ISRAELITE AND INDIAN. 205 



tinguished from his children by his other wives. Rebekak's de- 

 scent is practically valued as descent from Milkah,and the family 

 or clan connection is traced entirely through Milkah and Sarah. 

 Their rules of kinship regarding what we now call incest are part- 

 ly indicated by the following instances : Moses' father married his 

 father's sister ; Nahor married his brother's daughter ; Abraham 

 married Sarah, the daughter of his father but not of his mother. 



A passage in Judges relates to exogamy, recording that Ibzan 

 had thirty sons, and also thirty daughters whom he sent abroad, 

 and took thirty daughters from abroad for his sons. But exogamy 

 could not be kept up after the Israelites had become mainly an 

 agricultural people, and in the times of the kings only survivals 

 of it remained. 



Mr. John Fenton, in " Early Hebrew Life," makes some acute 

 remarks upon the story of Lot's daughters, but he did not exhaust 

 the subject. According to the clan system, it was not only proper 

 for Lot to marry his daughters, but under the circumstances it was 

 obligatory upon him to do so. The logical propriety of the mar- 

 riage of a father to his daughters, on the ground that they did not 

 belong to the same clan, is clear, and the practice exists to-day 

 among a number of the tribes of Indians not much affected by Eu- 

 ropean intercourse. A father was not of kin to his own children. 

 They belonged to the mother's clan, and not to his. An interest- 

 ing example of this clan law is furnished by Dr. George M. Daw- 

 son as still existing among tribes of British Columbia. A certain 

 rich Indian would have nothing to do with the search for his aged 

 father, who was lost and starving in the mountains. He did not 

 count his father as a relative, and said, " Let his people go in 

 search of him." Yet that son was regarded as a particularly good 

 Indian. 



There are other instances in which the son would fight against 

 the father to the death. Such cases would occur where, according 

 to the obligations of clan law, a son married a woman of a clan 

 other than that of his father and went to live with her people ; and 

 when there was warfare between her clan and that of his father, 

 the son was by association expected to fight against his father. 

 The real tie of blood gave no reason why he should not be alien 

 and antagonistic to his father and his father's clan. 



But it is true that, in many tribes of Indians, since they have 

 been observed by Europeans, the marriage of father and daughter 

 has been very rare. It may be suggested as a reason that a grad- 

 ual change has occurred from the mother-right to the father- 

 right, in which the attitude is reversed ; but practically the fact 

 that, by treating the daughter as an object of value or merchan- 

 dise, either the father or mother could secure presents from the 

 suitor, naturally tended to break down this part of the clan mar- 



