CHAPTER XVII.
THE FAMILIAL CLAN AND ITS EVOLUTION.
I. The Clan among the Redskins.—Primitive form of the Tribe—The Clan.
II. The Family among the Redskins.—Classes of relations among the Omahas—The family among the Iroquois-Senecas, the Omahas, etc.—Primitive familial stage of the Redskins—Adoption and its miracles—Rise and evolution of masculine filiation in America—Exogamy and endogamy.
III. The Family in Polynesia.—Maternal filiation—Rarity of exogamy—Hawaian marriage—The terms of kinship—The father humbling himself to the male child—Adoption in Polynesia.
IV. The Family among the Mongols.—Familial exogamy among the Mongols—Kinship by classes—Evolution of kinship by classes.
V. The Clan and the Family.—The European family has not been the “cellule” of societies—The primitive clan.
I. The Clan among the Redskins.
In the preceding chapter we have seen the nature of Redskin exogamy, on which it has sometimes been attempted to construct theories of conjugal evolution applicable to the entire human race. As a matter of fact, the North American Indians marry within their tribe; they are therefore endogamous as regards the tribe, but they do not take their wives from their own clan, and consequently they are exogamous as regards this clan. But the clan being composed of real or supposed blood-relations, the exogamy of the Redskins is actually nothing more than our own prohibition, very much extended, of marriages within certain degrees of kinship.
There is really nothing here which resembles marriage by capture, so often classed with exogamy; but the latter may very easily co-exist with the former, and may even be the general rule in more savage tribes. It prevailed, we are told, among the Caribs[928] to such a degree that the wives did not speak the same language as their husbands.
How was the American tribe originally formed? Either consanguineous hordes have ranged themselves side by side, or, which is more probable, a horde, becoming too numerous, has swarmed. Analogous groups, proceeding from it, have formed large families, remaining all the while attached to the original stock, but constituting, nevertheless, distinct communities, confederated with each other and with the primitive clan, which at length became indistinguishable from the others. The whole of these clans taken together represent a tribe. If the clans are too numerous, they group themselves in twos, or threes, etc., within the bosom of the tribe, and thus form what in primitive Greece were called phratries, the bond between them being a lesser degree of kinship. At first, marriage was prohibited within the phratry, and afterwards exogamy was restricted to the clans. The clans composing the phratry had festivals in common, and considered themselves bound to aid each other in revenging wrongs.[929] The clan, or gens, is a group of persons united by a closer consanguinity, but in the female line. The children of the women of the clan remain in the clan of their mother. “The woman bears the clan,” say the Wyandot Indians,[930] just as our ancestors said, “The womb dyes the child.” Each clan has its totem (a tortoise, bear, eland, or fox, etc.). In the “long houses” of the Iroquois, or in the Pueblos, the members of each clan even had a common habitation, in which each family had its own cell; but the members of this cell-family belonged to different clans, as the husband was not of the same clan as his wife, and sometimes did not inhabit the same dwelling. We have heard it said many times that “the family is the social cellule.” Now this is evidently false in regard to the American tribe, and to all tribes that are organised on the same plan. In them it is the clan which is the social unit, or cellule, to keep to the metaphor favoured by H. Spencer, and it is feminine filiation which determines the kinship. What is this kinship in the female line in its details? That is what we must now proceed to inquire.
II. The Family among the Redskins.
The manner in which the different degrees of kinship are understood and named varies somewhat among the diverse Redskin tribes; but, in general, the similarity is very great, and great also is the confusion between real consanguinity and fictitious kinship. Among the Omahas, for example, five classes of kinship are recognised—1st, the nikie kinship, arising from a very distant common ancestor; 2nd, the clan kinship; thus the families whose tents adjoin each other when the tribe is assembled, are of this kinship; 3rd, kinship by the calumet dance—that is to say, by adoption; 4th, kinship by marriage, including the husband, wife, son, and daughter’s husband; 5th, kinship of blood-relation, including the clans of the mother, grandmother, and father.[931]
The Omahas admit, therefore, entire groups of so-called kinsfolk quite unknown in our individualist societies; and moreover, the adopted kinsmen are held exactly on the same footing as the others.
