OF THE BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY. LX1 



they must be adopted into some clan within the capturing 

 tribe, in order that they may become wives of the men of the 

 tribe. When this is done, the captured women become by legal 

 appointment the wives of men in the group having marital 

 rights in the clan which has adopted them. 



The third form is marriage by duel. When a young woman 

 comes to marriageable age, it may happen that by legal ap- 

 pointment she is assigned to a man who already has a wife, 

 while there may be some other young man in the tribe who is 

 without a wife, because there is none for him in the group 

 within which he may marry. It is then the right of the latter 

 to challenge to combat the man who is entitled to more than 

 one, and, if successful, he wins the woman; and by savage 

 law controversy must then end. 



All three of these forms are observed among the tribes of 

 North America; and they are methods by which selection by 

 legal appointment is developed into selection by personal 

 choice. Sometimes these latter forms largely prevail ; and 

 they come to be regulated more and more, until at last they 

 become mere forms, and personal choice prevails. 



When personal choice thus prevails, the old regulation that 

 a man may not marry within his own group still exists; and 

 selection within that group is incest, which is always punished 

 with great severity. The group of persons within which mar- 

 riage is incest is always a highly artificial group; hence, in 

 early society, incest laws do not recognize physiologic condi- 

 tions, but only social conditions. 



The above outline will make clear the following statement, 

 that endogamy and exogamy, as originally defined by Mc- 

 Lennan, do not exist. Every savage man is exogamous with 

 relation to the class or clan to which he may belong, and he 

 is to a certain extent endogamous in relation to the tribe to 

 which he belongs, that is, he marries within that tribe; but in 

 all cases, if his marriage is the result of legal appointment, he 

 is greatly restricted in his marriage rights, and the selection 

 must be made within some limited group. Exogamy and en- 

 dogamy, as thus defined, are integral parts of the same law, 



