Page:The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.djvu/62

56 3. THE PAIRING FAMILY.

A certain pairing for a longer or shorter term took place even during the group marriage or still earlier. A man had his principal wife (one can hardly call it favorite wife as yet) among many women, and he was to her the principal husband among others. This fact in no small degree contributed to the confusion among missionaries, who regarded group marriage now as a disorderly community of women, now as an arbitrary adultery. Such a habitual pairing would gain ground the more the gens developed and the more numerous the classes of "brothers" and "sisters" became who were not permitted to marry one another. The impulse to prevent marriage of consanguineous relatives started by the gens went still further. Thus we find that among the Iroquois and