Northcote W. Thomas - Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia

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If however a homonymous totem kin exists even in a hostile or absolutely
unknown tribe, a member of it will be regarded, as we learn from Dr
Howitt, as a brother. How this view is reconciled with the belief that
the tribe in question is alien and in no way akin to that in which the
other totem kin is found, is a question of some interest for which there
appears to be no answer in the literature concerning the Australian
aborigines.

Even if, therefore, we had reason to believe that all totem kins in a
given tribe or group of tribes could make out a good case for their
descent from single male or female ancestors, which is far from being
the case, we should still have to recognise that kinship and not
consanguinity is the proper term to apply to the relationship between
members of the same group. For, as we have seen, it may be recruited
from without in some cases, while in others, persons who are
demonstrably not of the same blood, are regarded as totem-brethren by
virtue of the common name.

Enough has now been said to make clear the difference between
consanguinity and kinship and to exemplify the nature of some of the
transitional forms. As we have seen, it is on considerations of either
consanguinity or kinship that many marriage prohibitions are based.

Marriage prohibitions depend broadly on three kinds of considerations:
(1) Kinship, intermarriage being forbidden to members of the same
kinship group; a brief introductory sketch of the nature and
distribution of kinship groups will be found below. (2) Locality. In New
Guinea, parts of Australia, Melanesia, Africa, and possibly elsewhere,
_local exogamy_ is found. By this is meant that the resident in one
place is bound to go outside his own group for a mate, and may perhaps
be bound to seek a spouse in a specified locality. This kind of
organisation is in Australia almost certainly an offshoot of kinship
organisation (see p. 10), and is _prima facie_ due to the same cause in
other areas. (3) (_a_) consanguinity, and (_b_) affinity. The first of
these considerations is regulative of marriage even in Australia, where
the influence of kinship organisations is in the main supreme in these
matters. We learn from Roth and other authorities that blood cousins,
children of own brother and sister, may not marry in North-West Central
Queensland, although the kinship regulations designate them as the
proper spouses one for the other. (_b_) Considerations of affinity, the
relations set up by marriage, do not affect the status of the parties,
so far as the legality of marriage is concerned, till a somewhat higher
stage is reached.

In the present work we are concerned with kinship groups and the
marriage regulations based on them. A kinship group, whether it be a
totem kin, phratry, class, or other form of association, is a fraction
of a tribe; and before we proceed to deal with kinship organisations, it
will be necessary to say a few words on the nature of the tribe and the
family. In Australia the tribe is a local aggregate, composed of
friendly groups speaking the same language and owning corporately or
individually the land to which the tribe lays claim. A change of tribe
is effected by marriage plus removal, and possibly by simple residence;
children belong to the tribe among which their parents reside. In the
ordinary tribe each member seems to apply to every other member one or
other of the kinship terms; and this no doubt accounts for the feeling
of tribal solidarity already mentioned. There are however certain tribes
in which the marriage regulations, as with the Urabunna, so split the
intermarrying fractions, that the tribe is, as it were, divided into
water-tight compartments; how far kinship terms are applied under these
circumstances our information does not say.

The tribe is defined by American anthropologists as a union of hordes or
clans for common defence under a chief. The American tribe differs in
two respects, at least, from the Australian tribe; in the first place,
marriage outside the tribe is exceptional in America and common in
Australia; in the second place, the stranger gains entrance to the
American tribe only by adoption; and we may probably add, thirdly, that
the American tribe does not invariably lay claim to landed property or
hunting rights.

The tribe is subdivided in various ways. In addition to the various
forms of natal and other associations, there is, at any rate in
Australia, a local organisation; the local group is often the owner of a
portion of the tribal area. This local group again falls into a number
of families (in the European sense), and the land is parcelled out among
them in some cases, in others it may be the property of individuals. But
there is a great lack of clearness with regard to the bodies or persons
in whom landed property is vested. The composition of the local group
varies according to the customs of residence after marriage, and the
rules by which membership of the kinship organisation is determined.
These two forces acting together may produce two types of local group:
(1) the mixed group, in which persons of various kinship organisations
are scattered at random; (2) the kin group, in which either all the
males or all the females together with the children are members of one
kinship organisation.