If we confine ourselves to real kinship, we shall see that it is understood in a very wide manner. I will simply give, as a detailed example, a description of the family among the Iroquois Senecas and the Omahas. With the Iroquois Senecas, the direct line, both ascending and descending, is very short. It does not go farther than grandfather and grandmother, and grandson and grand-daughter. The more distant ancestors and descendants are all comprised without distinction in the same categories; they form groups of grandfathers or grandsons. In a collateral line, they proceed by groups, in the same manner. Thus, for a woman, the sons and daughters of a sister are reckoned as her own sons and daughters, and their children are her grandchildren. The collateral kinship is then confounded, at least in terminology, with kinship in a direct line. On the contrary, the sons and daughters of a woman’s brother are only her nephews and nieces. How can we explain this familial confusion on one side, and this distinction on the other? It may probably be attributed to the habit of the Redskins to marry a lot of sisters at the same time. A woman counts her sister’s children as her own, because the husband of that sister, whom we should call her brother-in-law, is virtually her husband also. Inversely, for a man, his brother’s children, or his fraternal nieces and nephews, are reckoned as his own children; their children are his grandsons or grand-daughters, whilst the children and grandchildren of his sister are only his nephews and nieces.[932] Following our previous line of reasoning, we are led to suppose that these denominations of kinship go back to a distant epoch, when brothers had their wives in common, but abstained from marrying their own sisters. This supposition is confirmed by the examination of the collateral ascending kinship. Thus, either in the case of a man or woman, the father’s brother, or the paternal uncle, is reckoned as the father, and his sons and daughters are reckoned as brothers and sisters.
The sisters of the father, or of any person bearing the title of father, are called aunts. The children of these aunts are cousins. For a man, the kinship of uncle is restricted to the brothers of the mother, and the children of these uncles are cousins. The mother’s sister, or the maternal aunt, is counted as a mother; her children are not nephews and nieces, but sons and daughters. All sisters, real or fictitious, are mutually mothers of all their children. The children of a man’s brothers are not his nephews and nieces, but his sons and daughters; his sisters’ children are his nephews and nieces,[933] probably because these names have been given at an epoch when the brothers married groups of sisters in common, but not their own sisters.
The Omaha Redskins distinguish the degrees of kinship almost in the same way as the Iroquois Senecas. For them also the most distant ascendants are all grandfathers or grandmothers. They class all their relations in groups, formed of individuals virtually brought together by similar degrees of consanguinity or alliance. Whole categories of individuals, more or less numerous, are called brothers or fathers of a man or woman; all those whom the father of a person calls brothers are fathers to that person; all those whom the mother of a woman calls husbands are also fathers to that woman. The name “mother” is given to all the women reputed as sisters to the mother, to the aunts or nieces of the mother, and also to the virtual wives of the father.
A man has virtually for wives all the wives of his brothers, and also their widows, on account of the levirate.
If a man has a brother-in-law who is at the same time the husband of a paternal aunt, the sister of that man is the grand-daughter of the brother-in-law.
A man becomes your brother-in-law if he is merely the husband of a paternal aunt, because he can marry your sister.
The husband of a daughter, of a niece, or of a grand-daughter, is a son-in-law.[934]
All the sons and all the daughters of persons reputed as fathers and mothers call each other brothers and sisters. All the wives, real or virtual, of the grandfather are called grandmothers; so are also all the mothers or grandmothers of the fathers and mothers, and all the women that the fathers and mothers call sisters.
A man counts as his sons all the sons of his brothers or of his virtual wives; but the sisters of these sons are his sisters. A woman calls the sons and daughters of her brothers her nephews and nieces, but the children of her sister are counted as her own children; because their father is virtually her husband.
Among the Omahas a man calls his sister’s children nephews and nieces. A person of either sex counts as grandchildren all those who are called the children of his sons, daughters, nephews, and nieces, or reputed as such.
