266 S. E. Peal — Communal Barracks of Primitive Races. [No. 3, 



to study carefully if we hope to glimpse the earlier forms of social 

 development, or settle whether man has heen from the first "a pairing 

 animal," and the family the unit, as some suppose, or whether the 

 unit has been the small chiefless communal clan. 



A general, if somewhat cursory survey in this research, is much 

 more likely to elucidate the truth, than a very careful study of isolat- 

 ed instances, which vary so considerably, as to be at times probably 

 misleading. Collectively these barracks seem to point to a communal 

 origin, incompatible with the pre-existence of monogamy, the univer- 

 sality of the tabu against the married woman, among races wherein 

 there is, and has been complete sexual liberty till marriage, seems to 

 point out the married woman or captured slave, as a social interloper ; 

 she is not the superior or even the equal in the situation anywhere, 

 but is universally legislated against as an inferior, the barrack domi- 

 nates her and even her offspring. They are antagonistic. 



One of the dangers of studying this subject exclusively from a few 

 instances only, is seen in the fact that in many cases the tabu against 

 the " wife," has gradually been extended to the other women and girls 

 of the clan, a veiy natural development. But while there are appar- 

 ently no cases wherein the married women can visit or sleep in these 

 young men's barracks (in their own tribe) there are a large number 

 wherein the unmarried girls can do so, and not o few in which these 

 latter are expected to do so, or even in which special barracks (Gabru 

 morongs) are built for them. Those who know anything of these primi- 

 tive races, among whom we find these communal barracks and their utter 

 disregard for juvenile chastity, must smile at the rem ai*k that "it is 

 precisely among nations in the most primitive stage which have the 

 greatest abhorrence of incestuous marriages," and that this drove them 

 all into wife capture. As if to render this view still more ludicrous, 

 Huth's " marriage of near kin," amounts to a demonstration that 

 consanguineous marriages are not at all necessarily injurious, and 

 may at times even be beneficial, as all breeders of stock well know and 

 the race of Ptolemies demonstrated. That in the earlier stages of 

 human development, ere social customs arose regulating the rights of 

 property, there may have been a time when captured women were the 

 public property of the horde, is not impossible. But as soon as rights 

 in captured spoils were recognized, by races wherein there was sexual 

 communism, and hence less internal competition for females, the right 

 of the stronger warriors to keep their female captives as " wives," 

 would be less disputed. The more valuable such females became as 

 slaves, the more " wife capture " would be developed, as in Australia. 

 MacLennan would appear to have been under misapprehension, when 



