III. The Origin of the Form of Capture

The question now arises, what is the meaning and what the origin of a ceremony so widely spread, that already on the threshold of our inquiry, the reader must be prepared to find it connected with some universal tendency of mankind?

Those who approach the subject with minds undisturbed by the views of Festus and Muller will most naturally think, in the first instance, of an early period of lawlessness, in which it was with women as with other kinds of property, that he should take who had the power, and he should keep who could. And it is a trite fact, that women captured in war have universally, in barbarous times and countries, been appropriated as wives, or as worse. But little consideration is needed to see that the symbol implies much more than this; for it is impossible to believe that the mere lawlessness of savages should be consecrated into a legal symbol, or to assign a reason—could this be believed—why a similar symbol should not appear in transferences of other kinds of property. To a certain extent, indeed, the first impression must be held to be a correct one. We cannot escape the conclusion that there was a stage in the history of tribes observing this custom when wives were usually obtained by theft or force. And unless the practice of getting wives by theft or force was so general where it prevailed that we may say it was almost invariable, it is incredible that such an association should be established in the popular mind between marriage and the act of rapine, as would afterwards require the pretence of rapine to give validity to the ceremony of marriage. It must have been the system of certain tribes to capture women—necessarily the women of other tribes—for wives. But we may be sure that such a system could not have sprung out of the mere instinctive desire of savages to possess objects cherished by a foreign tribe; it must have had a deeper source—to be sought for in their circumstances, their ideas of kinship, their tribal arrangements.

The fact that among savage tribes—whose normal relations with each other are those of war—a man could get a woman of a foreign tribe for his wife only by carrying her off, cannot, by itself, explain a symbolism which is so well established, so invariable, where it occurs at all. Where savages had women of their own whom they might marry, captive women would naturally become slaves or concubines rather than wives; the men would find their wives, or their chief wives, within the tribe; and the capture of women could never become so important in connection with marriage as to furnish a symbolism for all marriages to a later time. It may be doubted whether, in the circumstances supposed, the form of capture would, in a great number of cases, be bequeathed to more peaceful and friendly generations, even in the case of intertribal marriages—in which only the form could be expected to appear; and at any rate these, when first made subjects of friendly compact, would be too infrequent for their ceremonies to override those which were indigenous, and to be transferred into the general marriage law. Much more likely is it that indigenous marriage forms should be employed in the celebration of intertribal marriages when they occurred. It is a fortiori, that in the circumstances which we have been considering—those of tribes among which as among civilized peoples, the law of marriage is matrimonium liberum—no system of capturing women for wives could have arisen.

What circumstances then, what social idea, existing among rude tribes, could produce a system of capturing the women of foreign tribes for wives? It will be convenient, that before we make the answer we have to offer to this question, we should consider the condition, in respect of marriage, of a class of tribes with which we believe this system did not originate.

It is clear, that if members of a family or tribe are forbidden to intermarry with members of other families or tribes, and free to marry among themselves, there is not room for fraud or force in the constitution of marriage. The bridegroom and bride will live together in amity among their common relatives. With the consent of her relations, a woman will become the wife of a suitor peaceably. If a suitor forces her, or carries her off against her will or that of her friends, he must separate from these to escape their vengeance. It follows that, among tribes of this class, which we shall call endogamous tribes betrothal followed by cohabitation at first, and, at a more advanced stage, betrothal and a religious or other formal ceremony of appropriation of the spouses to one another, are the natural modes of marriage. To the practice of such tribes are to be referred the two modes of constituting marriage of which the Roman usus and confarreatio may be taken as the types. These are at any rate the forms appropriate to marriages between members of the same family-group or tribe; and, so far as appears at present, they could only have originated among endogamous tribes, or—in the case of marriage within the tribe—among tribes which allowed their members to marry among themselves or into other groups indifferently.

The form of marriage by gift, or that by sale and purchase, could never have originated with purely endogamous tribes. A tribe, in a primitive age, is just a group of kindred—more or less numerous, with common interests and possessions, where they have any other property besides their women; living together as an ungoverned fraternity, or under the headship of a pater-familias. Obviously within such a group there can be neither barter nor sale—neither the selling nor the buying of wives. On a marriage between two of its members, there is no foreign interest to be consulted or satisfied.

