Part 1 (1/2)
Kins.h.i.+p Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia.
by Northcote W. Thomas.
PREFACE.
It is becoming an axiom in anthropology that what is needed is not discursive treatment of large subjects but the minute discussion of special themes, not a ranging at large over the peoples of the earth past and present, but a detailed examination of limited areas. This work I am undertaking for Australia, and in the present volume I deal briefly with some of the aspects of Australian kins.h.i.+p organisations, in the hope that a survey of our present knowledge may stimulate further research on the spot and help to throw more light on many difficult problems of primitive sociology.
We have still much to learn of the relations of the central tribes and their organisations to the less elaborately studied Anula and Mara. I have therefore pa.s.sed over the questions discussed by Dr Durkheim. We have still more to learn as to the descent of the totem, the relation of totem-kin, cla.s.s and phratry, and the like; totemism is therefore treated only incidentally in the present work, and lack of knowledge compels me to pa.s.s over many other interesting questions.
The present volume owes much to Mr Andrew Lang. He has read twice over both my typescript MS, and my proofs; in the detection of ambiguities and the removal of obscurities he has rendered my readers a greater service than any bald statement will convey; for his aid in the matter of terminology, for his criticisms of ideas already put forward and for his many pregnant suggestions, but inadequately worked out in the present volume. I am under the deepest obligations to him; and no mere formal expression of thanks will meet the case. I have been more than fortunate in securing aid from Mr Lang in a subject which he has made his own.
I do not for a moment suppose that the information here collected is exhaustive. If any one should be in a position to supplement or correct my facts or to enlighten me in any way as to the ideas and customs of the blacks I shall be obliged if he will tell me all he knows about them and their ways. Letters may be addressed to me c/o the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, 3 Hanover Sq., W.
NORTHCOTE W. THOMAS.
BUNTINGFORD, _Sept. 11th, 1906._
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Social organisation. a.s.sociations in the lower stages of culture.
Consanguinity and Kins.h.i.+p. The Tribe. Kins.h.i.+p groups; totem kins; phratries.
The pa.s.sage from what is commonly termed savagery through barbarism to civilisation is marked by a change in the character of the a.s.sociations which are almost everywhere a feature of human society. In the lower stages of culture, save among peoples whose organisation has perished under the pressure of foreign invasion or other external influences, man is found grouped into totem kins, intermarrying cla.s.ses and similar organised bodies, and one of their most important characteristics is that members.h.i.+p of them depends on birth, not on the choice of the individual. In modern society, on the other hand, a.s.sociations of this sort have entirely disappeared and man is grouped in voluntary societies, members.h.i.+p of which depends on his own choice.
It is true that the family, which exists in the lower stages of culture, though it is overshadowed by the other social phenomena, has persisted through all the manifold revolutions of society; especially in the stage of barbarism, its importance in some directions, such as the regulation of marriage, often forbidden within limits of consanguinity much wider than among ourselves, approaches the influence of the forms of natal a.s.sociation which it had supplanted. In the present day, however, if we set aside its economic and steadily diminis.h.i.+ng ethical sides, it cannot be compared in importance with the territorial groupings on which state and munic.i.p.al activities depend.
If the family is a persistent type the tribe may also be compared to the modern state; it is, in most parts of the world, no less territorial in its nature; members.h.i.+p of it does not depend among the Australians on any supposed descent from a common ancestor; and though residence plus possession of a common speech is mentioned by Howitt as the test of tribe, it is possible in Australia, under certain conditions[1], to pa.s.s from one tribe to another in such a way that we seem reduced to residence as the test of members.h.i.+p. This change of tribe takes place almost exclusively where tribes are friendly, so far as is known; and we may doubt whether it would be possible for a stranger to settle, without any rite of adoption, in the midst of a hostile or even of an unknown tribe; but this is clearly a matter of minor importance, if adoption is not, as in North America, an invariable element of the change of tribe.
Although members.h.i.+p of a tribe is thus loosely determined, tribesmen feel themselves bound by ties of some kind to their fellow-tribesmen, as we shall see below, but in this they do not differ from the members of any modern state.
