son, and the same term was applied in either case without discrimination between them. Descent in the female line, which is all that “kinship through females only” can possibly indicate, is thus seen to be a rule of a gens, and nothing more. It ought to be stated as such, because the gens is the primary fact, and gentile kinship is one of its attributes.

Prior to the gentile organization, kinship through females was undoubtedly superior to kinship through males, and was doubtless the principal basis upon which the lower tribal groups were organized. But the body of facts treated in “Primitive Marriage” have little or no relation to that condition of mankind which existed prior to the gentile system.

3. There is no evidence of the general prevalence of the Nair and Tibetan polyandry.