Save in the rare instances of non-exogamous kinship groups, the family
necessarily contains one member, at least, whose kin is not the same as
that of the remainder; this is either the husband or the wife, according
as descent is reckoned in the female or the male line; where polygyny is
practised, this unity may go no further than the phratry or the class,
each wife being of a different totem kin.

Although it frequently happens that the children belong to the kin which
through one of the parents or otherwise exercises the supreme authority
in the family, it is far from being the case that there is invariable
agreement between the principles on which kinship and authority are
determined. Three main types of family may be distinguished: (1)
patripotestal, (2) matripotestal, (_a_) direct, and (_b_) indirect, in
which the authority is wielded by the father, mother, and mother's
relatives, in particular her brothers, respectively. Innumerable
transitional forms are found, some of which will be mentioned in the
next chapter, which deals with the rule of descent by which membership
of natal groups is determined.

Turning now to kinship organisations, we find that the most widely
distributed type is the totem kin, in fact, if we except the Hottentots
and a few other peoples among whom no trace of it is found, it is
difficult to say where totemism has not at one time or another
prevailed. It is found as a living cult to-day among the greater part of
the aborigines of North and South America, in Australia, and among some
of the Bantu populations of the southern half of Africa. In more or less
recognisable forms it is found in other parts of Africa, New Guinea,
India, and other parts of the world. In the ancient world its existence
has been maintained for Rome (clan Valeria etc.), Greece, and Egypt, but
the absence of information as to details of the social structure renders
these theories uncertain.

Aberrant cases apart, totemism is understood to involve (1) the
existence of a body of persons claiming kinship, who (2) stand in a
certain relation to some object, usually an animal, and (3) do not marry
within the kin.

Passing over the classes, which are peculiar to Australia and will be
fully dealt with below, we come to a more comprehensive form of kinship
organisation in the phratries. These are a grouping of the community in
two or more exogamous divisions, between which the totem kins, where
they exist, are distributed. The essential feature of a phratry is that
it is exogamous; its members cannot ordinarily marry within it, and,
where there are more than two phratries, there may exist rules limiting
their choice to certain phratries.[4]

This dual or other grouping of the kins is widely found in North
America, the number of phratries ranging from two among the Tlinkits,
Cayugas, Choctaws, and others, to ten among the Moquis of Arizona. As in
Australia, the totem kins bearing the same eponymous animal as the
phratry are usually, e.g. among the Tlinkits, found in the phratry in
question. Exceptions to this rule are found among the Haida, where both
eagle and raven are in the eagle phratry.

The Mohegan and Kutchin phratries call for special notice. The kins of
the former are arranged in three groups: wolf, turtle, and turkey; and
the first phratry includes quadrupeds, the second turtles of various
kinds and the yellow eel, and the third birds. We find a parallel to
these phratries in the groups of the Kutchin, but in the latter case
our lack of knowledge of the tribe precludes us from saying whether
totem kins exist among them, and, if so, how far the grouping is
systematic; the Kutchin groups, according to one authority, are known by
the generic names of birds, beasts, and fish. As a rule, however, no
classification of kins is found, nor are the phratry names specially
significant.

Dual grouping of the kins is also found in New Guinea, the Torres
Straits Islands, and possibly among the ancient Arabs[5]; but evidence
in the latter case has not been systematically dealt with.

Other peoples have a similar dichotomous organisation; but it is either
not based on the totem kins or they have fallen into the background.

In various parts of Melanesia we find the people divided into two
groups, each associated with a single totem or mythological personage,
and sexual intercourse, whether marital or otherwise, is strictly
forbidden between those of the same phratry[6]. In India the Todas have
a similar organisation[7], and the Wanika in East Africa[8].

Customs of residence and descent affect the distribution of the
phratries within the tribe, no less than the composition of the local
group. With patrilineal descent they tend to occupy the tribal territory
in such a way that each phratry becomes a local group. With the
disappearance of phratry names this would be transformed into a local
exogamous group, which is, however, indistinguishable from the local
group of the same nature which is the result of the development of a
totem kin under similar conditions.

