Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/770

 756 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

the man was neither by necessity nor disposition so much a home-keeper as the women and their children.

The tangential disposition of the male is expressed in the system of exogamy so characteristic of tribal life. The move- ment towards exogamy doubtless originates in the restlessness of the male, the tendency to make new coordinations, the stimulus to seek more unfamiliar women, and the emotional interest in making unfamiliar sexual alliances. But quite aside from its origin, exogamy is an energetic expression of the male nature. Natural selection favors the process by sparing the groups which by breeding out have heightened their physical vigor. 1 There results from this a social condition which, from the standpoint of modern ideas, is very curious. The man makes, and, by force of convention, finally must make, his matrimonial alliances only with women of other groups, but the woman still remains in her own group, and the children are members of her group, while the husband remains a member of his own clan, and is received, or may be received, as a guest in the clan of his wife. Upon his death his property is not shared by his children, nor by his wife, since these are not members of his clan, but it falls to the nearest of kin within his clan usually to his sister's children.

The maternal system of descent is found in all parts of the world where social advance stands at a certain level, and the evidence warrants the assumption that every group which advances to a culture state passes through this stage. Morgan gives an account of this system among the Iroquois :

Each household was made up on the principle of kin. The married women, usually sisters, own or collateral, were of the same gens or clan, the symbol or totem of which was often painted upon the house, while their husbands and the wives of their sons belonged to several other gentes. The children were of the gens of their mother. While husband and wife belonged to different gentes, the predominating number in each household would be of the same gens, namely, that of their mothers. As a rule the sons brought home their wives, and in some cases the husbands of the daughters were

1 Endogamous tribes have survived, in the main, in isolated regions where com- petition was not sufficiently sharp to set a premium on exogamy. It may be assumed that the history of exogamous groups has been more cataclysmical.