Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/217

Rh from his children by his other wives. Rebekak's descent is practically valued as descent from Milkah,and the family or clan connection is traced entirely through Milkah and Sarah. Their rules of kinship regarding what we now call incest are partly indicated by the following instances: Moses' father married his father's sister; Nahor married his brother's daughter; Abraham married Sarah, the daughter of his father but not of his mother.

A passage in Judges relates to exogamy, recording that Ibzan had thirty sons, and also thirty daughters whom he sent abroad, and took thirty daughters from abroad for his sons. But exogamy could not be kept up after the Israelites had become mainly an agricultural people, and in the times of the kings only survivals of it remained.

Mr. John Fenton, in "Early Hebrew Life," makes some acute remarks upon the story of Lot's daughters, but he did not exhaust the subject. According to the clan system, it was not only proper for Lot to marry his daughters, but under the circumstances it was obligatory upon him to do so. The logical propriety of the marriage of a father to his daughters, on the ground that they did not belong to the same clan, is clear, and the practice exists to-day among a number of the tribes of Indians not much affected by European intercourse. A father was not of kin to his own children. They belonged to the mother's clan, and not to his. An interesting example of this clan law is furnished by Dr. George M. Dawson as still existing among tribes of British Columbia. A certain rich Indian would have nothing to do with the search for his aged father, who was lost and starving in the mountains. He did not count his father as a relative, and said, "Let his people go in search of him." Yet that son was regarded as a particularly good Indian.

There are other instances in which the son would fight against the father to the death. Such cases would occur where, according to the obligations of clan law, a son married a woman of a clan other than that of his father and went to live with her people; and when there was warfare between her clan and that of his father, the son was by association expected to fight against his father. The real tie of blood gave no reason why he should not be alien and antagonistic to his father and his father's clan.

But it is true that, in many tribes of Indians, since they have been observed by Europeans, the marriage of father and daughter has been very rare. It may be suggested as a reason that a gradual change has occurred from the mother-right to the father-right, in which the attitude is reversed; but practically the fact that, by treating the daughter as an object of value or merchandise, either the father or mother could secure presents from the suitor, naturally tended to break down this part of the clan