A man counts as uncles all those whom his mothers call “brothers”; and as aunts all the sisters of his father and the wives of his uncles. A man has for brothers-in-law the husbands of his father’s sister; for they are the real or virtual husbands of his sisters; a woman has them for virtual husbands.[935]
Various prohibitions of marriage result from these conventional kinships. A man may not marry the women that he calls daughters of a sister, or grand-daughters, etc. A woman may not marry the men who are her sons, the sons of her sister, of her aunt or of her niece, or who are her brothers, etc.[936]
But an Omaha may marry any woman who is not a blood relation, provided that she does not figure among the prohibited affinities.[937]
We have not such detailed information regarding the other Redskin tribes; but we know enough of them to be certain that their systems of kinship are very analogous to those of the Iroquois Senecas and the Omahas. Filiation is everywhere maternal, except in certain tribes in the course of evolution; nearly everywhere also it is a crime to marry a woman having the same totem.[938]
Among the Mandans, Pawnies, and Arickaries, a man calls his brother’s wife his wife also. Among the Crows a woman calls her husband’s brother’s wife her “comrade”; but among the Winebagos she calls her “sister.” In some tribes a man’s wife’s sister’s husband is called his “brother.”[939]
Some very severe and inconvenient rules of decency have resulted from these fictitious kinships, with their prohibitions of marriage.
Thus, among the Omahas, the young girls may only speak to their father, brother, and grandfather. A woman avoids passing before her daughter’s husband as much as possible; and, unless under extraordinary circumstances, a woman does not speak directly to the father of her husband. A man never addresses a word to the mother or grandmother of his wife.[940] In the last century, among the Iroquois, a young man was dishonoured if he stopped to converse in public with a young girl who was certainly within the prohibited degree of kinship.[941] For a young Iroquois girl to call the husband of her aunt by his personal name was considered a grave act, indicating a culpable liaison.[942]
From the manner in which the Redskins understand kinship, we may infer two things: first, that they must have passed through a familial stage, in which groups of brothers married groups of sisters and possessed them in common, thus combining polygamy and polyandry, since they attach little value to real consanguinity, and their kinships are very often fictitious; and secondly, that they make no difference between real filiation and adoption, and in this they resemble savages and even barbarians of all countries. Among the Omahas the word used to signify adoption means literally “to take for one’s own son.”[943] The adopted child is always treated as the first-born, and takes his place; the father who adopts him refuses him nothing, and gives him a share in all his wealth. The real father, on his side, makes presents to the adopted father. And lastly, there is a prohibition of marriage during four years between the two families, on account of the kinship created by the adoption.[944]
Sometimes an entire clan adopts another. Thus the Wolf-Iroquois were adopted by the Falcon-Iroquois, and the effect of this adoption was that the two clans became completely assimilated, the new-comers taking the kinships of the adoptive clan.[945]
The adoption of enemies, taken prisoners after a battle, is still more curious. This adoption has almost miraculous effects; it extinguishes the ferocious hatred which the Redskins always feel for men belonging to rival tribes; more than that, it makes the captive warrior become the husband of the woman whom he has perhaps rendered a widow, or of the daughter whose father he may have killed. The Redskins have, it should be said, very exaggerated ideas on the subject of warlike valour. A combatant must never surrender unless very severely wounded. Every warrior who is taken prisoner is dishonoured and held as dead by his tribe, and his captors generally torture him to death. However, in the last century, the most ferocious of the Redskins, the Iroquois, sometimes spared a few prisoners to offer them to the wives or daughters whose relations had been killed. The latter had the power either to put them to death, in order that their shades might serve as slaves to their father, brother, or husband, etc., who had fallen, or to pardon them, and even adopt them. In this last case, the enemies of the previous night took a place among the warriors of the clan, and were no longer distinguished from the others.[946]
This system of kinship in the familial clan is curious, because it holds real consanguinity very cheap, unhesitatingly confusing real with fictitious kinship, and thus forming classes of fictitious relations. It seems to prove the existence of an ancient period of promiscuity, during which there was scarcely any thought of determining with precision the degrees of consanguinity of individuals. Naturally, the first form of the family which was more or less vaguely outlined in the confused groups anterior to the familial clans, was the maternal family; but this system of filiation by classes is in no way incompatible with paternal filiation.