But in Australia the importance of the tribe, save from an economic point of view, as joint owner of the tribal land, is small compared with the part played in the lives of its members by the intratribal a.s.sociations, whose influence is recognised without, as within the tribe. These a.s.sociations are of two kinds in the lowest strata of human society; in each case members.h.i.+p is determined by birth and they may therefore be distinguished as _natal a.s.sociations_. In the one case, the _kins.h.i.+p groups_ such as totem kins, phratries, etc., an individual remains permanently in the a.s.sociation into which he is born, special cases apart, in which by adoption he pa.s.ses out of it and joins another by means of a legal fiction[2]. The other kind of a.s.sociation, to which the name _age-grades_ is applied, is composed of a series of grades, through which, concomitantly with the performance of the rites of initiation obligatory on every male member of the community, each man pa.s.ses in succession, until he attains the highest. In the rare cases where an individual fails to qualify for the grade into which his coevals pa.s.s, and remains in the grade of ”youth” or even lower grades, he is by birth a member of one cla.s.s and does not remain outside the age-grades altogether.
In the element of voluntary action lies the distinction between age-grades and _secret societies_, which are organised on identical or similar lines but depend for members.h.i.+p on ceremonies of initiation, alike in the lowest as in the highest grade. Such societies may be termed voluntary. The differentia between the natal and the voluntary a.s.sociation lies in the fact that in the former all are members of one or other grade, in the latter only such as have taken steps to gain admission, all others being simply non-members.
Although _prima facie_ all these forms of a.s.sociation are equally ent.i.tled to be cla.s.sed as social organisations, the use of this term is limited in practice, at any rate as regards Australia, and is the accepted designation of the kins.h.i.+p form of natal a.s.sociations only; for this limitation there is so far justification, that though they perhaps play a smaller part in the daily life of the people than the secret societies of some areas, with their club-houses and other features which determine the whole form of life, the kins.h.i.+p a.s.sociations are normally regulative of marriage and thus exercise an influence in a field of their own.
Marriage prohibitions in the various races of mankind show an almost endless diversity of form; but all are based on considerations either of consanguinity or kins.h.i.+p or on a combination of the two. The distinction between _consanguinity_ and _kins.h.i.+p_ first demands attention; the former depends on birth, the latter on the law or custom of the community, and this distinction is all-important, especially in dealing with primitive peoples. With ourselves the two usually coincide, though even in civilised communities there are variations in this respect.
Thus, according to the law of England, the father of an illegitimate child is not akin to it, though _ex hypothesi_ there is a tie of blood between them. In England nothing short of an Act of Parliament can make them akin; but in Scotland the subsequent marriage of the father with the mother of the child changes the legal status of the latter and makes it of kin with its father. These two examples make it abundantly evident that kins.h.i.+p is with us a matter of law.
Among primitive peoples kins.h.i.+p occupies a similar position but with important differences. As with us, it is a sociological fact; custom, which has among them far more power than law among us, determines whether a man is of kin to his mother and her relatives alone, or to his father and father's relatives, or whether both sets of relatives are alike of kin to him. In the latter case, where parental kins.h.i.+p prevails, the limits of the kin are often determined by the facts of consanguinity. In the two former cases, where kins.h.i.+p is reckoned through males alone or through females alone, consanguinity has little or nothing to do with kins.h.i.+p, as will be shown more in detail below.
Kins.h.i.+p is sociological, consanguinity physiological; in thus stating the case we are concerned only with broad principles. In practice the idea of consanguinity is modified in two ways and a sociological element is introduced, which has gone far to obscure the difference between these two systems of laying the foundations of human society. In the first place, custom determines the limits within which consanguinity is supposed to exist; or, in other words, at what point the descendants of a given ancestor cease to be blood relations. In the second place erroneous physiological ideas modify the ideas held as to actually existing consanguine relations, as we conceive them. The latter peculiarity does not affect the enquiry to any extent; it merely limits the sphere within which consanguinity plays a part, side by side with kins.h.i.+p, in moulding social inst.i.tutions. If an Australian tribe, for example, distinguishes the actual mother of a child from the other women who go by the same kins.h.i.+p name, they may or may not develop on parallel lines their ideas as to the relation of the child and his real father.
Some relation will almost certainly be found to exist between them; but it by no means follows that it arises from any idea of consanguinity. In other communities potestas and not consanguinity is held to determine the relations of the husband of a woman to her offspring; and it is a matter for careful enquiry how far the same holds good in Australia, where the fact of fatherhood is in some cases a.s.serted to be unrecognised by the natives. In speaking of consanguinity therefore, it must be made quite clear whether consanguinity according to native ideas or according to our own ideas is meant.