212 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tant questions connected with the development of social organization 

 in early communities are involved. The evidence, therefore, ought to 

 be of the very strongest, and the witnesses fully competent to deal 

 with the facts they narrate. 



In forming our opinions as to the customs of savage tribes, in all 

 cases where the significance of a custom depends upon something 

 underlying the visible facts, the accounts given by travelers must be 

 received with caution. They may state quite correctly each fact they 

 observe, but they are very likely to be wrong in their interpretation of 

 its meaning. No witness here is to be trusted unless he has had very 

 full opportunities of making himself acquainted with that which 

 underlies the custom he describes. This caution has a special appli- 

 cation to evidence as to polyandry ; for, as Sir John Lubbock justly 

 observes, " When our information is incomplete, it must often be far 

 from easy to distinguish between communal marriage and true poly- 

 andry." * Thus Mr. Schurmann, who happened to observe two Aus- 

 tralian blacks living with one woman in common between them, re- 

 cords this as an instance of polyandry, whereas we know that it was 

 nothing more than an instance of group-marriage. So also the prac- 

 tice of the " imported laborers " f in Feejee at the present day might 

 well be set down as polyandry, if we did not know what is beneath 

 the outer fact. There is an exceptional scarcity of women among 

 them, many more males than females being imported ; and so a woman 

 may be seen cohabiting with a number of men. But we have had 

 more than one shocking proof that this seeming polyandry is only 

 group -marriage in difficulties, women who admitted men of a forbidden 

 class having been put to death by their countrymen for the offense ; 

 and the murderers have declared that they were under obligation to 

 kill them. 



Not a few of Mr. McLennan's instances of so-called polyandry 

 admit of a similar explanation ; and even those cases on which he 

 seems chiefly to depend the Nair and the Thibetan are anything but 

 conclusive in his favor. The Nair polyandry, according to the account 

 of it given by Mr. McLennan himself in quotation from Hamilton, 

 Buchanan, and the "Asiatic Researches," J is evidently group-mar- 

 riage. A Nair woman has " a combination of husbands," but " a Nair 

 may be one in several combinations of husbands that is, he may have 

 any number of wives." Group-marriage might well be described in 

 these very words. That the Nairs are divided into exogamous clans 

 is certain from the fact that cohabitation is regulated by " certain re- 

 strictions as to tribe and caste," the plain meaning of which is that 

 there are certain " tribes or castes " which do not intermarry ; and the 



* "Origin of Civilization," p. 116. 



f These are natives of other South-Sea Island groups, brought to Feejee as laborers 

 on the plantations, etc. 



\ " Studies," etc., p. 149. 



