From this hypothetic
beginning, primitive marriage may be traced through the various observed
stages of monogamy and polygamy and concubinage and wife-subordination,
through savagery and barbarism and into civilization, with its curious
combination of exoteric monogamy and esoteric promiscuity. Fortunately the
burden of the proof of this evolution does not now rest wholly on the
evidence obtained among the American aborigines; for Westermarck has
recently reviewed the records of observation among the primitive peoples
of many lands, and has found traces of the same sequence in all.(58) Thus
the evolution of marriage, like that of other human institutions, is from
the simple and definite to the complex and variable; i.e., from
approximate or complete monogamy through polygamy to a mixed status of
undetermined signification; or from the mechanical to the spontaneous; or
from the involuntary to the voluntary; or from the provincial to the
cosmopolitan.
As implied in several foregoing paragraphs, and as clearly set forth in
various publications by Powell, tribal society falls into two classes or
stages--(1) clan organization and (2) gentile organization, these stages
corresponding respectively to savagery and barbarism, strictly defined.
At the time of discovery, most of the American Indians were in the upper
stages of savagery and the lower stages of barbarism, as defined by
organization; among some tribes descent was reckoned in the female line,
though definite matriarchies have not been discovered; among several
tribes descent was and still is reckoned in the male line, and among all
of the tribes thus far investigated the patriarchal system is found.
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