most of the Indians in the lower stage of barbarism marriage is prohibited between all the relatives of their system of kinship, and this comprises several hundred kinds. By this increasing complication of marriage restrictions, group marriage became more and more impossible; it was displaced by the pairing family. At this stage one man lives with one woman, but in such a manner that polygamy, and occasional adultery, remain privileges of men, although the former occurs rarely for economic reasons. Women, however, are generally expected to be strictly faithful during the time of living together, and adultery on their part is cruelly punished. But the marriage-tie may be easily broken by either party, and the children belong to the mother alone, as formerly.
territorial community. Their members are scattered among different roving hordes, and they only meet occasionally, e.g., to celebrate a feast or dance.…
The origin of gentile systems out of Punaluan groups has never been proven, while we see among the Australian negroes that the classes are clearly and irrefutably in existence among the first traces of gentilism.…
The class system in its original form is a conclusive proof of Morgan's theory, that the first step in the formation of systems of relationship consisted in prohibiting sexual intercourse between parents and children (in a wider sense).…
It has been often disputed that the Punaluan family ever existed outside of the Sandwich Islands. But the marriage institutions of certain Australian tribes named by me prove the contrary. The Pirrauru of the Dieyerie is absolutely identical with the Punalua of the Hawaiians; and these institutions were not described by travelers who rushed through the territories of those tribes without knowing their language, but by men who lived among them for decades and fully mastered their dialects I have shown how far the class system corresponds to the Hawaiian system. It is and remains a fact, that it contains a long series of terms that cannot be explained by the relations in the so-called consanguine family, and the use of which creates confusion, if applied to this family. But that simply shows that Morgan was mistaken about the age and present structure of the Hawaiian system. It does not prove that it could not have grown on the basis assumed by him.…
If the opponents of Morgan dispute that the so-called
