In reference to some of the small uncivilized communities which he visited, Mr. Wallace says that each man respects the rights of his fellow,
and any infraction of these rights rarely or never takes place. In such a community all are nearly equal. There are none of those wide distinctions of education and ignorance, wealth and poverty, master and servant, which are the product of our civilization; there is none of that widespread division of labour, which, while it increases wealth, produces also conflicting interests; there is not that severe competition and struggle for existence or for wealth which the dense population of civilized countries inevitably creates.[94]
Under the archaic rule of the gens, at the death of a male, whether married or single, his possessions descended to his sister’s children; while at the death of a female, her property, including her personal effects, was distributed among her sisters and her children and the children of her daughters, but the children of her sons were not included among her heirs. The sons’ children belonged to the gentes of their respective mothers, and as descent and all the relationships to which rights of succession were attached were traced only in the female line, and as property until the middle of the Second Status of barbarism was strictly confined to the gens in which it originated, children could receive nothing from their fathers. Wives and husbands, as they belonged to separate gentes, received nothing from one another. In later times, when tribal honours were confined within certain families or groups, as descent and property rights were all traced in the female line, each male was dependent upon his female blood relations, not only for his common inherited privileges in the gens, but for any civil or military distinction to which he might attain.
Where female kinship prevails, a Rajah’s son may become a hodman, taking the state of his mother—while the son of the Rajah’s sister mounts the throne.[95]
[95] McLennan, _Studies in Ancient History_, p. 103.
Among the Rocch tribe, a people among which descent is traced in the female line, a man goes on marriage to live with his wife and her mother, of whose family he is a subordinate member.[96]