Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/290

 with the men of the other sub-tribe having conjugal right over them, the women do not on that account cease to reside in their own clan, the sub-tribe of their "brothers."

Marriage within this sub-tribe is the abomination of desolation, the sin for which there is no forgiveness. Whoever commits it is outlawed from society, driven from the tribe, tracked through the woods like game, and put to death. He has dishonoured the association, and the children who are born of these social incests are exterminated. Thus, all real consanguinity has been set aside, and a fictitious fraternity created between all the members of the same clan, similar to paternity by adoption. Is this artificial parenthood the result of practical exogamy, or has it, on the contrary, produced it? We cannot tell; but wherever it exists, its rule is absolutely inflexible. If, for example, as often happens in Australia, the important men, the chiefs, the sorcerers, or the strong adults, seize a certain number of women for their personal use, they only do it in conformity to the law of exogamy between the sub-tribes. If one of the women thus confiscated runs away and is re-taken, she is not restored to the man who had usurped possession of her, but belongs by right to those who have caught her.

Moreover, certain neighbouring tribes are subdivided into sub-tribes, or clans of the same name; they have probably sprung one from the other at some former period. If it happens that a man steals a woman from one of these tribes, the captured woman is immediately incorporated into the corresponding clan of the ravisher's tribe, and she becomes the "sister" of all the women of this clan, to which will also belong her children. As for the ravisher, he is always a member of another gens, or clan, of the same tribe. If the tribes of the captured woman and of her captor are not symmetrical—that is to say, have not corresponding clans—then the woman may become the founder of a new clan belonging to the tribe of the man who has carried her off.

If a woman is captured by a party of warriors, and not