Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia | Page 5

consanguinity physiological; in thus stating the
case we are concerned only with broad principles. In practice the idea
of consanguinity is modified in two ways and a sociological element is
introduced, which has gone far to obscure the difference between these
two systems of laying the foundations of human society. In the first
place, custom determines the limits within which consanguinity is
supposed to exist; or, in other words, at what point the descendants of a
given ancestor cease to be blood relations. In the second place
erroneous physiological ideas modify the ideas held as to actually
existing consanguine relations, as we conceive them. The latter
peculiarity does not affect the enquiry to any extent; it merely limits the
sphere within which consanguinity plays a part, side by side with
kinship, in moulding social institutions. If an Australian tribe, for
example, distinguishes the actual mother of a child from the other
women who go by the same kinship name, they may or may not
develop on parallel lines their ideas as to the relation of the child and

his real father. Some relation will almost certainly be found to exist
between them; but it by no means follows that it arises from any idea of
consanguinity. In other communities potestas and not consanguinity is
held to determine the relations of the husband of a woman to her
offspring; and it is a matter for careful enquiry how far the same holds
good in Australia, where the fact of fatherhood is in some cases
asserted to be unrecognised by the natives. In speaking of
consanguinity therefore, it must be made quite clear whether
consanguinity according to native ideas or according to our own ideas
is meant.
The customary limitations and extensions of consanguinity, on the
other hand, cause more inconvenience. They are of course sometimes
combined with the other kind, which we may term quasi-physiological,
but with this combination we need not deal, as we are concerned to
analyse only on broad lines the nature of these elements. Just as, with
us, kinship and consanguinity largely coincide, so with primitive
peoples are the kinship organisations immense, if one-sided, extensions
of blood relationship, at all events in theory. In many parts of the world
a totem kin traces its descent to a single male or female ancestor; and
even where, as in Australia, this is not the case, blood brotherhood is
expressly asserted of the totem kin[3].
Entry into the totem kin may often be gained by adoption, though not
apparently in Australia, and the blood relationship thus becomes an
artificial one and partakes, even if the initial assumption be accepted as
true, far more of the nature of kinship than of consanguinity. In
Australia, and possibly in other parts of the world, there is a further
extension of natal kinship. Although the tribe is not regarded as
descended from a single pair, its members are certainly reckoned as of
kin to each other in some way; the situation may be summarised by
saying that under one of the systems of kinship organisation (the
two-phratry), half of the members of the tribe in a given generation are
related to a given man, A, and the other half to his wife. More than one
observer assures us that there is a solidarity about the tribe, which
regards some, if not all other tribes as "wild blacks," though it may be
on terms of friendship and alliance with certain neighbours, and feel

itself united to them by a bond analogous to, though weaker than, that
which holds its own members together.
If however a homonymous totem kin exists even in a hostile or
absolutely unknown tribe, a member of it will be regarded, as we learn
from Dr Howitt, as a brother. How this view is reconciled with the
belief that the tribe in question is alien and in no way akin to that in
which the other totem kin is found, is a question of some interest for
which there appears to be no answer in the literature concerning the
Australian aborigines.
Even if, therefore, we had reason to believe that all totem kins in a
given tribe or group of tribes could make out a good case for their
descent from single male or female ancestors, which is far from being
the case, we should still have to recognise that kinship and not
consanguinity is the proper term to apply to the relationship between
members of the same group. For, as we have seen, it may be recruited
from without in some cases, while in others, persons who are
demonstrably not of the same blood, are regarded as totem-brethren by
virtue of the common name.
Enough has now been said to make clear the difference between
consanguinity and kinship and to exemplify the nature