Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/132

 lOO Reviews.

obliteration, in the winter organization, of the blood-bond in the narrower sense of that term. A priori it would appear hardly likely that the inner degrees of blood-relationship could be wholly overlooked in winter, seeing that the organization of summer is so intimately connected with them, and that if their existence were in effect suspended during the winter the consciousness must remain, and must affect that suspension, that at the end of a few weeks, or months at the most, it would be resumed in full force. And what do we find in fact? The duty of blood-revenge may fall upon the entire settlement : it falls however primarily upon the immediate kin. About this the writers to whom we are indebted for our knowledge of the Eskimo do not intimate a doubt. The winter-house is not occupied indiscriminately by those who have a right in it. Each family, as M. Mauss himself says, occupies a bench or a distinct part of the structure. Family life is, therefore, to some extent, preserved throughout the winter, and is not wholly merged in the community. The occupants of a winter-house too are often found to be relatives — father, mother, and young children on one bench, son-in-law and daughter, with their young children on the next, a son with his wife and children on the next, and so on. This helps us to understand why marriage with house- mates is usually prohibited. It is noteworthy, moreover, that while some kind of relationship seems to be recognized between members of the settlement, it is not such as ordinarily to preclude marriage. Such relationship is a looser bond, therefore, than that between housemates. Marriage between blood-relatives, so far forth as the Eskimo recognize blood-kinship, is certainly prohibited in summer; nor can we infer that it is permitted in winter. It is accordingly clear that the social organization of summer is, after all, the permanent organization, never lost, and only in abeyance during the winter so far as regards some of its less important functions.

For these and other reasons I think that M. Mauss has stated the change of social organization between summer and winter more emphatically than the facts warrant. It is possible that the present stage of Eskimo society has been evolved out of one in which the people lived a purely collective life in the winter