Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia

by Northcote Whitridge Thomas

With this view agree the facts that in some cases the brother is required to purchase his pirrauru rights, that the young man without pirrauru wife can purchase from another man the temporary use of one of his pirrauru spouses, and that the tippa-malku marriage always precedes the pirrauru relation in the female. It may indeed be urged against the view that the purchase of a temporary pirrauru is in fact not a case of pirrauru at all, but simply the ordinary purchase of hospitality among savage nations. This is no doubt the case and we might merely cite this fact in order to show that the purchase of sexual rights is a recognised proceeding in Australia. Looked at from another point of view however the case is seen to be singularly instructive. So far as Dr Howitt's statements go, the husband of the pirrauru who is thus lent does not require to be consulted in the matter. The pirrauru husband, on the other hand, disposes of his spouse exactly as if she were a slave. On the theory of group marriage the tippa-malku husband has no less a right to be consulted in the matter than the pirrauru husband. In point of fact he seems to be entirely neglected in the transaction. It is true that in the case we are considering the pirrauru husband seems to have exceptional privileges, for we have seen that under ordinary circumstances the tippa-malku husband has exclusive rights at ordinary times. But we must probably understand the passage to mean that the lending of pirraurus takes place at tribal meetings[179] or on other occasions when the right of the husband is in abeyance. In either case, the facts tell far more strongly in favour of the view suggested here than in favour of group marriage.

There is another factor to be considered. Abductions and elopements are merely ordinary amenities of married life among the aborigines of Australia. We have seen that it is the duty of the pirrauru husband to protect the wife during the absence of the tippa-malku husband. Clearly this is a sort of insurance against the too bold suitor or the too fickle wife, unless indeed the pirrauru himself is the offender, a point on which Dr Howitt has nothing to say, though Mr Siebert's evidence may be fairly interpreted to mean that such occurrences are not known.

We shall see below in connection with the question of the jus primae noctis that special privileges are sometimes accorded to men of the husband's totem or class in return for assistance in capturing the wife. Now assuming that a wife is abducted or elopes, it is, I think, on the same persons that the duty of aiding the injured husband would fall. Whether this is so or not, the men of his own totem are those with whom a man's relations are, in most tribes, the closest. We have seen that the heads of the totem-kins play an important part in assigning pirraurus. Now although it is actually the practice for men of different totems to exchange wives, it by no means follows that it was always the case. The element of adelphic polyandry, for example, may well have upset the original relations and brought about a practice of exchange between men of different totems. At any rate the theory here suggested affords an explanation of the part played by the totem headmen, and on the theory of group marriage their share in the transaction remains absolutely mysterious.

In connection with these possible explanations of the pirrauru custom, it is important to observe that there are duties in regard to food owed by the pirrauru wife to her spouse, when her husband is absent. Now it is hardly conceivable that in a state of "group marriage" any such practice should have obtained. A woman would doubtless have collected food for the man with whom she was actually cohabiting; but in the case of the pirrauru relation, the absence of the tippa-malku wife of her pirrauru spouse must coincide with the absence of her own tippa-malku husband before this position is reached. So long as only one tippa-malku partner is absent, the pirrauru spouse is under the obligation of lightening the labours of the woman whose place she sometimes occupies, and this is very far from what we should expect in the "group marriage" stage.

On the whole therefore I conclude that the pirrauru relation affords absolutely no evidence of a prior stage of group marriage. So far from the quantity of evidence for group marriage having been increased by Dr Howitt's recent book, it has undergone a diminution. Gason had stated[180] that tribal brothers had the right of access in the absence of the husband without first being made pirrauru. This, if correct, would have been much nearer group marriage than the actual facts; the statement however appears to be incorrect, if we may judge by the fact that Dr Howitt has silently dropped it.

Of the piraungaru relation but little can be said, mainly for the reason that our information is so scanty. We do not learn, for example, if it is temporary or permanent, if the consent of the woman is needed, if she ever asks her husband for a certain piraungaru, or if she applies rather to her elder brothers. We do not know what becomes of the piraungaru when the primary spouse dies, whether the brother can claim a right to his brother's wife as piraungaru on giving presents, whether married and unmarried alike enter into the relationship, whether a woman can become piraungaru before she has a special husband, whether relations of free love are barred between a man and his prospective wife and permitted with other nupa women, and a host of other questions. We do not even learn when access is permitted to a piraungaru spouse. We have, it is clear, far too few data to be able to estimate the value of the dictum of Messrs Spencer and Gillen that "individual marriage does not exist either in name or in practice in the Urabunna tribe." If their views are based only on the facts they have given us, they have clearly overlooked a number of essential points; if, on the other hand, they took other facts into consideration, we may reasonably ask to be put in possession of the whole case.

[152] Aust. Ass. IV, 689.

[153] Ib. p. 717.

[154] Ausland, 1891, p. 843.