350 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF 



ship had, originally, no such signification : the word daughter, for in- 

 stance, meaning literally "milkmaid," and thus dating back to a time 

 when our ancestors did not recognize the "liimily" as it now exists 

 among us. Mr. Morgan has pointed out a very interesting illustration 

 of the same fact in the language of the Sandwich Islands. The word 

 ^^waheena^^ stands equally for wife, wife's sister, brother's wife, and 

 wife's brother's wife. So again, " IcaiJcee,^^ child, also signifies brother's 

 wife's child and wife's brother's wife's child. The same ideas of relation- 

 ship are indicated by the application of the word " /;«««," i. e. husband. 



That this does not arise from mere poverty of language is evident, 

 because the same system discriminates between other relationships we 

 do not distinguish from one another. 



Perhaps the contrast is most clearly shown in the words for brother- 

 in-law and sister-in-law. Thus, if a woman is speaking, the word for 

 sister-in-law=husband's brother's wife, is^Mwafea, and for sister-in-law= 

 husband's sister, JcaiJcoaka; but brother-iu-law, whether sister's husband 

 or husband's brother, is /*;«»« =husband. On the contrary, when a man 

 is speaking, the word for sister-in-la,w=wife's sister or brother's wife, is 

 tvaheena=vfife ; but brother-in-law = wife's brother, is Milcoala, and for 

 wife's sister's husband, punahia. Thus, a woman has husbands and 

 sisters-in-law, but no brothers-in-law, while a man has wives and brothers- 

 in-law, but no sisters-in-law. The same idea runs through all other 

 relationship, cousins being regarded as brothers and sisters. So again, 

 while the Eomans distinguished between father's brother =patmas, and 

 mother's hr other = avunculus ; and again, father's sister = am ita, and 

 mother's sister =mat€rter a; the two first in Ha\vaian are malma Icana. 



Thus, the idea of marriage does not in fact exist in the Sandwich 

 Island system of relationship. Uncleships, auntships, cousinships, are 

 ignored, and we have only grandparents, parents, brothers and sisters, 

 children, and grandchildren. 



Here it is clear that the child is related to the group. It is not 

 specially related either to its father or its mother, who stand in the same 

 relation as mere uncles and aunts, so that every child has several fathers 

 and several mothers. 



To our English ideas, the question of the origin of marriage seems 

 devoid of difficulty, nay, even of significance. The married state is one 

 with which we are so familiar, it is so interwoven with all our family life, 

 all our sense of social duty, that we are apt to regard it as universal and 

 aboriginal. This, however, is not the case. Facts like those just refer- 

 red to — and, if time permitted, many others might be given — show that 

 the condition of the lowest races of men is that not of individual marriage 

 as it exists among us, but of communal marriage, if I may call it so. 

 Even, however, under the system of communal marriage, a man who had 

 captured a beautiful girl in some marauding expedition would wish to 

 keep her to himself. She did not belong to the tribe; they had no right 

 to her; he might have killed her if he had chosen; and if he preferred 

 to keep her alive, it was no affair of theirs ; she was as much his indi- 

 vidual property as his spear or his bow. Hence a form of individual 

 marriage would rise uj) by the side of the communal marriage. This 

 theory explains the extraordinary subjection of the woman in marriage; 

 it explains the very widely distributed custom of " exogamy," or that 

 custom which forbids marriage within the tribe; the necessity of expia- 

 tion for marriage, as an infringement of tribal rights, since, according 

 to old ideas, a man had no right to appropriate to himself that which 

 belonged to the whole tribe ; and, lastly, the remarkable prevalence of 

 the form of capture in marriage. 



