104 KINDRED GROUP-MARRIAGE 



barbaric, hunting or giant-type. 1 Nearly as old is the 

 mythology which supplements the mother-goddess by a 

 brother as spouse. Much later than either comes as 

 deity a patriarchal All-father ruling a kindred group. I 

 cannot now enter upon the causes which led to the 

 termination of the brother-sister sexual relation, but 

 there is considerable evidence to show that there was a 

 differentiation first of the elder sister, and that the social 

 prohibition was only gradually extended to the younger. 

 As the social unit enlarged, we find a group of men, 

 brothers or cousins in blood, having sexual relations 

 with a like group of women, who may or may not be 

 blood relations of the men. This is the system I would 

 refer to as that of kindred group -marriage. Evidences 

 of its existence are still to be found in several Australian 

 races. In these cases the men of one tribe have wives 

 from the women of a second, or in some cases they are 

 co-husbands of all the women of a second. Yet although 

 this group-marriage is exogamous, at certain great tribal 

 festivals the men and women of the same tribe indulge 

 promiscuously in what at another period would be pro- 

 hibited intercourse. This interesting fossil of the tran- 

 sition of group -marriage from the endogamous to 

 exogamous type is of special value, for it illustrates a 

 common feature of kindred group-marriage the custom 

 of periodical gatherings which are at the same time sex- 

 festivals. These meetings for the purpose of reproduction 

 are singularly characteristic of group-marriage, and would 

 seem to indicate that in the distant past the sex-instinct 



1 The fact that the son in both Celtic and Norse mythology is represented as 

 breaking the ground with a stone hammer or axe is suggestive of the period of 

 such mother-son theogonies. 



