Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia

by Northcote Whitridge Thomas

The association of the right of access with the initiation ceremony is paralleled, as we have already seen, among other tribes. It hardly seems necessary to argue a state of primitive promiscuity from a custom of licence at the period of puberty, which does not in fact differ, except in degree, from the licence normally enjoyed by the unmarried, and is readily explicable on other grounds than those suggested by Spencer and Gillen. If we are not prepared to regard this licence at puberty, which may equally well have subsisted side by side with marriage or group promiscuity, as a mere expression of the newly attained sexual rights, we have as an alternative the magical theory of Mr Crawley. I do not propose to dwell on this but will pass at once to discuss some points which seem to have escaped the notice of Spencer and Gillen when they proposed their hypothesis of promiscuity.

The essential point in connection with these ceremonies is the fact that access is not limited, as in the case of the Dieri, to men who might lawfully marry the woman. The right is restricted to men of six classes out of the eight, including all four of the other moiety and the two of her own half of her own moiety. Now whatever else may be deduced from this, one thing is clear, and that is that the custom in its present form, at any rate, took its rise before the eight classes were introduced but after the four classes were already in existence and a fortiori after the phratries were known. Consequently no argument for promiscuity can be founded on the right of access at initiation. It cannot be a survival from a time when no marriage regulations were known, for the simple reason that the custom itself bears unmistakeable traces of regulations of a comparatively advanced type. It may of course be argued that these limitations are of late origin. How far this is so and why such limitations should have been introduced it is impossible to say; but it is impossible to base an argument for primitive promiscuity on a state of things which is admittedly not primitive unless we have good primâ facie grounds for regarding the custom as a survival. There is nothing in the present case to show that it is not a magical rite.

At other times access is permitted in accordance with class regulations, the husband's consent being necessary, if indeed he does not actually take the preliminary steps himself. We have seen that a similar state of things exists in other tribes. It does not seem necessary to look for the explanation further than the ordinary customs of savage hospitality, the desire to do a favour to men who may be useful. It is difficult to see why Spencer and Gillen regard the fact that women are lent in this way only to their unawa as a proof of the former existence of group marriage. Clearly if intercourse is permitted only between certain persons before marriage and only certain persons are allowed to marry, we can hardly be surprised to find that these latter are restricted in the choice of men to whom they may lend their wives after marriage. The surprising thing would be if it were otherwise.

In addition, as in the tribes we have already considered, irregular access is practised for magical purposes in connection with the performance of ceremonies and the sending out of messengers. It has already been pointed out that we have no grounds for regarding such practices as survivals; for if we put on sackcloth and ashes as a penance for our misdeeds, it does not follow that this was ever the prevailing costume. It is even less possible to interpret the ritual lending of wives to messengers as a survival, for, ex hypothesi, the messengers were not of the group which "group-married," and messengers of any sort point to a stage when inter-tribal relations had made considerable advance and the tribes in question are hardly likely to have been still in the stage of the "undivided commune."

The survey of Australian customs and terms of relationship leads us to the conclusion that the former, so far from proving the present or even former existence of group marriage in that continent, do not even render it probable; on the latter no argument of any sort can be founded which assumes them to refer to consanguinity, kinship or affinity. It is therefore not rash to say that the case for group marriage, so far as Australia is concerned, falls to the ground. Even were it otherwise, even were group marriage proved for Australia or for any other part of the world, we should still be far from having established promiscuity and group marriage as a stage in the general history of mankind. For that at least a scheme of development is needed. Even were the arguments in favour of the group marriage hypothesis much stronger, its supporters might reasonably be asked to give us something more than assertion and reassertion without any attempt to show in detail the process of evolution. To take an example from another sphere, it may safely be said that the general theory of evolution would find few supporters if it were not possible to trace some existing species and genera back to some generalised type in the past. At present the position of a supporter of the theory of primitive promiscuity and group marriage is analogous to that of an evolutionist who can only point to a few more or less useless peculiarities in the anatomy of man without being able to show resemblances between them and the corresponding portions of fossil or actually existing anthropoids. He calls them "vestiges[197]" and insists that homo is descended from a generalised anthropoid. The mere assertion of the vestigial character of such bones or organs would hardly carry conviction unless they could be shown to exist in some anthropoid in a more fully developed state. Similarly the arguments for promiscuity and group marriage suffer from incurable weakness, and would so suffer, even were the basis far more reliable than I have shown to be the case, unless and until it has been shown by what process and for what reasons man took each upward step. So far only one writer has attempted, and that nearly thirty years ago, to trace the course of human development on the hypothesis of primitive promiscuity, and his scheme is a house of cards.

The student of sociology is at a disadvantage compared with the zoologist in not being able to unearth his fossils for comparison with living forms. He must therefore trace the relationship between living forms, and, in seeking to discover the earlier stages of human progress, rely in part on the sociology of the higher mammals, in part on the possibility of showing a logical scheme of human development. When he examines the living forms he is of course unable to say whether actually existing savage institutions are in the main line of human progress or merely bye-paths embryological or teratological. It may be possible to show that group marriage exists somewhere on the earth at the present time. Even if this is so, the theory of primitive promiscuity and group marriage as stages in the general history of mankind remain mere baseless guesses until we have a systematic account both of the causes which led to the various steps, and of the processes by which the various stages were reached.

[181] Howitt, p. 205.

[182] p. 214.

[183] p. 217.

[184] pp. 224, 260.