Up to the present time kinship in the female line prevails among most of the Redskin tribes. Certain of them, however, are evolving in the direction of masculine filiation, and this movement was already commencing at the close of the last century.[947] The transformation began with the chiefs and more powerful men. Among the Thlinkits of Russian America the great men already give the paternal name to their children; but the poorer people are still in the stage of uterine filiation.[948] Certain tribes have quite recently adopted the system of paternal filiation. It is owing to European influence that this change is operating, and its accomplishment is only a question of time. The Ojibways have only taken two generations to effect the adoption of agnatic filiation.[949] A similar evolution was spontaneously accomplished in the great states of Central America. In Peru maternal filiation was still in general use, but the paternal family was beginning to appear. In the mass of the nation, says Gomara, the heritage was transmitted to nephews and not to sons; but in the family of the Incas direct male descendants alone had the right to avail themselves of their origin, and sons inherited.[950] It seems that in Mexico the familial evolution may have been more advanced, for there it is always the paternal personality which predominates, and it is the father who dictates to the children rules of conduct and moral precepts. The mothers exhort their daughters to be submissive to their husbands, to obey them and strive to please them.
The familial customs which I have just described are general in America; they are not universal as regards exogamy, for Hearne tells us that many Chippeways frequently take to wife their sisters, daughters, and even mothers.[951] We know, on the other hand, that the Peruvian Incas married their sisters, and that throughout the Peruvian empire no one married outside the administrative district.
In some parts of America the diversity is still greater. The Caribs married their relatives, with the exception of sisters,[952] indiscriminately; the Indians of Guiana, on the contrary, practised totemic exogamy, like the Redskins.[953]
The Indians of Guatemala were unacquainted with maternal kinship. They willingly married their sisters, provided they were not children of the same father, and among them the children belonged to the class of the father even when the mother was a slave.[954] Among the Mayas descent was also reckoned in the male line.[955] In various savage tribes of Mexico the women did not inherit. Among the Ityas and in Yucatan the name of the child was formed by combining the names of the father and mother; the mother’s name, however, had the precedence.[956]
The monk Thevet relates that the Indians of Brazil already pushed the agnatic system, at least in theory, to its most extreme limits; for they affirmed, he says, that in procreation the part of the father is predominant, and that of the mother only secondary.[957] The general conclusion to be drawn from these very dissimilar facts is, that we should abstain from forming any absolute theories on these great sociological questions of marriage and the family, which are still so far from being elucidated.
Filiation by the female line seems to be generally adopted, not only in Polynesia, but in many Melanesian or Micronesian archipelagoes. It has been found in the Fiji Islands, at Tonga and the Carolines,[958] etc. But exogamy, even the exogamy of the clan, after the American fashion, appears rare. It existed at Samoa, but in any case it seems not to have been a general custom.[959]
In New Zealand endogamy predominated, and marriage with a woman of another tribe was even prohibited, unless an important political motive could be given as an excuse.[960] Endogamy was also practised in the Hawaian Islands. In the Mulgrave Islands every marriage required the sanction of an assembly of all the friends and relatives, or rather of the whole clan,[961] for the interest of the community was involved in it.
