Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/175

Rh globe, has carried all before it, only showing in isolated spots and by relics of custom the former existence of matriarchal society. Such a geographical view of the matriarchal region makes intelligible facts which, while not thus seen together, were most puzzling. When years ago Sir George Grey studied the customs of the Australians, it seemed to him a singular coincidence that a man whose maternal family name was Kangaroo might not marry a woman of the same name, just as if he had been a Huron of the Bear or Turtle totem, prohibited accordingly from taking a wife of the same. But when we have the facts more completely before us, Australia and Canada are seen to be only the far ends of a world-district pervaded by these ideas, and the problem becomes such a one as naturalists are quite accustomed to. Though Montreal and Melbourne are far apart, it may be that in prehistoric times they were both connected with Asia by lines of social institution as real as those which in modern times connect them through Europe. Though it is only of late that this problem of ancient society has received the attention it deserves, it is but fair to mention how long ago its scientific study began in the part of the world where we are assembled. Father Lafitau, whose "Mœurs des Sauvages Amériquains" was published in 1724, carefully describes among the Iroquois and Hurons the system of kinship to which Morgan has since given the name of "classificatory," where the mother's sisters are reckoned as mothers, and so on. It is remarkable to find this acute Jesuit missionary already pointing out how the idea of the husband being an intruder in his wife's house bears on the pretense of surreptitiousness in marriage among the Spartans. He even rationally interprets in this way a custom which to us seems fantastic, but which is a most serious observance among rude tribes widely spread over the world. A usual form of this custom is that the husband and his parents-in-law, especially his mother-in-law, consider it shameful to speak to or look at one another, hiding themselves or getting out of the way, at least in pretense, if they meet. The comic absurdity of these scenes, such as Tanner describes among the Assiniboins, disappears if they are to be understood as a legal ceremony, implying that the husband has nothing to do with his wife's family. To this part of the world also belongs a word which has been more effective than any treatise in bringing the matriarchal system of society into notice. This is the term totem, introduced by Schoolcraft to describe the mother-clans of the Algonquins, named "Wolf," "Bear," etc. Unluckily the word is wrongly made. Professor Max Müller has lately called attention to the remark of the Canadian philologist. Father Cuoq ("K.O. Ancien Missionnaire"), that the word is properly ote, meaning "family mark," possessive otem, and with the personal pronoun nind otem, "my family mark," kit otem, "thy family mark," It maybe seen, in Schoolcraft's own sketch of Algonquin grammar, how he erroneously made from these a word totem, and the question ought perhaps to be gone into in this