Chapter 9 KINSHIP TERMS.

Descriptive and classificatory systems. Kinship terms of Wathi-Wathi, Ngerikudi-speaking people and Arunta. Essential features. Urabunna. Dieri. Distinction of elder and younger.

Some classless two-phratry tribes observe in practice the same rules as the four and eight class tribes when they are deciding what marriages are permissible. The Dieri and Narrangga follow the eight-class rule; the position of the Urabunna is somewhat uncertain owing to the obscurity of our authorities, which again is probably due to their lack of intimate acquaintance with the tribe; and the Wolgal, Ngarrego and Murring have the simple four-class rule that a man marries his mother's brother's daughter.

We have seen in an earlier chapter that kinship and consanguinity are distinct in their nature, though among civilised peoples they are not in practice distinguishable. In the lower stages of culture it is otherwise, as will be shown in detail below. Corresponding to this distinction of consanguinity and kinship but not parallel to it we have two ways of expressing these relationships-the descriptive and the classificatory. The terminology of the former system is based on the principle of reckoning the relationship of two people by the total number of steps between them and the nearest lineal ancestor of both. The latter does not concern itself with descent at all but expresses the status of the individual as a member of a group of persons. Thus, to take a single example, in a typical Australian tribe the word applied by a child to its father is not used of him alone but of all the other males on the same level of a generation provided they belong to the same phratry; to the other half of the generation is applied the term usually translated "mother's brother."

Unfortunately but few Australian lists of kinship terms have been drawn up, and the anomalous tribes like the Kurnai have absorbed a large share of attention. It is however possible to give tables for the three classes of tribes with which we have been in the main concerned. Those given are in use among the Wathi-Wathi of Victoria, the Ngerikudi-speaking people of North Queensland and the Arunta138.

Wathi-Wathi Tribe: two-phratry.

Phratry A Phratry B Generation

Naponui

(mother's father)

Miimui

(father's mother) Kokonui

(mother's mother)

Matui

(father's father) I

Mamui (father)

Niingui (father's

sister=

Nalundui, wife's

mother) Kukui (mother)

Gunui (mother's

brother=

Nguthanguthu

wife's father) II

Malunui

(father's

sister's son)

Neripui

(father's sister's

daughter=wife) EGO

Wawi, mamui

(elder brother,

sister)

Tatui, minukui

(younger do.) III

Waipui

(son, daughter) Ngipui

(sister's son)

? (sister's dau.

=Boikathui,

son's wife) IV

Naponui

(daughter's son)

Miimui

(sister's son's

son) Kokonui

(sister's

daughter's son)

Matui

(son's son) V

Ngerikudi: Four-class.

Phratry A: Class a Class a1 Phratry B: Class b Class b1 Generation

Daida

(mother's father)

Baida

(father's mother) Mite

(mother's mother)

Laeta

(father's father I

Naider

(father)

Waita

(father's brother)

Niata

(elder sister)

Wiata

(younger do.) Naibeguta

(mother)

Miata

(brother)

Goete

(elder sister)

Datu

(younger do.) II

Danuma

(wife=mo. bro.

dau.)

Lanti ngenuma

(sister's husband

=mo. bro. son) EGO

Maneinga

(elder brother)

Goete

(elder sister)

Otro

(younger brother

or sister) III

Yuta (son

or daughter) ? (sister's son

or daughter)

Yamaanta (dau's

husband) IV

Yudanta

(daughter's child) Yuunta

(son's child) V

So far as deficiencies in our information would allow, these tables have been drawn up on corresponding lines, and the first point which strikes us is the great similarity between the three tables, in spite of the apparent wide divergence in the kinship organisation of the tribes. To facilitate comparison the Wathi-Wathi terms have been arranged, not only according to the system in use in the tribe, but in such a way as to show how the terms would be arranged under the four-class system.

Arunta: Eight-class.

