Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia

stages of culture. Consanguinity and Kinship. T

whose organisation has perished under the pressure of foreign invasion or other external influences, man is found grouped into totem kins, intermarrying classes and similar organised bodies, and one of their most important characteristics is that mem

ism, 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 association which it ha

ralia, under certain conditions1, to pass 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

e be distinguished as natal associations. In the one case, the kinship groups such as totem kins, phratries, etc., an individual remains permanently in the association into which he is born, special cases apart, in which by adoption he passes out of it and joins another by means of a legal fiction2. The other kind of association, to which the name age-grades is applied, is composed of a series of grades, through which

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 association

esignation of the kinship form of natal associations 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

e 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 t

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 det

siological 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 institutions. 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

as we are concerned to analyse 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 re

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 t

tt, 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 t

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

nd to exemplify the nature of some of the transitional forms. As we have seen, it is on c

n 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

cal 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

rom 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 entr

lled 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 ki

e 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 l

inciples 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 mothe

r 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 a body of persons claiming kinship, who (2) stand in a certain relati

e 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

, 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. amo

, 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

s Straits Islands, and possibly among the ancient Arabs5; but ev

isation; but it is either not based on the tot

or mythological personage, and sexual intercourse, whether marital or otherwise, is strictly forbidden betwe

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 e

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 sis

e to face with the question of how memb

, N. T.,

122; Lahontan, Voyages, II, 203-

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 neit

Frazer, Totemism,

port of Cook-Daniels Expedition; Camb. Univ.

I. XVI

1903,

Travels

Zts. Vgl. Rechtswiss. XIV, 295; Mitt. Orient. Seminar, III, 7