282 



SOME EEMAEKABLE CUSTOMS. 



Indians.^ Morgan's account of the Iroquois' rules is particu- 

 larly remarkable. The father and child can never be of the 

 same clan, descent going in all cases by the female line. Each 

 nation had eight tribes, in two sets of four each. 



1. Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Turtle. 



2. Deer, Snipe, Heron, Hawk. 

 Originally a "Wolf might not marry a Bear, Beaver, or Turtle, 



reckoning himself their brother, but he might marry into the 

 second set, Deer, etc., whom he considered his cousins, and so 

 on with the rest. But in later times a man is allowed to marry 

 into any tribe but his own.^ A recent account from North- 

 West America describes the custom among the Indians of 

 Nootka Sound ; '' a Whale, therefore, may not marry a Whale, 

 nor a Frog a Frog. A child, again, always takes the crest of 

 the mother, so that if the mother be a Wolf, all her children will 

 be Wolves. As a rule, also, descent is traced from the mother, 

 not from the father.''^ 



The analogy of the North American Indian custom is there- 

 fore with that of the Australians in making clanship on the 

 female side a bar to marriage, but if we go down further south 

 into Central America, the reverse custom, as in China, makes 

 its appearance. Diego de Landa says of the people of Yucatan, 

 that no one took a wife of his name, on the father's side, for 

 this was a very vile thing among them ; but they might marry 

 cousins german on the mother's side.'* Further south, below 

 the Isthmus, both the clanship and the prohibition reappear on 

 the female side. Bernau says that among the Arrawaks of 

 British Guiana, " Caste is derived from the mother, and chil- 

 dren are allowed to marry into their father's family, but not 

 into that of their mother."^ Lastly, Father Martin Dobriz- 

 hoffer says that the Guaranis avoided, as highly criminal, mar- 

 riage with the most distant relatives, and, speaking of the 

 Abipones, he makes the following statement : — " Though the 

 paternal indulgence of the Roman Pontiffs makes the first and 



1 Grey, I. c. Schoolcraft, part i. p. 52 ; part ii. p. 49. Loskiel, p. 72. Talbot, 

 Disc, of Lederer, p. 4. 



^ L. H. Morgan, p. 79. ^ Mayne, Brit. Columbia, p. 257. 



* Landa, p. 140. 5 Bernau, p. 29. 