Panunga Uknaria Bulthara Appungerta Generation

Ipmunna (mother's

mother, wife's

mother's father) Arunga (father's

father) I

Oknia (father)

Uwinna

(father's sisters) Mura (wife's

mother, wife's

mother's

brothers) II

Ipmunna (father's

sister's daughter's

husband, son's

wife's mother) EGO

Okilia (elder

brothers)

Ungaraitcha

(elder sisters)

Itia (younger

brothers and

sisters) III

Allira (children,

brother's

children) IV

Arunga (son's

son) V

Purula Ungalla Kumara Umbitchana Generation

Tjimmia

(mother's father) Aperla (father's

mother) I

Mia (mother,

mother's sister)

Gammona

(mother's brother) Ikuntera

(wife's father) II

Unkulla (father's

sister's sons) Unawa (wife,

wife's sisters)

Umbirna (wife's

brother=sister's

husband) III

Gammona (son's

wife) Umba (sister's

children) IV

Tjimmia

(daughter's child) V

In the Wathi-Wathi system, we observe that in each generation there are two groups of males and two of females, corresponding to the two-phratry system, which are distinguished by names differing for each generation. Precisely the same arrangement is found in the four-class tribe. The four-class are therefore simply a systematisation of the terms of kinship in use under the two-phratry system.

Comparing now the eight-class with the four-class system, we do not see at a glance the essential principle of the former. The clue is given by the fact that classes I and IV, II and III in phratry A, I and II, III and IV in phratry B, are what we have termed a couple, that is to say stand in the relation of parent and child alternately. Marriage being between classes of corresponding numbers, it follows that Kumara-Bulthara and Appungerta-Umbitchana are the maternal and paternal grandparents of the man EGO. The grandparents of his wife are in the same classes but with reversal as regards the sex. Bulthara is the cousin of Appungerta, Kumara of Umbitchana and so on. We see therefore that, just as among the Dieri, a man may not marry his cousin, but must marry his second cousin, to use ordinary terms, which in this case are not misleading.

Looking now at the Ngerikudi system, we see that elder and younger sisters are distinguished in the generations of EGO and his parents. Possibly they are the eight-class tribe of Queensland to which Dr Howitt alludes. If not, we have in them a tribe one stage earlier than the southern Arunta, who have their four classes divided but as yet without any corresponding names.

The Dieri rule is that of the eight-class tribes. The person designated as the proper spouse for a male is his mother's mother's brother's daughter's daughter, in other words, the grandchildren of brother and sister intermarry. This, as we have already seen, is precisely the effect of the eight-class rules. We are therefore confronted with three possibilities. Either the Dieri regulations are aberrant or they have introduced these rules under the influence of the neighbouring eight-class system; or the eight-class organisation is a systematisation of the Dieri rule, adopted perhaps to facilitate the determination of marriageableness or otherwise in the case of persons residing at some distance from each other and therefore less likely to be acquainted with genealogical niceties than the members of a small community. Now if the second of these hypotheses is correct, it is by no means clear why the Dieri, having in view the attainment of the object of the eight-class system, did not simply adopt it; for this we can find no reason; and it is clearly more reasonable on other grounds to suppose that these regulations are of independent origin. But we know the eight-class rule to have arisen from a division within a generation, which the Dieri rule is not. Therefore the latter must be sporadic.

The same is probably true of the Urabunna, but here our information is very scanty and the precise working of the rules is far from clear. What happens is that an elder brother (A) of a woman (B) marries an elder sister (D) of a man (C); the daughter of this elder sister (D) is the proper mate for the son of the younger sister (B) of her husband; this younger sister's husband is the younger brother, C. Now the term elder brother, elder sister, does not seem to refer to age; the rule appears to be-once an elder brother, always an elder brother from generation to generation.

We learn from Spencer and Gillen, that all the women of a generation in the one phratry, and presumably within the right totem only, are to a man either nupa (= marriageable) or apillia. In the case given by Dr Howitt the younger sister is nupa to the younger brother, the elder to the elder brother; but we do not learn how elder and younger are distinguished, if it is not by descent. Apparently it cannot be by descent, however; for we find that the son of the younger brother and sister marries the daughter of the elder brother and sister. As to what would happen if the younger brother and sister have a daughter, the elder a son, we have no information; but apparently they cannot marry. Such a daughter must find the son of two people who stand to her father and mother as they stood to A and D.

