Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/295

 reputed to be his relations—sisters, aunts, nieces, daughters, etc. We shall see presently to what women these various appellations, which among the Redskins have a much wider sense than with us, are applied.

These customs, or very analogous ones, were in force with a great number of American tribes. At the present day the Indians of the Moqui Pueblos still live in their common habitations, as at the time of the conquest, and they are divided into nine clans.

In the Pueblo of Orayba the relatives of a married woman who dies take her property and her children, only leaving to the husband his horse, his clothes, and his weapons; for by marrying the woman does not cease to belong to her original clan. Among the Pipiles of Salvador a genealogical tree with seven branches was painted on the wall of the common house, and save in the case of a great service rendered to the clan, a man could not intermarry with any persons related up to the degree indicated by the genealogical tree. In reality, this people had got beyond familial confusion, or of purely totemic relationship, but the principle regulating conjugal unions had not yet changed. In Yucatan marriage between persons of the same name—that is to say, of the same clan—entailed the penalty of being considered as a renegade. The savage Abipones were also exogamous, according to Dobritzhoffer. This rule naturally gives way in proportion as civilisation develops. The Nahuas still prohibited marriage between consanguineous relatives; but at Nicaragua the prohibition only applied to relatives of the first degree.

We have previously seen, in describing the family amongst the animals, that it is habitually maternal; it is around the female that the young group themselves. As for the male, if he does not abandon the family, he exercises no other function but that of chief of the band. It must surely have been thus that the first human hordes were formed, and when man became intelligent enough to take note of filiation, it was uterine parenthood alone that he