Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/216

204 rendering women scarce, led at once to polyandry within the tribe, and to the capturing of women from without."

"If it can be shown, firstly, that exogamous tribes exist or have existed, and, secondly, that in rude times the relations of separate tribes are uniformly or almost uniformly hostile, we have found a set of circumstances in which men could get wives only by capturing them—a social condition in which capture would be the necessary preliminary to marriage."

Further on he remarks, "We now confidently submit that the conditions required for this inference have been amply established. . . ."

After a careful study of Mr. McLennan's work, I am not sure that I have grasped his meaning here. The "tribe" of which he speaks must have been in the first place endogamous, because he supposes it to have become exogamous as the result of the practice of female infanticide. Here, then, we have an endogamous tribe becoming exogamous. But, in the table of contents to Chapter VII. we read, "Conversion of an endogamous tribe into an exogamous tribe inconceivable." Turning to that part of the body of the work here indicated, we find the statement to be that the "reconversion of an endogamous tribe into an exogamous tribe is inconceivable." But this does not help us. For there can be no difficulty in conceiving that which we have before our eyes at the present day in almost all savage peoples on the face of the earth—a tribe endogamous qua tribe—that is, marrying within its own limits, and yet split up into exogamous intermarrying divisions, classes, gentes, septs, clans, thums, keelis, or whatsoever else they may be called; so that the law of marriage is distinctly exogamous. The confusion here evidently arises from want of precision in the use of the terms endogamy, exogamy, and tribe. Let us know the exact boundaries of the group to which they are applied, and then we shall be clear as to their meaning.

Again, turning to the general theory as set forth in Mr. McLennan's words already quoted, we find the following sequence:

1. Female infanticide was the general practice among the "primary hordes," and resulted in a scarcity of women, so causing polyandry and marriage by capture.

2. The tribe having thus taken to capturing women, acquired the habit of so doing, and became exogamous.

3. Exogamy having thus grown into a law, and neighboring tribes being, as a rule, hostile to one another, men could get their wives no otherwise than by capture.

Which may be fairly summed up as follows: Female infanticide causes marriage by capture. Marriage by capture causes exogamy. Exogamy causes marriage by capture.

I can not suppose this to have been Mr. McLennan's meaning, but