From this example it is clear that the boundaries of the nupa and apillia groups are not fixed in a given group of women; it is not possible to divide the women and the men into elder brothers and sisters on the one hand, younger brothers and sisters on the other. But if this is the case, we are quite in the dark as to the meaning of the marriage regulations.

One thing however seems certain; viz., that the Urabunna regulations do not give the same result as the four-class regulations. With them the division is within the generation. There is no class of women, who, with their descendants, are the normal spouses of a class of men, with their descendants. That being so, the Urabunna case can hardly throw light on the genesis of the four-class system.

Among the Urabunna, however, like the Wathi-Wathi, we find the rule that a man must marry in his own generation; and this is prima facie the meaning of the four-class rule. It is true that the origin of the eight-class rule was not what its prima facie meaning suggests, viz., the desire to prevent the marriage of cousins, for we know that it originated in the distinction between elder and younger sisters. But no similar theory appears to fit the case of the four-class tribes. No division within the generation could possibly produce an alternation of generations.

The Red Indians have in many cases different names for the elder and younger sister; the Hausa impose on persons standing in these relations certain prohibitions and avoidances, which are not the same for both elder and younger; in Australia a man may speak freely to his elder sisters in blood, but only at a distance to his tribal ungaraitcha. To his younger sisters, blood and tribal, he may not speak save at such a distance that his features are indistinguishable. In many parts the elder brother has special rights with regard to the younger, and many similar customs might be quoted139.

The question why marriage within the generation-the rule of four-class and two-phratry tribes alike-should have come into existence is a complicated one and involves that of the origin of kinship terms. If we take a crucial case of kinship terminology, we find that a child applies the same term to its actual mother as to all the women whom its father might have married, to its potential mothers in fact. If therefore we have to choose between the gradual extension of the terms from the single family to the group or their original application to a group, this instance seems decisive in favour of the latter theory.

Now if marriage was originally not "group" but individual, a question to be fully discussed in later chapters, we can hardly doubt that parent-child marriage was forbidden or perhaps instinctively avoided. But this would be equivalent to prohibiting marriage with one of a number of men or women embraced under a common kinship term. In the lower culture generally and especially among the Australians there is a tendency to follow things out to their logical conclusions. If this were done in the present case, the result would be to extend the prohibition to all the persons embraced under the kinship term.

In any case the natural tendency in a small group would be to marry within the generation, and this might readily become crystallised in the kinship terms.

The eight-class system, as we have seen, resulted from the distinction between elder and younger sister. What is the meaning of this and what analogies do we find to it?

Widely extended also are the systems of age-grades. In all parts of the world the men, and sometimes the women, are or have been divided into associations, to which reference was made in Chapter I, which begin by being co-extensive with the tribe for all practical purposes, since all pass through the initiation ceremonies. The various initiation ceremonies during what may be termed the involuntary stage of these associations, no less than in their later form of secret societies, determine the rights and duties of the individuals who undergo them. The period at which they take place is determined, broadly speaking, by the age of the individual. It is therefore clear that for the peoples in the lower stage of culture considerations of age are of the highest importance.

We find that in practice the elder brother has much authority, both over the younger brother and the sister. In Victoria he decides whom they are to marry. As we have seen in the tables of terms, the Wathi-Wathi man distinguishes both elder and younger of either sex by special terms, which points to their having special rights or duties140.

If therefore we cannot see why primitive man should have enacted that the elder rather than the younger, or the daughter of the elder rather than the daughter of the younger, should be preferred, it is at any rate of a piece with his other customs.

From the terms of kinship tabulated above various conclusions have been drawn. It will be seen that a man applies to all the women in the other phratry on the level of his generation the same term as he applies to his actual wife. On this basis it has been argued that at one time all the men in one phratry were united in marriage with all the women in the other within the limits of the generation. Before this again a stage of absolute promiscuity is supposed to have existed. This alternative explanation of the kinship organisations demands to be considered.

138 J. A. I. XIV, 354; N. Queensl. Eth. Bull. VI, 6; Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes, p. 90.

139 Morgan, in Smithsonian Contr. vol. XVII; Globus, LXIX, 3; Nat. Tribes, pp. 88-9.

140 For lists of tribes where this distinction is found see Mathew, Eaglehawk, p. 223-4.

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