Australian Marriage

. . . . [In the Urabunna tribe we can] distinguish women of three different levels of generation; the Nowillie belong to that of the father and to still older generations; the Biaka to younger ones and the Apillia and Nupa to the same generation as the individual concerned. A man can only marry women who stand to him in the relationship of Nupa, that is, are the children of his mother’s elder brothers blood or tribal, or, what is the same thing, of his father’s elder sisters. The mother of a man’s Nupa is Nowillie to him, and any woman of that relationship is Mura to him and he to her, and they must not speak to one another. In connection with this it must be remembered that it is not necessary for the woman to actually have a daughter for her to be Nowillie and so Mura to the man, the very fact that she was born a sister of his father places her in this relationship. In the same way Nupa, the term applied to a woman with whom it is lawful for a man to have marital relations, and which is thus the term applied to a wife, cannot, strictly speaking, be regarded as at all the equivalent of the latter term. It is applied indiscriminately by a dingo man to each and every member of a group of water-hen women with one or more of whom he may perhaps actually have marital relations, but with any one of whom it is lawful and possible for him to do so. When we say possible for him to have such marital relations, we mean that any one of these women might be assigned to him, as they all, in fact, stand to him in the relationship of potential wives.

The word Nupa is without any exception applied indiscriminately by men of a particular group to women of another group, and vice versa, and simply implies a member of a group of possible wives or husbands as the case may be.

While this is so, it must be remembered that in actual practice each individual man has one or perhaps two of these Nupa women who are specially attached to himself and live with him in his own camp. In addition to them, however, each man has certain Nupa women, beyond the limited number just referred to, with whom he stands in the relationship of Piraungaru. To women who are the Piraungaru of a man (the term is a reciprocal one), the latter has access under certain conditions, so that they may be considered as accessory wives.

The result is that in the Urabunna tribe every woman is the special Nupa of one particular man, but at the same time he has no special right to her as she is the Piraungaru of certain other men who also have the right of access to her. Looked at from the point of view of the man his Piraungaru are a limited number of the women who stand in the relationship of Nupa to him. There is no such thing as one man having the exclusive right to one woman; the elder brothers, or Nuthie, of the latter, in whose hands the matter lies, will give one man a preferential right, but at the same time they will give other men of the same group a secondary right to her. Individual marriage does not exist either in name or in practice in the Urabunna tribe.

The initiation in regard to establishing the relationship of Piraungaru between a man and a woman must be taken by the elder brothers, but the arrangement must receive the sanction of the old men of the group before it can take effect. As a matter of actual practice, this relationship is usually established at times when considerable numbers of the tribe are gathered together to perform important ceremonies, and when these and other matters of importance which require the consideration of the old men are discussed and settled. The number of a man’s Piraungaru depend entirely upon the measure of his power and popularity; if he be what is called a word which implies much the same as our word "influential," he will have a considerable number, if he be insignificant or unpopular, then he will meet with scanty treatment.

A woman may be Piraungaru to a number of men, and as a general rule men and women who are Piraungaru to one another are to be found living grouped together. A man may always lend his wife, that is, the woman to whom he has the first right, to another man, provided always he be her Nupa, without the relationship of Piraungaru existing between the two, but unless this relationship exists, no man has any right of access to a woman. Occasionally, but rarely, it happens that a man attempts to prevent his wife’s Piraungaru from having access to her, but this leads to a fight and the husband is looked upon as churlish. When visiting distant groups where, in all likelihood, the husband has no Piraungaru, it is customary for other men of his own class to offer him the loan of one or more of their Nupa women, and a man, besides lending a woman over whom he has the first right, will also lend his Piraungaru.

All the children of women who are Nupa to any man, whether they are his special Nupas, or Piraungaru, or Nupa women with whom he has no marital relations, call him Nia, and he calls them Biaka. Whilst naturally there is a closer tie between a man and the children of the women who habitually live in camp with him, still there is no name to distinguish between the children of his special Nupa and those of any other woman to whom he is Nupa, but with whom he has no marital relations. All Biaka, or children of men who are at the same level in the generation and belong to the same class and totem, are regarded as the common children of these men, and in the same way the latter are regarded collectively by the Biaka as their Nia.

