284 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



other tribes is either a sequence of open war, or is an act of private 

 war which brings on open war. Pure endogamy, however, resulting 

 in this manner, is probably rare, since the hostility of tribes is almost 

 universal. But endogamy is likely to characterize not peaceful groups 

 alone, but also groups habitually worsted in war. An occasional ab- 

 ducted woman taken in reprisal will not suffice to establish in a weak 

 tribe any precedent for wife.-capture ; but, contrariwise, a member of 

 such a tribe who carries off a woman, and so provokes vengeance by 

 the stronger tribe robbed, is likely to meet with general reprobation. 1 

 Hence marrying in the tribe will not only be habitual, but there will 

 arise a prejudice, and eventually a law, against taking wives from 

 other tribes ; the needs of self-preservation will make the tribe endog- 

 arnous. This interpretation harmonizes with the fact, admitted by 

 Mr. McLennan, that the endogamous tribes are as numerous as the 

 exogamous ; and also with the fact he admits, that in sundry cases 

 clusters of tribes allied by blood and language are some of them ex- 

 ogamous and some endogamous. 



It is to be inferred that, among tribes not differing much from one 

 another in strength, there will be continual aggressions and reprisals, 

 accompanied by mutual robberies of women. No one of them will be 

 able to supply itself with wives entirely at the expense of adjacent 

 tribes, and hence, in each of them, there will be both native wives, 

 and wives taken from other tribes there will be both exogamy and 

 endogamy. Stealing of wives will not be reprobated, because the 

 tribes robbed are not too strong to be defied ; and it will not be in- 

 sisted on, because the men who have stolen wives will not be numer- 

 ous enough to determine the average opinion. 



If, however, in a cluster of tribes, one gains predominance by fre- 

 quent successes in war if the men in it who have stolen wives come to 

 form the larger number if the possession of a stolen wife becomes a 

 mark of that bravery without which a man is not worthy of a wife 

 then the discreditableness of marrying within the tribe, growing into 

 disgraceful ness, will end in a peremptory requirement to get a wife 

 from another tribe if not in open war, then by private theft : the 

 tribe will become exogamous. A sequence may be traced. The ex- 

 ogamous tribe thus arising, and growing while it causes adjacent tribes 

 to dwindle by robbing them, will presently divide ; and its sections, 

 usurping the habitats of adjacent tribes, will carry with them the es- 

 tablished exogamous habit. When, presently becoming hostile, these 

 diverging sub-tribes begin to rob one another of women, there will 



1 Since the above sentence was written, I have, by a happy coincidence, come upon a 

 verifying fact, in the just-published "Life in the Southern Isles," by the Rev. Mr. Gill 

 (p. 47). A man, belonging to one of the tribes in Mangaia, stole food from an adjacent 

 tribe. This adjacent tribe avenged itself by destroying the houses, etc., of the thief s 

 tribe. Thereupon the thief s tribe, angry because of the mischief thus brought upon 

 them, killed the thief. If this happened with a stealer of food, still more would it be 

 likely to happen with a stealer of women, when the tribe robbed was the more powerful. 



