MCGEE] BEGINNING Of MARRIAGE 201 



iniuiical to, all other groups. The testimony of the observed iustitu- 

 tions is corroborated by the testimony of language, which, as clearly 

 shown by Powell,' represents progressive combination rather than con- 

 tinued diflerentiation, a iirocess of involution rather than evolution. 

 It would appear that the original definitely organized groups occasion- 

 ally met and coalesced, whereby changes in organization were required; 

 that these compound groups occasionally coalesced with other gionjjs 

 both simple and compound, whereby they were elaborated in structure, 

 always with some loss in detiniteness and permanence; and that grad- 

 ually the groups enlarged by incorporation, while the composite organ- 

 ization grew complex and variable to meet the ever-changing condi- 

 tions. It would also appear that in some cases the corporeal growth 

 outran the structural or institutional growth, when the bodies — clans, 

 gentes, tribes, or confederacies — split into two or more fragments which 

 continued to grow independently; yet that in general the progress of 

 institutional development went forward through incorporation of peoples 

 and differentiation of institutions. The same process was followed as 

 tribal society passed into national society; and it is the same process 

 which is today exalting national society into world society, and trans- 

 forming simple civilization into enlightenment. Tlius the evolution of 

 social organization is from the simple and deflnite toward the complex 

 and variable; or from the involuntary to the voluntary ; or from the 

 enviroumeut-shaped to the environment-shaping; or from the biotic to 

 the demotic. 



The second postulate, which may be regarded as a corollary of the 

 first, is that the primary conjugal condition was one of promiscuity, 

 out of which different forms ot marriage were successively segregated. 

 Now the wide range in institutional development exemplified by the 

 American Indians affords unprecedented opportunities for testing this 

 postulate also. The simplest demotic unit found among the aborigines 

 is the clan or mother-descent group, in which the normal conjugal rela- 

 tion is essentially monogamous,'* in which marriage is more or less 

 strictly regulated by a system of prohibitions, and in which the chief 

 conjugal regulation is commonly that of exogamy with respect to the 

 clan ; in higher groups, more deeply affected by contact with neighbor- 

 ing peoples, the simple clan organization is sometimes found to be 

 modified, (1) by the adoption and subsequent conjugation of captive 

 men and boys, and, doubtless more profoundly, (2) by the adoption 

 and polygamous marriage of female captives; and in still more highly 

 organized groups the mother-descent is lost and polygamy is regular 

 and limited only by the capacity of the husband as a provider. The 

 second and third stages are commonly characterized, like the first, 



'Notably in "Relation of primitive peoples to environment, illustrated by American examples," 

 Smithsonian Report for 1896, pp. G25-638, especially p. 635. 



^Neither space nor present occasion warrants discussion of the curious aphrodiaian cults found 

 among many peoples, usually in tbo barbaric stage of development; it may bo noted merely tliat this 

 is an aberrant branch from the main stem of institutional growth. The subject is touched brieily in 

 "The beginiiins of marriage," American Anthropologist, vol. ix, pp. 371-383, Nov., 1896. 



