Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia | Page 6

of some of the
transitional forms. As we have seen, it is on considerations of either
consanguinity or kinship that many marriage prohibitions are based.
Marriage prohibitions depend broadly on three kinds of considerations:
(1) Kinship, intermarriage being forbidden to members of the same
kinship group; a brief introductory sketch of the nature and distribution
of kinship groups will be found below. (2) Locality. In New Guinea,
parts of Australia, Melanesia, Africa, and possibly elsewhere, local
exogamy is found. By this is meant that the resident in one place is
bound to go outside his own group for a mate, and may perhaps be
bound to seek a spouse in a specified locality. This kind of organisation
is in Australia almost certainly an offshoot of kinship organisation (see
p. 10), and is _primâ facie_ due to the same cause in other areas. (3)
(_a_) consanguinity, and (_b_) affinity. The first of these
considerations is regulative of marriage even in Australia, where the

influence of kinship organisations is in the main supreme in these
matters. We learn from Roth and other authorities that blood cousins,
children of own brother and sister, may not marry in North-West
Central Queensland, although the kinship regulations designate them as
the proper spouses one for the other. (_b_) Considerations of affinity,
the relations set up by marriage, do not affect the status of the parties,
so far as the legality of marriage is concerned, till a somewhat higher
stage is reached.
In the present work we are concerned with kinship groups and the
marriage regulations based on them. A kinship group, whether it be a
totem kin, phratry, class, or other form of association, is a fraction of a
tribe; and before we proceed to deal with kinship organisations, it will
be necessary to say a few words on the nature of the tribe and the
family. In Australia the tribe is a local aggregate, composed of friendly
groups speaking the same language and owning corporately or
individually the land to which the tribe lays claim. A change of tribe is
effected by marriage plus removal, and possibly by simple residence;
children belong to the tribe among which their parents reside. In the
ordinary tribe each member seems to apply to every other member one
or other of the kinship terms; and this no doubt accounts for the feeling
of tribal solidarity already mentioned. There are however certain tribes
in which the marriage regulations, as with the Urabunna, so split the
intermarrying fractions, that the tribe is, as it were, divided into
water-tight compartments; how far kinship terms are applied under
these circumstances our information does not say.
The tribe is defined by American anthropologists as a union of hordes
or clans for common defence under a chief. The American tribe differs
in two respects, at least, from the Australian tribe; in the first place,
marriage outside the tribe is exceptional in America and common in
Australia; in the second place, the stranger gains entrance to the
American tribe only by adoption; and we may probably add, thirdly,
that the American tribe does not invariably lay claim to landed property
or hunting rights.
The tribe is subdivided in various ways. In addition to the various

forms of natal and other associations, there is, at any rate in Australia, a
local organisation; the local group is often the owner of a portion of the
tribal area. This local group again falls into a number of families (in the
European sense), and the land is parcelled out among them in some
cases, in others it may be the property of individuals. But there is a
great lack of clearness with regard to the bodies or persons in whom
landed property is vested. The composition of the local group varies
according to the customs of residence after marriage, and the rules by
which membership of the kinship organisation is determined. These
two forces acting together may produce two types of local group: (1)
the mixed group, in which persons of various kinship organisations are
scattered at random; (2) the kin group, in which either all the males or
all the females together with the children are members of one kinship
organisation.
Save in the rare instances of non-exogamous kinship groups, the family
necessarily contains one member, at least, whose kin is not the same as
that of the remainder; this is either the husband or the wife, according
as descent is reckoned in the female or the male line; where polygyny is
practised, this unity may go no further than the phratry or the class,
each wife being of a different totem kin.
Although it frequently happens that the children belong to the kin
which through one of the parents or otherwise exercises the supreme
authority in the family, it is