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Let us begin with Australia, where the aboriginal population is in a more primitive condition than any other race whose institutions have been investigated. I can notice a few facts only from the harvest of information brought together by anthropologists and travellers. The tribes are grouped into exogamous sub-divisions, and each group has its own land from which it takes a local name.
The above tribes and sub-tribes are not strictly endogamous, nor are they strictly exogamous, but they are more endogamous than exogamous; for instance, Syntengs more often marry Syntengs than Khasis, and vice versâ, and it would be usually considered derogatory for a Khasi of the Uplands to marry a Bhoi or Wár woman, and a disgrace to marry a Lynngam.
These exogamous subdivisions, which are peculiar to Australia, are known as matrimonial classes. Dr. Frazer thinks that they are the result of deliberate arrangement on the part of native statesmen; and certainly he is right in his contention that there is an artificial and man-made look about them.
Is it credible that savages should discover a fact which puzzles science? It may be replied that modern care, nursing, and medical art save children of near marriages from results which were pernicious to the children of early man. Secondly: Mr. Thirdly: Mr. Morgan seems to require, for the enforcement of the exogamous law, a contrat social.
It has been already mentioned that each of these clans is strictly exogamous; this again supports the family origin theory. A Khasi can commit no greater sin than to marry within the tribe. Some of the clans are prohibited moreover from intermarriage with other clans, because of such clans being of common descent.
In the southwest not clans but families are the social units; these trace their descent from animals, and there are individual animal patrons. In the northwest no clan organization is reported; there is class exogamy, and in the magical ceremonies the performers are taken from the exogamous classes. +474+. Torres Straits Islands.
Like the other tribes they are divided into exogamous totem clans; descent is traced only through the mother. The tribe through various reasons has been greatly reduced in numbers, and whole clans have died out, and under these circumstances exogamy has ceased to be strictly enforced. This has led to other changes. The Sai are still normally monogamous.
The social organization in the vast mass of islands called Melanesia has not been fully investigated, but the existence of some general features has been established. Society is divided not into clans or tribes, but into exogamous classes, and the classificatory system of relationships is general.
But to return to the Pueblo peoples. The tribes are divided into exogamous totem clans. Kinship is reckoned through the women, and in several tribes we find the complete maternal family. Among such peoples the husband goes to live with the wife and becomes an inmate of her family.
This at least is a plausible reason for such an unnatural practice among a people so unquestionably child-lovers. The Marquesans had no totemism to save them. There were no exogamous taboos. The tribe or clan was the chief unit, not the family. The phratry tie was stronger than that of the father and mother.
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