VIEWS OF PRIMITIVE MARRIAGE. 211 



It "would be an undivided commune, to the former existence of which 

 significant evidence has long seemed to point. 



The case of the Ahts, quoted from Sproat's " Scenes and Studies 

 of Savage Life," by Sir John Lubbock,* and apparently brought for- 

 ward by him as an instance of such a tribe, is far from being a case in 

 point. Sproat's account of the Ahts does not prove that tribe to be 

 endogamous, excepting in the sense that a tribe made up of exogamous 

 clans may be said to be endogamous because it prefers not to go be- 

 yond its own clans for its wives. If this be endogamy, then the term 

 endogamy is of little value ; for in this sense nearly every nation on 

 the face of the earth may be said to be endogamous, in feeling at 

 least. Even among the English the "foreigner" is not looked upon 

 as an altogether eligible husband excepting for princesses, and for 

 them only because of ancient traditions. It is the Calmuck rule over 

 again. The common people may marry at home, but a Derbet noble 

 must marry one of the Torgot stock. One of the good deeds the Queen 

 has done is her breaking through this rule in the case of one of her 

 daughters. And, even if one of her sons had taken an English or an 

 American lady to wife, there is little doubt that the nation would have 

 applauded his choice, in spite of all the old traditions. But this is 

 going a long way from our subject. 



"What Sproat tells us of the Ahts is that " the idea of slavery con- 

 nected with capture is so common that a freeborn Aht would hesitate 

 to marry a woman taken in war, whatever her rank had been in her 

 own tribe." And this feeling is a very common one elsewhere. With 

 reference to this passage in the " Origin of Civilization," Mr. Walter 

 Carew, Commissioner for the Interior of Naviti Levu, Feejee, was good 

 enough to write me the following note : " To call a person ' a child of 

 a captive ' is a very great insult, even though the mother were of 

 high rank." Mr. Carew goes on to remind me of a case, with the cir- 

 cumstances of which we are both acquainted, of a Viria chief who 

 was set aside because his mother was a captive, though she was a 

 marama, or lady of rank, belonging to one of the principal tribes in 

 Feejee, a tribe of far greater consequence than that of Viria. 



Having examined Mr. McLennan's theory of exogamy and mar- 

 riage by capture, it now remains for us to notice his statement of poly- 

 andry. 



If what we have to deal with here were no more than a statement 

 that local cases of polyandry are to be found, or even that such cases 

 are of frequent occurrence, the controversy would be of no very great 

 importance. But Mr. McLennan treats polyandry as a system of mar- 

 riage of so extensive a prevalence, and draws with singular ability 

 such wide inferences from it as to kinship, succession, and the change 

 of descent from the female line to the male, that all the most impor- 



* "Origin of Civilization," p. 117. 