It will thus be seen that in the Urabunna tribe we have apparently an organisation closely similar to that described by Mr. Howitt as occurring in the Dieri tribe with which it is associated locally. It will also be evident that in both these tribes there is what can only be described as a modified form of group-marriage, the important features of which may be summarised as follows. We have:—

(1) A group of men all of whom belong to one moiety of the tribe who are regarded as the Nupas or possible husbands of a group of women who belong to the other moiety of the tribe.

(2) One or more women specially allotted to one particular man, each standing in the relationship of Nupa to the other, but no man hating exclusive right to any one woman, only a preferential right.

(3) A group of men who stand in the relationship of Piraungaru to a group of women selected from amongst those to whom they are Nupa. In other words, a group of women of a certain designation are actually the wives of a group of men of another designation.

A curious feature in the social organisation of the Urabunna tribe is the restriction in accordance with which a man’s wife must belong to what we may call the senior side of the tribe so far as he himself is concerned. He is only Nupa to the female children of the elder brothers of his mother, or what is exactly the same thing, to those of the elder sisters of his father. It follows from this that a woman is only Nupa to men on the junior side of the tribe so far as she is concerned. This marked distinction between elder and younger brothers and sisters is a striking feature, not only in tribes such as the Urabunna, in which descent is counted in the female line, but also in tribes such as the Arunta in which descent is counted in the male line. . . . .

. . . . In connection with this, it may be worth while noting that amongst the Australian natives with whom we have come in contact, the feeling of sexual jealousy is not developed to anything like the extent to which it would appear to be in many other savage tribes. For a man to have unlawful intercourse with any woman arouses a feeling which is due not so much to jealousy as to the fact that the delinquent has infringed a tribal custom.

Now and again sexual jealousy as between a man and woman will come into play, but as a general rule this is a feeling which is undoubtedly subservient to that of the influence of tribal custom, so far as the latter renders it obligatory for a man to allow other men, at certain times, to have free access to his wife, or so far as it directs him to lend his wife to some other individual as a mark of personal favour to the latter.

Whilst jealousy is not unknown amongst these tribes, the point of importance in respect to the matter under discussion is that it is not strongly enough developed to prevent the occurrence of general intercourse on certain occasions, or the lending of wives at other times; it is, indeed, a factor which need not be taken into serious account in regard to the question of sexual relations amongst the Central Australian tribes. A man in these tribes may be put to death for wrongful intercourse, but at the same time this is no proof of the fact that sexual jealousy exists; it is a serious offence against tribal laws, and its punishment has no relation to the feelings of the individual.

We may now pass on to discuss briefly the customs relating to marriage which have already been enumerated, and in so doing, as we have often to refer to the lending of wives, it must be remembered that we use this term only as applying to the private lending of a woman to some other individual by the man to whom she has been allotted, and do not refer to the custom at corrobborees which has just been dealt with, and which, as it is in reality obligatory and not optional, cannot be regarded as a lending in the same sense in which the term is used in connection with the former custom.

In his well-known work dealing with human marriage, Westermarck has brought together, from various sources, facts relating to similar customs, and, while discussing the hypothesis of promiscuity from an adverse point of view, has endeavoured to explain them as due to various causes. These we may conveniently discuss, examining each briefly in the endeavour to ascertain whether it will or will not serve to explain the marriage customs as we find them in Australian tribes, of which those quoted above may be taken as typical examples. It must be understood that we are here simply dealing with this question so far as the evidence derived from these Australian tribes is concerned.

The first explanation offered is that in certain instances the practice is evidently associated with phallic worship, as, for example, when in the valley of the Ganges, the virgins had to offer themselves up in the temples of Juggernaut. This implies a state of social development very different from, and much more advanced than, anything met with amongst the Australian natives, and the two customs are evidently quite distinct from one another. It is doubtful how far phallic worship can be said to exist amongst the Australian natives.

