Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 18.djvu/313

Rh and Mongols desert him and go over to other chiefs. Of the Abipones, Dobrizhoffer says: "Without leave asked on their part, or displeasure evinced on his, they remove with their families whithersoever it suits them, and join some other cacique; and, when tired of the second, return with impunity to the horde of the first." Similarly, in South Africa, "the frequent instances which occur [among the Balonda] of people changing from one part of the country to another show that the great chiefs possess only a limited power." And how, through this process, some tribes grow while others dwindle, we are shown by McCulloch's remark respecting the Kukis, that "a village, having around it plenty of land suited for cultivation and a popular chief, is sure soon, by accessions from less favored ones, to become large."

With the need which the individual has for protection is joined the desire of the tribe to strengthen itself; and the practice of adoption, hence resulting, constitutes another mode of integration. Where, as among tribes of North American Indians, "adoption or the torture were the alternative chances of a captive" (adoption being the fate of one admired for his bravery), we see reillustrated the tendency which each society has to grow at the expense of other societies. That desire for many actual children whereby the family may be strengthened, which Hebrew traditions show us, readily passes into the desire for factitious children—here made one with the brotherhood by exchange of blood, and there by mock birth. As was implied in another place, it is probable that the practice of adoption into families so prevalent in Rome arose during those early times when the wandering patriarchal group constituted the tribe, and when the desire of the tribe to strengthen itself was dominant. And, indeed, on remembering that, long after larger societies were formed by the compounding of patriarchal groups, there continued to be feuds between the component families and clans, we may see that there had never ceased to operate, on such families and clans, the primitive motive for strengthening themselves by increasing their numbers.

It may be added that kindred motives produced kindred results within more modern societies, during times when their component parts were so imperfectly integrated that there remained antagonisms among them. Thus we have the fact that in mediæval England, while local rule was incompletely subordinated to general rule, every free man had to attach himself to a lord, a burgh, or a guild: being otherwise "a friendless man," and in a danger like that which the savage is in when not belonging to a tribe. And. then, on the other hand, in the law that, "if a bondsman continued a year and a day within a free burgh or municipality, no lord could reclaim him," we may recognize an effect of the desire on the part of industrial groups to strengthen themselves against the feudal groups around—an effect analogous to the adoption, here into the savage tribe and there into the family