Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia

by Northcote Whitridge Thomas

The marriageable group is termed nupa by both men and women; in addition to the nupa relationship and the unnamed individual marriage, into which a man enters with one or more of his nupa, there is the piraungaru relationship, corresponding to the pirrauru of the Dieri. In each case the elder brothers of the woman decide who are to have the primary and who the secondary right to the female. In the case of the piraungaru however the matter requires confirmation by the old men of the tribe. The circumstances under which the piraungaru claims take the first rank are not stated by Messrs Spencer and Gillen; the statement that a man lends his piraungaru need not, of course, refer to times at which he himself cannot claim the right of access[174].

We may now turn to a discussion of the bearing of the facts just cited on the question of "group marriage." The first point is naturally that of nomenclature, and we at once recognise that among the Dieri the relations of the pirrauru are not marriage, either on the definition suggested by Dr Westermarck or on that given in Chapter XI of the present work. If two tippa-malku pairs are reciprocally in pirrauru, the only relations between them, unless the tippa-malku husbands absent themselves or are complaisant, are, strictly speaking, those of temporary regulated polygamy or promiscuity, and rather a restriction than an extension of similar customs in other tribes, as I shall show below.

A second point of a similar nature is that the parties to a pirrauru union are in no sense a group[175]. They are not united by any bond, local, totemistic, tribal, or otherwise. The theoretical "group marriage"—the union of all the noa—does, in a sense, refer to a group, though this term properly refers rather to a body of people distinguished by residence or some other local differentia from other persons or groups. But no distinction of this kind can in any sense be affirmed of the pirrauru spouses; it cannot be said of them that they are in any way distinguished from the remainder of their tribe, phratry, class or totem-kin. From this it follows that the term class-marriage cannot be applied to the relation between the pirrauru, nor yet class promiscuity; the pirrauru, though members of a certain class, do not include all members of that class.

Turning now to the custom itself, let us examine how far it presents any marks of being a survival of a previous state of class promiscuity. Pirrauru relations are regarded by Dr Howitt and others as survivals from a previous stage of "group," by which we must, presumably, understand class or status marriage, or promiscuity. So far as they are evidence of this, the pirrauru customs are certainly important. If however it cannot be shown that they probably point to some form of promiscuity, they have but little importance except as a freak or exceptional development of polyandry and polygyny.

Let us recall the distinguishing features of the pirrauru union. They are (1) consent of the husband (?); (2) recognition by the totem-kin through its head-man; (3) temporary character[176]; (4) priority of the tippa-malku union in the case of the woman; (5) purchase of pirrauru rights by (a) the brother who becomes a widower, and (b) visitors or others without pirraurus of their own, the rights being in the latter case for a very short period and not dependent on recognition by the totem-kin, so far as Dr Howitt's narrative is a guide. Now unless "group marriage" was very different from what it is commonly represented to be, the essence of it was that all the men of one class had sexual rights over the women of another class. How far does this picture coincide with the features of the pirrauru, which is regarded as a survival of it? In the first place pirrauru is created by a ceremony, which is performed, not by the head, nor even in the Wakelbura tribe, by a member of the supposed intermarried classes of the earlier period; but by the heads of the totem-kins of the individual men concerned. Now it is quite unthinkable that the right of class promiscuity, to use the correct term, should ever have been exercised subject to any such restriction; even were it otherwise the performance of the ceremony would more naturally fall into the hands of tribal, phratriac, or class authorities than of the heads of totem-kins. Then too if pirrauru is a survival of group marriage we should expect the ceremony to be performed for the tippa-malku union and not for the pirrauru.

Again if tippa-malku is later and pirrauru earlier, what is the meaning of the regulation that the woman must first be united in tippa-malku marriage before she can enter into the pirrauru relationship? On the "group marriage" theory this fact demands to be explained, no less than the different position of men and women in this respect. We have seen that freedom in sexual matters is accorded to both bachelors and spinsters. It is therefore from no sense of the value of chastity, from no jealousy of the future tippa-malku husband's rights, that the female is excluded from the pirrauru relation until she has a husband.

Again, if pirrauru is a relic of former rights, now restricted to a few of the group which formerly exercised them, why is the husband's consent needed before the pirrauru relation is set up, and why is the pirrauru relation, once established, not permanent (assuming that my reading of Dr Howitt is right)?

Once more, if pirrauru is a right, how comes it that a brother has to purchase the right, when he becomes a widower[177]? What too is the meaning of the transference of pirrauru women to strangers in return for gifts?

All these points seem to me to weigh heavily against the survival theory, and we may add to them the fact that the tippa-malku husband, so far from having to gain the consent of his fellows before he obtains his wife, gets her by arrangement with her mother and her mother's brothers, all of whom belong to the other moiety, and consequently are not among those whose supposed group rights are infringed by the introduction of individual marriage. When we consider that the jus primae noctis is explained as an expiation for individual marriage the position of the tippa-malku husband and the method in which he obtains his wife are exceedingly instructive.

Supporters of the theory of group marriage will naturally ask in what other way the facts can be explained. The unfortunate lack of detail to which I have alluded does not make it easier to make any counter-suggestion; but the explanation may, I think, be inferred from the facts already at our disposal. We have seen that in the Wakelbura tribe, so far from the condition being one of "group marriage," it is one of dissimilar adelphic polyandry. Now it is by no means easy to see how this could arise from the Dieri custom, the essence of which, according to one of the statements I have quoted, is reciprocity. On the other hand we can readily see how polyandry of this type, which is found in other parts of the world also, may be in Australia, as in other regions, the result of a scarcity of women[178], or, what is the same thing, of polygyny on the part of the notables of the tribe and of the independent custom of postponing the age of marriage in the male till 28 or 30.