women, who sometimes even reigned,[1] and the father was not counted as the parent of his child.[2]
Of late years, and manifestly under European influence, the familial system has become modified in Polynesia. At Tonga masculine filiation is being substituted by degrees for feminine filiation.[3] The Maoris of New Zealand have also adopted agnatic filiation, but this new system still jars against ancient usages, which formerly harmonised with the maternal family.
This evolution of the family in Polynesia has probably had for its starting-point a confused promiscuity, and afterwards a system of classification of relations, in which real and fictitious ties were hardly distinguished from each other. With the slight importance attached to real consanguinity might very naturally coexist a great facility to practise adoption. This was abused to such a degree in the Marquesas Islands that it was not uncommon to see aged persons getting themselves adopted by children, and even animals were adopted also. Thus a chief had adopted a dog, to which he had ceremoniously offered ten pigs and some precious ornaments; he had him constantly carried by a kikino; and at the banquets of the chiefs, the animal had his appointed place by the side of his adoptive father.[4] There was no distinction generally made between the real and the adoptive parent,[5] and we may hence conclude that the degrees and bonds of kinship were not well distinguished. IV. The Family among the Mongols.
The family of the Polynesians, and more especially of the Hawaians, may well have been, as L. Morgan supposes, the primitive familial type of the American Redskins. It has for its basis a marriage which is at once polyandric and polygynic, between groups of sisters and corresponding