In other cases where the bride is for a night considered the common property of the guests at a wedding feast, Westermarck suggests that "It may have been a part of the nuptial entertainment—a horrible kind of hospitality no doubt, but quite in accordance with savage ideas, and analogous to another custom which occurs much more frequently—I mean the practice of lending wives." This presupposes, and in fact is co-existent with, what does not take place in Australian tribes, and that is a more or less regular marriage ceremony at which guests assemble, and such an organised proceeding cannot be said to exist amongst the tribes with which we are dealing; moreover, apart from this, which is not perhaps a very serious objection, though it seems to imply a state of development considerably in advance of that of the Australian natives, there still remains what appears to us to be the insuperable difficulty of accounting, on this hypothesis, for the fact that this "hospitality" amongst Australian tribes is only allowed to a limited number of individuals, all of whom must stand in some particular relationship to the woman.

Westermarck further suggests that it is analogous to the custom of lending wives. Now, amongst the Australian natives wives are certainly lent, but only under strict rules; in the Arunta tribe for example no man will lend his wife to any one who does not belong to the particular group with which it is lawful for her to have marital relations—she is in fact, only lent to a man whom she calls Unawa, just as she calls her own husband, and though this may undoubtedly be spoken of as an act of hospitality, it may with equal justice be regarded as evidence of the very clear recognition of group relationship, and as evidence also in favour of the former existence of group marriage.

It is quite true, on the other hand, that a native will sometimes offer his wife, as an act of hospitality, to a white man; but this has nothing to do with the lending of wives which has just been dealt with, and the difference between the two acts is of a radical nature. The white man stands outside the laws which govern the native tribe, and therefore to lend him a wife of any designation does not imply the infringement of any custom. This is purely and simply, as Westermarck points out, an act of hospitality, but the very fact that he will only lend his wife, if he does so at all, to another native of a particular designation, seems to at once imply that we are dealing with a custom at the root of which lies something much more than merely an idea of hospitality. The lending of women to men outside the tribe who are not amenable to its laws and customs is one thing, to lend them to men who are members of the tribe is quite another thing, and the respective origins of the Customs in these two radically different cases are probably totally distinct—one is no doubt to be explained on the hypothesis of hospitality, the other is not. The hypothesis of hospitality does not, in short, appear to us to be capable of explaining the fact that both at marriage and at certain other times, it is only particular men who are allowed access to particular women.¹

A third hypothesis suggested to account for certain customs such as the "jus primae noctis," accorded to chiefs and particular individuals, is that "it may be a right taken forcibly by the stronger, or it may be a privilege voluntarily given to the chief man as a mark of esteem; in either case it depends upon his authority." It will be generally admitted that here again no such explanation will account for the customs as met with amongst Australian tribes. In the first place, while the elder men are undoubtedly accorded certain privileges, there is not in any Australian tribe any one individual to whom the term chief can, with strict propriety, be applied, arid in the second place the privilege with which we are dealing is by no means enjoyed wholly by the elder men. Unless the leading man in any group stands in a particular relationship to the woman, he has no more right of access to her than the most insignificant man in the group.

A fourth hypothesis is suggested in connection with the right of access granted to men. who have assisted the bridegroom in the capture of the woman. "In such cases the ’jus primae noctis’ is a reward for a good turn done, or perhaps, as Mr. McLennan suggests, a common war right, exercised by the captors of the woman." There is undoubtedly much to be said in favour of this, but there are objections applying to it as to the second hypothesis dealt with. In the first place, so far as Australia is concerned, it is founded upon such vague statements as that quoted by Brough Smyth upon the authority of Mr. J. M. Davis. Mr. Davis says, "when a young man is entitled to have a lubra, he organises a party of his friends, and they make a journey into the territories of some other tribe, and there lie in wait, generally in the evening, by a waterhole, where the lubras come for water. Such of the lubras as may be required are then pounced upon, and, if they attempt to make any resistance, are struck down insensible and dragged off. There is also this peculiarity, that in any instance where the abduction has taken place for the benefit of some one individual, each of the members of the party claims, as a right, a privilege which the intended husband has no power to refuse."