As a rule kinship organisations descend in a given tribe either in the
male line or in the female. Among the Ova-Herero, however, and other
Bantu tribes, there are two kinds of organisation, one--the
_eanda_--descending in female line and regulative of marriage, is
clearly the totem kin; property remains in the _eanda_, and
consequently descends to the sister's son. The other--the
_oruzo_--descends in the male line; it is concerned with chieftainship
and priesthood, which remain in the same _oruzo_, and the heir is the
brother's son.[9]

This dual rule of descent brings us face to face with the question of
how membership of kinship groups is determined.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Howitt, _N.T._, p. 225.

[2] Cf. Owen, _Musquakie Indians_, p. 122; Lahontan, _Voyages_, II,
203-4; Morgan, _Ancient Society_, p. 81.

[3] Two kinds of kinship are recognised in Australian tribes--(_a_)
totem and (_b_) phratry or class--but the precise relationship of one to
the other is far from clear. Nor is there much information as to what
terms of kinship are used within the totem kin. It is certain that
neither set of terms includes the other, for the totem kin extends
beyond the tribe or may do so, and there is more than one in each
phratry.

[4] For the facts see Frazer, _Totemism_, and cf. p. 31 _infra_.

[5] MS. note from Dr Seligmann's unpublished _Report of Cook-Daniels
Expedition; Camb. Univ. Torres Sts Exped._, V, 172; _Man_, 1904, no. 18.

[6] _J.A.I._ XVIII, 282.

[7] _Man_, 1903, no. 97.

[8] New, _Travels_, p. 274.

[9] _Ausland_, 1856, p. 45, 1882, p. 834; _Allg. Miss. Zts._ V, 354;
_Zts. Vgl. Rechtswiss._ XIV, 295; _Mitt. Orient. Seminar_, III, 73, V,
109. The recent work of Irle is inaccurate and confused.

CHAPTER II.

DESCENT.

Descent of kinship, origin and primitive form. Matriliny in Australia.
Relation to potestas, position of widow, etc. Change of rule of
descent; relation to potestas, inheritance and local organisation.

In discussions of the origin and evolution of kinship organisations, we
are necessarily concerned not only with their forms but also with the
rules of descent which regulate membership of them. Until recently the
main questions at issue were twofold: (1) the priority or otherwise of
female descent; (2) the causes of the transition from one form of
descent to another. Of late the question has been raised whether in the
beginning hereditary kinship groups existed at all, or whether
membership was not rather determined by considerations of an entirely
different order. Dr Frazer, who has enunciated this view, maintains that
totemism rests on a primitive theory of conception, due to savage
ignorance of the facts of procreation.[10] But his theory is based
exclusively on the foundation of the beliefs of the Central Australians
and seems to neglect more than one important point which goes to show
that the Arunta have evolved their totemic system from the more ordinary
hereditary form. Whether this be so or not, it is difficult to see how
any idea of kinship could arise from such a condition of nescience. If
we take the analogous case of the nagual or "individual totem" there
seems to be no trace of any belief in the kinship of those who have the
same animal as their nagual, but are otherwise bound by no tie of
relationship. Yet if Dr Frazer's theory were correct, this is precisely
what we ought to find.

This is, however, no reason for rejecting the general proposition that
kinship, at its origin, was not hereditary; or, more exactly, that the
beginnings of the kinship groups found at the present day may be traced
back to a point at which the hereditary principle virtually disappears,
although the bond of union and perhaps the totem name already existed.
If, as suggested by Mr Lang, man was originally distributed in small
communities, known by names which ultimately came to be those of the
totem kins, we may suppose that daily association would not fail to
bring about that sense of solidarity in its members which it is found to
produce in more advanced communities. In the case of the tribe an even
feebler bond, the possession of a common language, seems to give the
tribesmen a sense of the unity of the tribe, though perhaps other
explanations may be suggested, such as the possession in common of the
tribal land, or the origin of the tribe from a single blood-related
group. However this may be, it seems reasonable to look for one factor
of the first bond of union in the influence of the daily and hourly
association of group-mates. On the other hand, if, as Mr Lang supposes,
the original group was a consanguine one, the claims of the factor of
consanguinity and perhaps of foster brotherhood and motherhood cannot be
neglected. It may be true, as Dr Frazer argues, that man was originally
and still is in some cases ignorant of physiological facts. But all
races of man and a great part of the rest of the animal kingdom show us
the phenomena of parental affection, of care for offspring and sometimes
of union for their defence. This does not, it may be noted, imply any
predominance of the mother.[11]