In the Hawaian Islands there existed a confused kinship by classes, analogous to that of the familial clan among the Redskins, but much more gross. Group-marriage of brothers and sisters prevailed, but generally the brothers did not marry their own sisters. As for the names expressing the degrees of kinship, they were names of classes. The Hawaians had no words to express “father” or “mother.” They used the word “mkûa,” which signifies “parents.” To say “father,” they added the word “kana,” which signifies “male”: Mkûa kana, male parent. To say “mother,” they used the combination, Mkûa ouahina, female parent. There was no expression for “son” or “daughter.” They used the word keiki, child, or little one, to which they added kana or ouahina, as before, according as the child was male or female. The language had no terms for “brother” or “sister.”[962] The word employed to express “wives” is collective; it applies to the wife’s sister as well as to the wife proper, and signifies literally “female”; in the same way, for “husband” they used the word kana (male), and applied it also to the husband’s brother and sister’s husband. All the sisters of a woman were called “the wives of the husband of that woman,” even when they were not actually so.[963] The Hawaians had no expressions for “grandfather” or “grandmother.” Their word kapuna signifies an ancestor of any degree beyond the father and mother (mkûa). Neither had they any special denomination for “grandson” or “grand-daughter.” As brothers and sisters did not generally intermarry, the women called the husband or husbands of their sisters, not “husbands,” but “intimate companions” (punalua).[964]
It was possible for either the paternal or maternal family to evolve from this confused system of kinship, based at first apparently on the promiscuity of brothers and sisters; but it was the latter which at first arose, and in the time of Cook the rank and dignity of the chiefs were transmitted in the female line.[965] A singular custom noticed by Cook in the Society Isles may perhaps be interpreted in the sense of maternal filiation. They spoke of the transmission of the title and dignity of the chiefs to their first-born, and that even at the moment of birth. As soon as the wife of a chief had given birth to a son, the father was reckoned as deposed, and became a simple regent; he owed homage to his son, and might not remain in his presence without uncovering to the waist.[966] At Tonga maternal filiation was well established; rank was transmitted by the women, who sometimes even reigned,[967] and the father was not counted as the parent of his child.[968]
Of late years, and manifestly under European influence, the familial system has become modified in Polynesia. At Tonga masculine filiation is being substituted by degrees for feminine filiation.[969] The Maoris of New Zealand have also adopted agnatic filiation, but this new system still jars against ancient usages, which formerly harmonised with the maternal family.
This evolution of the family in Polynesia has probably had for its starting-point a confused promiscuity, and afterwards a system of classification of relations, in which real and fictitious ties were hardly distinguished from each other. With the slight importance attached to real consanguinity might very naturally coexist a great facility to practise adoption. This was abused to such a degree in the Marquesas Islands that it was not uncommon to see aged persons getting themselves adopted by children, and even animals were adopted also. Thus a chief had adopted a dog, to which he had ceremoniously offered ten pigs and some precious ornaments; he had him constantly carried by a kikino; and at the banquets of the chiefs, the animal had his appointed place by the side of his adoptive father.[970] There was no distinction generally made between the real and the adoptive parent,[971] and we may hence conclude that the degrees and bonds of kinship were not well distinguished.
IV. The Family among the Mongols.
The family of the Polynesians, and more especially of the Hawaians, may well have been, as L. Morgan supposes, the primitive familial type of the American Redskins. It has for its basis a marriage which is at once polyandric and polygynic, between groups of sisters and corresponding groups of brothers, and it results quite naturally in a system of kinship by classes, holding real consanguinity very cheap.
It seems probable that analogous systems of kinship may have been adopted by the greater number of the Asiatic Mongols. This may at least be inferred from the fragmentary but significant accounts with which explorers have supplied us. Among the Yourak Samoyedes, it is forbidden to marry a woman of the same tribe (or rather clan).[972] The people among the Kalmucks are subject to restrictions of the same kind in regard to marriage, which must not take place within three or four degrees of kinship. The great men, however, for whom the laws are more lenient in all countries, sometimes obtain immunity from these inconvenient obligations, but the populace is very much shocked at their laxity. “Great men and dogs,” they say, “have no kin.” Nevertheless, the sons of the great men, who often also marry their sisters-in-law, always take a wife in another clan.[973] Kinship by classes surely existed among the Mongols only a few centuries ago, for Baber, the founder of the Mongol Empire of Delhi, speaks in his Memoirs of one of his lieutenants, named Lenguer Khan, who possessed a whole tribe of maternal uncles, the Djendjouhah, forming a people who lived in the mountains of the Punjaub.[974]
V. The Evolution of the System of Kinship by Classes.
These facts, and the inferences they suggest, enable us to solve a difficulty which has embarrassed an eminent sociologist, L. Morgan, to whom we owe our acquaintance with the details of the curious systems of kinship by classes prevailing among the Polynesians and the Redskins.