It is different if we conceive a number of such tribes aggregated in a political union to which the caste principle of its parts is extended; so that, while formerly the members of each could only marry among themselves, the members of all have acquired the right of intermarrying with one another. In forming this conception, we pass from marriages within the tribe to inter-tribal marriages. In an inter-tribal marriage one tribe loses a woman, the other acquires one; or, as sometimes happens, one loses a man, the other acquires one. In either case, there is room and a necessity for compensation. Such a marriage must be a subject of bargain, a matter of sale and purchase. And we may now perceive that the marriages of which coemptio may be taken as the civilised type, have their origin in intermarriages between distinct family groups or tribes.

But it is not in a primitive age, not until after a very considerable advance has been made in civility, that tribes are ever found joined in a political union. Such union indicates a state of friendliness between the tribes, brought about by common action for common objects. And should inter-tribal marriages come to be permitted among endogamous tribes, they could from the first be carried through by friendly negotiation. On the other hand, the degree of political union presupposed to explain the intermarriages must be such as to exclude the idea of the members of any tribe resorting to violence to obtain wives from any other. We conclude that, among this class of tribes, marriage by capture could have had no place. Still more certain is it that they could never come to form such an association between marriage and the act of rapine as would lead them to adopt the symbol of capture in marriage ceremonies; on the contrary, we should expect to find that they would, out of respect to immemorial usage in the case of marriages within the tribe, celebrate even their intertribal marriages—though really brought about by sale and purchase—by such ceremonies as had been customary among them in marriages between members of the tribe. And if the symbol of capture be ever found in the marriage ceremonies of an endogamous tribe, we may be sure that it is a relic of an early time at which the tribe was organised on another principle than that of endogamy.

And now let us postulate the existence of tribes, organised on what we shall call, for the want of a better name, the principle of exogamy—that is, which prohibited marriage within the tribe—and whose tribesmen were thus dependent on other tribes for their wives. It is obvious that inter-tribal marriages could only be peaceably arranged between tribes whose relations were friendly. But peace and friendship were unknown between separate groups or tribes in early times, except when they were forced to unite against common enemies. The sections of the same family—when it fell into sections—became enemies by the mere fact of separation. And while this state of enmity lasted, exogamous tribes never could get wives except by theft or force.

If it can be shown, firstly, that exogamous tribes exist, or have existed; and secondly, that in rude times the relations of separate tribes are uniformly, or almost uniformly, hostile, we have found a set of circumstances in which men could get wives only by capturing them—a social condition in which capture would be the necessary preliminary to marriage. And if it be shown in a reasonable number of well-authenticated cases that these conditions—exogamy as tribal law, and hostility as the prevailing relation of separate tribes towards each other—exist or have existed, accompanied, as might have been expected, by a system of capturing wives, we shall be justified in concluding—failing the appearance of any phenomena inconsistent with such an explanation—that the same conditions have existed in every case where the system of capture prevailed, or where the form of capture has been observed as a ceremony of marriage. Nothing more than this is necessary to satisfy the conditions of a sound hypothesis.

We are in a position to do this and more. We shall be able to point to many tribes which habitually capture or captured their wives from foreign tribes; to show that exogamy is or was the law of these tribes; also, that there are cases of exogamous tribes whose tribesmen, marrying women by compact, always go through the form of capturing such women; that in all the modern instances where the symbol of capture is best marked, marriage within the tribe is prohibited as incestuous. We shall also find various circumstances common to exogamous tribes, and traceable in their case to the principle of exogamy, appearing more or less marked in the case of historical tribes which have used the form of capture, supporting the conclusion that such tribes had once been exogamous.

It may easily be conceived how, among exogamous tribes, out of respect to immemorial usage, when friendly relations came to be established between tribes and families, and their members intermarried by purchase instead of capture, the form of invasion and capture should become an essential ceremony at weddings. It was unheard of from the remotest times that a woman became a man’s wife except through being made his captive, forced or stolen away from her friends by him or for him. Surely something shall be wanting if there is not at least the appearance of a capture! So the Roman youths rush in with drawn swords, and feign to enact a tragedy; so the Kalmuck girl rides, as if for life, from her lord and master by pre-arrangement!

We now proceed to treat of the matter, in order, under the three following heads:—Firstly, The prevalence of capturing wives de facto; secondly, Whether where that practice prevails, marriage between members of the same family-group, clan, or tribe, is forbidden, and the prevalence of that limitation of the right of marriage; and, thirdly, How far the state of war prevails among primitive groups?