We may suppose that the idea of kinship or the recognition of
consanguinity, whichever be the more correct term to apply to these
far-off developments of the factors of human society, extended only by
degrees beyond the limits of the group. First, perhaps, came the naming
of the group, already, it may be, exogamous; then came the recognition
of the fact that those members of it, viz. the women, who passed to
community B after being born and having resided for years in community
A, were in reality, in spite of their change of residence, still in fact
the kin of community A; finally came the step of assigning to their
children the group names which were retained by their mothers from the
original natal groups. This brings us face to face with the first of the
fundamental questions of descent, to which allusion has been made.

It is commonly assumed by students of primitive social organisation that
matrilineal descent is the earlier and that it has everywhere preceded
patrilineal descent; but the questions involved are highly complicated
and it can hardly be said that the subject has been fully discussed.

Much of what has been said on the point has been vitiated by the
introduction of foreign factors. Thus, the child belongs to the tribe of
the father where the wife removes to the husband's local group or tribe.
But though it may be taken as a mark of matrilineal institutions, often
associated with matria potestas or its analogue the rule of the mother's
brother, that the husband should remove and live with the wife, we are
by no means entitled to say that the removal of the wife to the husband
implies a different state of things. Customs of residence are no guide
to the principles on which descent is regulated. Consequently it is
entirely erroneous to import into the discussion with which we are
concerned, viz. the rules by which _kinship_ is determined, any
considerations based on the rules by which membership of a _tribe_ is
settled.

Similarly, no proof of the existence of paternal authority in the family
throws any light on the question of whether the children belong to the
kin of the father rather than of the mother. Where the mother or
mother's brother is the guardian, we are usually safe in assuming that
descent is or has been until recently matrilineal. But from the
undisputed existence of patria potestas no similar inference can be
drawn.

Again, as will be shown below, not even the tie of blood between parent
and child, confined though it may be in the opinion of the people whose
institutions are in question, to a single parent, is an index to the way
in which is determined the kinship organisation to which the child
belongs.

It is therefore clear that the utmost discrimination is necessary in
dealing with these questions; rules of descent must be kept apart from
matters which indeed influence the evolution of the rules but are in no
way decisive as to their form at any given moment.

Returning now to the alleged priority of matrilineal descent in
determining the kinship organisation into which a child passes, it may
be said that whereas evidences of the passage from female to male
reckoning may be observed,[12] there is virtually none of a change in
the opposite direction. In other words, where kinship is reckoned in the
female line, there is no ground for supposing that it was ever
hereditary in any other way. On the other hand, where kinship is
reckoned in the male line, it is frequently not only legitimate but
necessary to conclude that it has succeeded a system of female kinship.
But this clearly does not mean that female descent has in _all_ cases
preceded the reckoning of kinship through males. Patrilineal descent may
have been directly evolved without the intermediate stage of reckoning
through females.

The problem is probably insoluble. No decisive data are available, for
the mere absence of traces of matrilineal descent does not necessarily
prove more than that it had long been superseded by reckoning of kinship
through males. All that can be said is that in the kinship organisations
known to us female descent seems to have prevailed in the vast majority
of cases and probably existed in the residual class of indeterminable
examples.

With patria potestas it is, of course, different. There can be little
doubt that it might and probably did develop in the absence of kinship
organisations and in a state of society where consanguinity is no real
bond after the children have reached puberty. If therefore under such
circumstances a kinship organisation were to come into existence, either
independently or by transmission, it might well be that patrilineal
principles prevailed from the first. But of such a case we have no
knowledge. It may perhaps be questioned whether the actually existing
peoples who appear to have no kinship organisations, such as the
Hottentots, the Bushmen, the Veddahs and perhaps the Fuegians, are not
in this state rather as a result of the break-up of their former
organisation than because they have never evolved kinship groups. But
our knowledge in these matters is lamentably small and the problem is
not one which calls for discussion here.