Before it is safe, or indeed possible, to draw any conclusion from this, we require to know exactly who the men were, that is in what relationship they stood to the man whom they were assisting. The more detailed is the information acquired in respect to the Australian tribes, the more clearly is it made apparent that on expeditions such as this, when the object in view is the obtaining of a wife, the man only asks the assistance of men who stand in certain definite relationships to himself. It does not at all follow, that, because a man forms a member of a party which captures a woman, he is therefore allowed to have access to her. In the tribes which we have investigated, marriage customs regulate the whole proceedings; the equivalent classes in the tribes are well known and, supposing for example, a party consists of men belonging to two classes, which we will call A and B, and a woman is captured belonging, say, to a third class C, which intermarries with Class A, but not with Class B, then no man in the party, if there be any such present, who belongs to Class B will be allowed, or will attempt, to have access to her. When we have merely such general statements as that quoted above from the report of Mr. Davis, it may look very much as if there did exist such a thing as "a common war-right, exercised by the captors of a woman," but the more detailed our information becomes, the less evidence of any such "common war-right" do we find, and in the Australian tribes generally it may be regarded as very doubtful if any such right really exists. Amongst the tribes with which we are acquainted it certainly does not.

Marriage by capture is again, at the present day, whatever it may have been in the past, by no means the rule in Australian tribes, and too much stress has been laid upon this method. It is only comparatively rarely that a native goes and seizes upon some lubra in a neighbouring tribe; by far the most common method of getting a wife is by means of an arrangement made between brothers or fathers of the respective men and women, whereby a particular woman is assigned to a particular man. Marriage by capture may indeed be regarded as one of the most exceptional methods of obtaining a wife amongst the natives at the present day. We are not of course referring here to customs which may, in many tribes, be explained as indicative of a former existence of the practice; whether, in the remote past, capture was the prevailing method can only be a matter of conjecture, but the customs at marriage in the tribes here dealt with —and it may be pointed out that these occupy a very large area in the centre of the continent, so that we are by no means dealing with an isolated example—do not seem to indicate that they owe their origin to anything like the recognition of the right of captor, as captor.

The fifth hypothesis is that of promiscuity. Certainly at the present day, so far as we can tell, there is some definite system of marriage in all Australian tribes and promiscuity, as a normal feature, does not exist. At the same time none of the hypotheses put forward by Westermarck will serve to explain the curious and very strongly marked features of the marriage customs, the essential points in which are, (1) that men have access to women who are strictly forbidden to them at ordinary times, and (2) that it is only certain definite men standing in certain particular relationships to the woman who thus have access.

To make use of the same analogy again, it seems that in the evolution of the social organisation and customs of a savage tribe, such features as those which we are now discussing are clearly comparable to the well known rudimentary organs, which are often of great importance in understanding the phylogeny of the animal in which at some time of its development they are present. Such rudimentary structures are emblematic of parts which are perhaps only transient, or, at most, imperfectly developed in the animal, but their presence shows that they were, at some past time, more highly developed and functional in ancestral stages.

It is thus perhaps permissible to speak of "rudimentary customs," in just the same way, and with just the same significance attached to them, in which we speak of "rudimentary organs" and we may recognise in them an abbreviated record of a stage passed through in the development of the customs of the tribe amongst which they are found. Such rudimentary customs, like those which are associated with the Maypole for example, point back to a time when they were more highly developed than they are at present, and when the customs were more or less widely different from those now prevailing.

The origin of the marriage customs of the tribes now dealt with cannot possibly, so it seems to us, be explained as due either to a feeling of hospitality, or to the right of captors; nor can they be explained, as in certain cases the "jus primae noctis" can, as a right forcibly taken by the stronger from the weaker. There can be no reasonable doubt but that at one time the marriage arrangements of the Australian tribes were in a more primitive state than they are at the present day, and the customs With which we are dealing can be most simply explained as rudimentary ones serving, possibly in a very abbreviated way, to show the former existence of conditions which are no longer prevalent.

