Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia Part 1

Kinship 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 kinship 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 Kinship. The Tribe. Kinship 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 membership 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, membership 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 diminishing 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; membership 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 membership. 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 membership 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 membership is determined by birth and they may therefore be distinguished as _natal a.s.sociations_. In the one case, the _kinship 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 membership 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 kinship 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 kinship 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 kinship or on a combination of the two. The distinction between _consanguinity_ and _kinship_ 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 kinship is with us a matter of law.

Among primitive peoples kinship 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 kinship prevails, the limits of the kin are often determined by the facts of consanguinity. In the two former cases, where kinship is reckoned through males alone or through females alone, consanguinity has little or nothing to do with kinship, as will be shown more in detail below.

Kinship 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 kinship, 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 kinship 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.

The customary limitations and extensions of consanguinity, on the other hand, cause more inconvenience. They are of course sometimes combined with the other kind, which we may term quasi-physiological, but with this combination we need not deal, as we are concerned to a.n.a.lyse only on broad lines the nature of these elements. Just as, with us, kinship and consanguinity largely coincide, so with primitive peoples are the kinship organisations immense, if one-sided, extensions of blood relationship, at all events in theory. In many parts of the world a totem kin traces its descent to a single male or female ancestor; and even where, as in Australia, this is not the case, blood brotherhood is expressly a.s.serted of the totem kin[3].

Entry into the totem kin may often be gained by adoption, though not apparently in Australia, and the blood relationship thus becomes an artificial one and partakes, even if the initial a.s.sumption be accepted as true, far more of the nature of kinship than of consanguinity. In Australia, and possibly in other parts of the world, there is a further extension of natal kinship. Although the tribe is not regarded as descended from a single pair, its members are certainly reckoned as of kin to each other in some way; the situation may be summarised by saying that under one of the systems of kinship organisation (the two-phratry), half of the members of the tribe in a given generation are related to a given man, A, and the other half to his wife. More than one observer a.s.sures us that there is a solidarity about the tribe, which regards some, if not all other tribes as "wild blacks," though it may be on terms of friendship and alliance with certain neighbours, and feel itself united to them by a bond a.n.a.logous to, though weaker than, that which holds its own members together.

If however a h.o.m.onymous 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, cla.s.s, or other form of a.s.sociation, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sociations, 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 cla.s.s, 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.

Pa.s.sing over the cla.s.ses, 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 cla.s.sification 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 a.s.sociated with a single totem or mythological personage, and s.e.xual 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: