Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/309

 man was dishonoured if he stopped to converse in public with a young girl who was certainly within the prohibited degree of kinship. For a young Iroquois girl to call the husband of her aunt by his personal name was considered a grave act, indicating a culpable liaison.

From the manner in which the Redskins understand kinship, we may infer two things: first, that they must have passed through a familial stage, in which groups of brothers married groups of sisters and possessed them in common, thus combining polygamy and polyandry, since they attach little value to real consanguinity, and their kinships are very often fictitious; and secondly, that they make no difference between real filiation and adoption, and in this they resemble savages and even barbarians of all countries. Among the Omahas the word used to signify adoption means literally "to take for one's own son." The adopted child is always treated as the first-born, and takes his place; the father who adopts him refuses him nothing, and gives him a share in all his wealth. The real father, on his side, makes presents to the adopted father. And lastly, there is a prohibition of marriage during four years between the two families, on account of the kinship created by the adoption.

Sometimes an entire clan adopts another. Thus the Wolf-Iroquois were adopted by the Falcon-Iroquois, and the effect of this adoption was that the two clans became completely assimilated, the new-comers taking the kinships of the adoptive clan.

The adoption of enemies, taken prisoners after a battle, is still more curious. This adoption has almost miraculous effects; it extinguishes the ferocious hatred which the Redskins always feel for men belonging to rival tribes; more than that, it makes the captive warrior become the husband of the woman whom he has perhaps rendered a widow, or of the daughter whose father he may have killed. The Redskins have, it should be said, very exaggerated ideas on the subject of warlike valour. A combatant must never surrender unless very severely wounded. Every