In regard to the marriage customs of the tribes now dealt with, we have the following facts. In the first place we have a group of women who are, what is called Unawa, to a group of men and vice versa, that is, all of these men and women are reciprocally marriageable. This, it may be observed, is not a matter of assumption but of actual fact. In the Arunta tribe for example a Panunga man will call the Purula whom he actually marries Unawa, but he has no name to distinguish her from all the other Purula women whom he does not actually marry, but any of whom he might lawfully marry. Further than this, while he has no actual right of access to any woman, except his own special Unawa woman or women, there are times, as, for example, during special ceremonies, or when he is visiting a distant group, when a woman is lent to him, but that woman must be one who is Unawa to him. In other words, we have individual marriage in which a man is limited in his choice to women of a particular group, each one of whom stands to him in the relationship of a possible wife, and with whom it is lawful for him, with the consent of her special Unawa man, to have marital relations. However hospitably inclined a man may feel, he will never lend his wife to a man who does not belong to a group of men to each of whom she stands in the relationship of Unawa or possible wife. A Panunga man may lend his wife to another Panunga, but for a man of any other class to have marital relations with her would be a gross offence.

In the second place, we have certain customs concerned with marriage which are of what we may call a transient nature. Taking the Kaitish tribe as an example, we find that, when marriage actually takes place, the operation of Atna-ariltha-kuma is performed by the elder sister of the woman, and that men of the following relationship have access to her in the order named: Ipmunna, that is individuals of the same moiety of the tribe as her own; mothers’ brothers’ sons; tribal elder and younger brothers; and lastly, men whom she might lawfully marry, but who have no right to her when once she becomes the property of a member of the group to which they belong. By referring to the tables already given, it will be seen that these men, if we take a particular example, say a Panunga woman, are Ungalla, Uknaria, Purula and Panunga. In other words, both men of her own, and of the moiety of the tribe to which she does not belong, have access to her, but only for a very limited time, and the same holds true in the case of all the tribes examined.

It will therefore be seen that (1) for a given time a woman has marital relations with men of both moieties of the tribe, and (2) that she may during her life, when once she has become the special wife of some individual man, have lawfully, but dependent always upon the consent of the latter, marital relations with any of the group of men to each and all of whom she stands in the relationship of Unawa.

These are the actual facts with which we have to deal, and the only possible explanation of them appears to us to lie along the following lines. We are here of course only dealing with those tribes in which descent is counted in the male line, the remaining tribe—the Urabunna—in which descent is counted in the female line, will be referred to subsequently. It appears to us that, in the present customs relating to marriage amongst this section of the Australian natives, we have clear evidence of three grades of development. We have (1) the present normal condition of individual marriage with the occasional existence of marital relations between the individual wife and other men of the same group as that to which her husband belongs, and the occasional existence also of still wider marital relations; (2) we have evidence of the existence at a prior time of actual group marriage; and (3) we have evidence of the existence at a still earlier time of still wider marital relations.

The evidence in favour of the hypothesis, that the present marriage system of such a tribe as the Arunta is based upon the former actual existence of group marriage, seems to us to be incontestable. The one most striking point in regard to marriage at the present day is that a man of one group is absolutely confined in his choice of a wife to women of a particular group, and that it is lawful for him to marry any woman of that group. When once he has secured a woman she is his private property, but he may, and often does, lend her to other men, but only if they belong to his own group. Further still, the natives have two distinct words to denote on the one hand surreptitious connection between a man and a woman who is not his own wife, but belongs to the proper group from which his wife comes, and, on the other hand, connection between a man and a woman belonging to forbidden groups. The first is called Atna-nylkna, the second is Iturka. In the face of the facts which have been brought forward, we see no possible explanation other than that the present system is derived from an earlier one in which the essential feature was actual group marriage.

When we turn to the Urabunna tribe we find the evidence still clearer. Here we have only two classes, viz., Matthurie and Kirarawa. A Matthurie man marries a Kirarawa woman, and vice versa. There is no such thing as an individual wife. Every Matthurie man stands in the relationship of Nupa to a group of Kirarawa women, and they are, in the same way, Nupa to him. Every man has, or at least may have, one or more of these Nupa women allotted to him as wives, and to whom he has the first but not the exclusive right of access. To certain Nupa women other than his own wives he stands in the relationship of Piraungaru, and they to him. These Piraungaru are the wives of other men of his own group, just as his own wives are Piraungaru to some of the latter men, and we thus find in the Urabunna tribe that a group of women actually have marital relations with a group of men. Westermarck has referred in his work to what he calls "the pretended group-marriages" of the Australians. In the case of the Urabunna there is no pretence of any kind, and exactly the same remark holds true of the neighbouring Dieri tribe. . . . .