The second fundamental problem relating to rules of descent is that of
the cause of the transition from matrilineal to patrilineal descent. The
subject needs to be discussed in detail for each particular area before
general conclusions can be formulated; it is quite possible that the
causes will be found to differ widely; for no general rule can be laid
down as to the relations between matrilineal descent and other cultural
conditions.

All that can be attempted here is an examination of the various elements
in the problem so far as it affects Australia. To this may be prefixed a
further discussion of the origin of matrilineal descent with especial
reference to Australian conditions.

It is commonly assumed that in a pure matrilineal community, the husband
removes to the wife's local group (matrilocal marriage), or if not that,
that at any rate the authority in the family rests in the hands of the
mother's brothers, who are also the heirs to the exclusion of the
children. But of any such custom of removal there is but the very
slenderest evidence in Australia. According to Howitt it occurs
occasionally in Victoria and among the Dieri; among the Wakelbura it is
done only if a man elopes with a betrothed woman and the man to whom she
was betrothed dies; among the Kuinmurbura it seems to have been a
recognised thing for a man who married a woman of another tribe to
remove, but in this case he took no part in intertribal warfare[13]. In
all these cases, the Kurnai excepted, descent is reckoned in the female
line.

If however Dr Howitt's informant, who does not seem to have been
particularly accurate in many cases, is to be relied on, the removal of
the husband to the wife's group is also found among the patrilineal
Maryborough tribes, though only if the woman belonged to a distant
tribelet, whatever that may be[14]. To this information is added the
statement that in such cases the husband joined his wife's tribe for
purposes of hostilities also and that it has happened that a son has
come into conflict with his father under these circumstances and
endangered his life with full knowledge of what he was doing. There is,
it is true, no definite statement to the effect that children in these
tribes take their totems from the father, but we may assume that it is
the case. If therefore the statement in question is accurate, it is a
pretty clear proof of the break-up of the social system; for under no
circumstances does the totem-kinsman, as a rule, violate the
sacro-sanctity of his own flesh. It cannot therefore be argued that the
fact of removal in the Maryborough tribes is any very strong evidence of
the primitive nature of the custom. In the other tribes, on the other
hand, it is distinctly stated that the practice prevails only when
marriage takes place between members of two different tribes, and among
the Wakelbura only exceptionally even when the wife is of an alien folk.
Whatever else the custom proves in these cases, it certainly evidences
the existence of friendly relations between the tribes in question; for
if it were otherwise the man would hardly be disposed to give up the
security of his own people for the perils of a strange community; on the
other hand it is hardly likely that the man's tribe would allow him to
pass over to the ranks of the strangers, nor would they view with
equanimity the loss of effective fighting strength which would result
from the fact that his children too would be numbered against them, not
for them, if it came to hostilities. The custom is therefore clear
evidence of fairly permanent friendly relations in the district in
question; and it is plain that we cannot assume these to have existed in
more primitive times. It is therefore difficult to see in what way the
present day practices lend support to the theory that the original usage
was for the husband to remove to his wife's group. For, be it noted,
there is not a single case, unless we include the anomalous Kurnai, in
which the husband removes to his wife's group within his own tribe; but
clearly this is the custom to which the removal theory applies. So far,
therefore, as Australia is concerned, the removal theory falls to the
ground; it cannot of course be disproved, but we are not justified in
assuming that matrilineal descent and matria potestas are due to a
custom of removal.

Inasmuch as patrilocal[15] marriage involves descent of group and tribal
property rights in the male line, it might appear that in rejecting the
hypothesis of a prior stage of matrilocal marriage, we are involving
ourselves in difficulties; for it is clearly not easy to see how descent
could come to be reckoned through the mother, while property descended
through the father. But it is obviously unnecessary in the first place
to regard the individual rights of property as originating
simultaneously or under the same conditions as the rules as to kinship
or even communal property; there is nothing to show how long the present
system of land tenure in Australia has held good, and it is clearly one
which points to a certain growth of population; for if the local group
were remote from their neighbours, there would be little need to
encroach; moreover, the exact delimitation of territory now in practice
is a thing of long growth.

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