Morgan, in comparing, term for term, the denominations indicating kinship among the Iroquois-Senecas and the Tamils of India, found them identical as to meaning and number, and he admits, but not without hesitation, that there has been, in both races, a parallel and spontaneous evolution.[975] This way of explaining ethnic similarities is certainly in general very legitimate. At first sight it often appears trustworthy, and saves the trouble of inventing fantastic migrations. In thousands of cases men of every period, every country, every race have conducted themselves in the same way, had the same ideas, realised the same inventions, adopted the same practices, without knowing each other, without even supposing the existence of the other peoples, and this simply because all of them were part of the great human family. But between the Mongoloids of North America, their cousins of Northern Asia, and the Hawaians, there is probably the bond of a distant and common origin, and, besides this, the nomad Mongols of Asia have more than once penetrated into India. Up to the present time, half-savage Mongol tribes occupy entire regions of the Himalaya. Mongols and Tamils have had wide and long communications with each other during prehistoric ages; it has therefore been possible for them to borrow mutually their system of kinship. There exists quite a chain of peoples, including the Tamils of India, the least civilised Mongols, the American Redskins, and lastly the greater number of the Polynesians, all of whom have formerly adopted, or still practise systems of kinship, based, not on consanguinity, but on a classification more or less fictitious.
The fact is interesting; but it is somewhat bold to attach to it, as Morgan has done, a universal value, and to pretend that all human races have passed through this phase of kinship by classes. Even in the countries where this familial form prevails, it is subject to more than one exception, and it is probable that each great human type, having had its special centre of creation, has evolved physically and psychically in its own manner, sometimes unconsciously imitating the others, but quite as often deviating from them, according as the environment, the difficulties to be overcome, and the necessities of the struggle for existence imposed on it such or such a line of conduct.
However it may be, if we condense, by classification, all the notions that have been collected in relation to kinship by classes among the Australians, the Tamils, the primitive Mongols, the Mongoloids of North America and those of Polynesia, we may retrace the evolution of kinship by classes with sufficient appearance of truth.
To begin with, there must have existed hordes, which, though doubtless human, were still very bestial as regards their instincts and intelligence. In these hordes, which were not very numerous, the women being taken possession of by the most robust old males, the young ones were obliged either to quit the group or to remain in it by ravishing one or two women from rival hordes; for exogamy was a necessity. The least advanced of the Australian tribes seem to be still in this primitive stage. At length a little order was put into this disorder by the horde breaking up into clans; it was then decided that all the men and all the women of each clan should be brothers and sisters, and should not intermarry, and that on the other hand, all the men of a clan should be the husbands of all the women of the neighbouring clan, simply by right of birth. The Kamilaroi of Australia may represent the second stage.
In Polynesia the principle is the same, but the idea has become restricted and defined. Groups of real brothers marry groups of women actually sisters, thus forming households at once polyandric and polygamic; but traces of the antique marriage by fictitious groups of brothers and sisters appear again in the terms used to designate the various degrees of kinship. These terms are in reality purely classificatory, and take little account of real consanguinity.
Among the Redskins a new and important restriction has been established. Marriage outside the clan is continued, but not marriage by groups of sisters and brothers. That this was done in primitive times, however, is proved by the familial vocabulary. On the other hand, they have clearly renounced polyandry, and adopted polygamy with not less clearness; but this polygamy is special, and it is generally a group of sisters who marry the polygamous husband.
As for the terms of kinship, they are always general and classificatory. The relations are denominated by groups, and the titles of kinship do not in the least correspond to the ties of blood.