It must be remembered, of course, that any one woman may be Piraungaru to a larger number of men than the two who are represented in the diagram. The relation of Piraungaru is established between any woman and men to whom she is Nupa— that is, to whom she may be lawfully married by her Nuthie or elder brothers. If a group be camped together, and, as a matter of fact groups of individuals who are Piraungaru to one another do usually camp together, then in the case of F1, her special Nupa man M1 has the first right to her, but if he be absent then M2 arid M3 have the right to her; or, if M1 be present, the two have the right to her subject to his consent, which is practically never withheld.¹

It is difficult to see how this system can be regarded otherwise than as an interesting stage in the transition from group to individual marriage. Each woman has one special individual who has the first right of access to her, but she has also a number of individuals of the same group who have a right to her either, if the first man be present, with his consent or, in his absence, without any restriction whatever.

In this tribe, just as in all the others, connection with women of the wrong group is a most serious offence, punishable by death or very severe treatment.

The evidence in favour of the third grade, that is the existence of wider marital relations than those indicated by the form of group marriage which has just been discussed, is naturally more indefinite and difficult to deal with. Westermarck, after having discussed at length the hypothesis of promiscuity, says: "Having now examined all the groups of social phenomena adduced as evidence for the hypothesis of promiscuity, we have found that, in point of fact, they are no evidence. Not one of the customs alleged as relics of an ancient state of indiscriminate cohabitation of the sexes or ’communal marriage’ presupposes the former existence of that state," and further on he says: "It is not, of course, impossible that, among some people, intercourse between the sexes may have been almost promiscuous. But there is not a shred of genuine evidence for the notion that promiscuity ever formed a general stage in the social history of mankind."

It need scarcely be pointed out how totally opposed this conclusion of Mr. Westermarck’s is to that arrived at by other workers, and we think there can be little doubt but that Mr. Westermarck is in error with regard to the question of group marriage amongst the Australian natives.

We are here simply concerned with the question as to whether there is any evidence in favour of the supposition that in former times there existed wider marital relations amongst the Australian natives than is indicated in the system of group marriage, the evidence in favour of which has been dealt with. If any were forthcoming, there can be little doubt but that, a priori, we should expect to find it in the nature of what we have called a rudimentary custom, such as might be met with at the actual time of marriage, that is, when a woman is handed over to become the possession of one man. None of the hypotheses brought forward by Westermarck to explain the customs on this occasion can, we think, be considered as at all satisfactory in regard to those of the tribes with which we are dealing. The one striking feature of the marriage customs is that particular men representative of the woman’s own moiety, and of the half of the tribe to which she does not belong, have access to her, and always in a particular order, according to which those who, in the present state of the tribe, have lawfully the right to her come last.

These customs, together with the one already dealt with, referring to a general intercourse during the performance of certain corrobborees are, it appears to us, only capable of any satisfactory explanation on the hypothesis that they indicate the temporary recognition of certain general rights which existed in the time prior to that of the form of group marriage of which we have such clear traces yet lingering amongst the tribes. We do not mean that they afford direct evidence of the former existence of actual promiscuity, but they do afford evidence leading in that direction, and they certainly point back to a time when there existed wider marital relations than obtain at the present day—wider, in fact, than those which are shown in the form of group marriage from which the present system is derived. On no other hypothesis yet advanced do the customs connected with marriage, which are so consistent in their general nature and leading features from tribe to tribe, appear to us to be capable of satisfactory explanation.—n/a SPENCER n/a n/a AND GILLEN n/a, , 61–65; 91–111.

¹ It may perhaps be advisable to point out that in many cases in which apparently women are lent (in the sense in which we use the word, which is the sense in which it is generally used in this connection) indiscriminately, a knowledge of details would show that this was not so. In regard to Australian tribes it is very difficult in most cases, to find out anything like exact details from accounts already published, and general statements such as that a party of men have the privilege of access to a woman are valueless unless we know the exact conditions or relative status of the individual men and the women. In the nine tribes examined by us we have found that intercourse of this nature is strictly regulated by custom.

¹ A diagram is here omitted. M.=male, F.=female