906 REFOBT— 1884. 



gone much modification. Thus 150 years ago Father Lafitau mentions that the 

 husband and wife, while in fact moving into one another's hut, or setting up a 

 new one, still kept up the matriarchal idea by the fiction that neither he nor she 

 quitted their own maternal house. But in the Sumatra district just referred to, 

 the matriarchal system may still be seen in actual existence, in a most extreme and 

 probably early form. If, led by such new evidence, we look at the map of the 

 world from this point of view, there discloses itself a remarkable fact of social 

 geography. It is seen that matriarchal exogamous society, that is, society with 

 female descent and prohibition of marriage within the clan, does not crop up here 

 and there, as if it were an isolated invention, but characterises a whole vast region 

 of the world. If the Malay district be taken as a centre, the system of inter- 

 marrying mother-clans may be followed westward into Asia, among the Garos and 

 other hill tribes of India. Eastward from the Indian Archipelago it pervades the 

 Melanesian islands, with remains in Polynesia; it prevails widely in Australia, 

 and stretches north and south in the Americas. This immense district represents 

 an area of lower culture, where matriarchalism has only in places yielded to the 

 patriarchal system, which developes with the idea of property, and which, in the 

 other and more civilised half of the globe, has carried all before it, only showing in 

 isolated spots and by relics of custom the former existence of matriarchal society. 

 Such a geographical view of the matriarchal region makes intelligible facts which 

 while not thus seen together were most puzzling. When years ago Sir George 

 Grey studied the customs of the Australians, it seemed to him a singular co- 

 incidence that a man whose maternal family name was Kangaroo might not 

 marry a woman of the same name, just as if he had been a Huron of the Bear or Turtle 

 totem, prohibited accordingly from taking a wife of the same. But when we have 

 the facts more completely before us, Australia and Canada are seen to be only the 

 far ends of a world-district pervaded by these ideas, and the problem becomes such 

 a one as naturalists are quite accustomed to. Though Montreal and Melbourne 

 are far apart, it may be that in prehistoric times they were both connected with 

 Asia by lines of social institution as real as those which in modern times connect 

 them through Europe. Though it is only of late that this problem of ancient 

 society has received the attention it deserves, it is but fair to mention how long 

 ago its scientific study began in the part of the world where we are assembled. 

 Father Lafitau, whose ' Mceurs des Sauvages Ameriquains ' was published in 17:24. 

 carefully describes among the Iroquois and Hurons the system of kinship to which 

 Morgan has since given the name of ' classificatory,' where the mother's sisters are 

 reckoned as mothers, and so on. It is remarkable to find this acute Jesuit mission- 

 ary already pointing out how the idea of the husband being an intruder in his 

 wife's house bears on the pretence of surreptitiousness in marriage among the 

 Spartans. He even rationally interprets in this way a custom which to us seems 

 fantastic, but which is a most serious observance among rude tribes widely spread 

 over the world. A usual form of this custom is that the husband and his parents- 

 in-law, especially his mother-in-law, consider it shameful to speak to or look at one 

 another, hiding themselves or getting out of the way, at least in pretence, if they 

 meet. The comic absurdity of these scenes, such as Tanner describes among the 

 Assineboins, disappears if they are to be understood as a legal ceremony, implying 

 that the husband has nothing to do with his wife's family. To this part of the 

 world also belongs a word which has been more effective than any treatise in 

 bringing the matriarchal system of society into notice. This is the term totem, 

 introduced by Schoolcraft to describe the mother-clans of the Algonquins, named 

 ' Wolf,' ' Bear,' &c. Unluckily the word is wrongly made. Professor Max Muller 

 has lately called attention to the remark of the Canadian philologist Father Cuoq 

 (N. O. Ancien Missionnaire), that the word is properly ote, meaniug 'family mark, 7 

 possessive otem, and with the personal pronoun nind otem, ' my family mark,' kit 

 otem, ' thy family mark.' It may be seen in Schoolcraft's own sketch of Algonquin 

 grammar how he erroneously made from these a word totem, and the quest 

 ought perhaps to be gone into in this Section, whether the term had best be kept up 

 or amended, or a new term substituted. It is quite worth while to discuss the 

 name, considering what an important question of anthropology is involved in the 