Lastly, among certain nomad Mongols of Asia, the strict prohibition to marry within the clan, and the terms of kinship applying to groups, show that formerly a familial system, analogous to that of the American Redskins, has been in use.
Moreover, this classificatory system is preserved entire in the denominations of kinship by the Tamils of India. But among these last, and also among certain Mongol populations of Thibetan Himalaya, the primitive family, at once polygamic and polyandric, that of the Hawaian islanders, has evolved after its own manner, which it is interesting to notice.
The Polynesian, or rather the Hawaian family, formed essentially by the conjugal union of a group of brothers with a group of sisters, may evidently be restricted in two ways. Either, in the long run, polyandry is found irksome; the men will no longer share their wives, even with brothers, but find polygamy very convenient; in this case the brothers contract isolated marriages, preserving nothing of the old ways but the custom of marrying, when possible, a group of sisters: the Redskins have done and still do this. Or, on the contrary, for one reason or another, and most often on account of the relative scarcity of women, the Hawaian marriage evolves in another direction. The brothers continue to marry in a group; but, instead of marrying simultaneously several sisters, they take only one wife and possess her in common: this time it is in the direction of polyandry that primitive group-marriage has evolved. From the Himalaya to Ceylon we find a long track of ethnic groups who have thus transformed their marriage. The mountaineers of Bhootan, the Naïrs, certain other aboriginal tribes of India, and a part of the population of Ceylon, where the Tamils have largely immigrated, are all of them the remains or landmarks of an ancient layer of polyandric population traversing the whole of Hindostan.
All these facts can be classed in a satisfactory manner. Thus united, and placed in a series, they complete and throw a light on each other, and show us the reason of customs which before appeared inexplicable.
All this evolution is quite admissible, but it is important to restrict it to the populations with which it actually appears to be connected, and not to make of it a universal law, applicable to the whole human race.
Independently of their intrinsic interest, the facts that I have so rapidly enumerated have a very wide bearing. Taken alone, they suffice to destroy altogether the generally accepted ideas as to the origin of human societies. The current doctrine, so often asserted, and manifestly inspired by the Edenic tradition of a terrestrial Paradise and by the memory of the Roman family, insists that human societies have always and everywhere started with the family, and by this word is understood the patriarchal family, essentially composed of the father and the mother, or at most the mothers and the children. From this first family, grouped submissively around one august chief, the father, similar families are supposed to have sprung, which, side by side, constituted tribes, cities, and states. This familial unit, supposed to be primordial, this “cellule” of societies, is held to be particularly respectable; the chief who governs it despotically, the father, has something enchanting about him. At his voice the celestial wrath bursts without mercy on the child bold enough to brave it. Even as late as the last century, the paternal malediction had the effect of a moral thunderbolt; in romances and theatrical plays the writers often had recourse to it in order to effect the catastrophes of their plots.
We are forced in the present day to renounce this traditional notion. We must bid adieu to the primitive patriarchate. The patriarchal, or even simply paternal family, does not date, at least in most cases, from the origin of societies.
The truly primitive stock is no other than the clan, that is, a small consanguine group in which the kinship is still very much confused. It was not in a day that the first men succeeded in constructing genealogical trees, or even in determining with any precision the degrees of consanguinity. Not only does the father not stand out as a principal personage from the background of the familial clan; he has not even yet any recognised social existence in the little group; in short, the actual physiological father has had in principle no ascertainable relationship with his children, for marriage was anything but monandric.
Within the primitive social unit, the familial clan, every one was consanguine, but in a confused way; the wives had several husbands, and the husbands several wives; the degrees of kinship were not individual, but applied to classes of individuals. At this period of social development it was difficult to distinguish as yet the real from the possible, fictitious consanguinity from real consanguinity. Every one had groups of fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters: filiation and the true ties of consanguinity in numerous cases could not be discerned.
In these groups of consanguine individuals, these clans with kinship still confused, the first thing that became most habitually differentiated was not the paternal family, for that could scarcely exist, seeing that the father of a child was not easy to designate; it was the maternal family, which we will now proceed to examine.