INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 75
Nature, by rendering habit all-powerful and the effects hereditary, has adapted the Fuegians to the climate and productions of their miserable country.
They have been forced to migrate toward territory of an inferior quality, either because of the invasion of the primitive habitats or by an excess of population among themselves. Now, they have located in new territory where separating boundaries have been established between the tribes, and it is quite evident that these limits have been the result both of the new home of the people and of the subsistence necessary for each several group; at least these are the most general factors, which other more special ones may either reinforce or partly nullify. It is perfectly clear in all these cases that the Fuegians are in a static condition very real as well as inferior; they are at one with their habitat, climate, and food. All these conditions together limit the possible exten- sion of the group, and therefore play a part in determining its boundaries.
According to Dampier 9 and Bonwick 10 the Tasmanians consisted of small groups of twenty or thirty persons men, women, and children living as savages. These groups had totems and well-defined hunting grounds, the violation of which entailed hostilities. In times of war they chose a chief, but in times of peace they lived in perfect equality and under a sort of communism. The only authority seemed to be that of the old men. These distributed the food to the members of the group.
A more developed group, the Tartars, in general nomadic, have got beyond this state of equality and homogeneity. Their political organization is that of a petty monarchy, patriarchal and despotic, with castes of nobility on the one hand, and slaves on the other. However, their nomadic life does not prevent them from having kingdoms with definite boundaries which the individual cannot easily cross. 11
In the hunting state as well as in the pastoral state that is, among the least sedentary types we find reciprocally deter- mined boundaries, limiting the group and protecting it from
- Universal History of Travel, Vol. XVII, p. 393.
10 The Daily Life and Origin of the Tasmanians.
n Hue, Travels among the Tartars, Vol. I, p. 271 ; PREJAVALSKY, Mongolia, Vol. I, p. 87.
