CHAPTER 3 Lewis Henry Morgan and ancient society An American, Lewis Henry Morgan, was to prove the most influ. ential of those who developed the anthropological idea of primitive society. His influence on his immediate successors was so great, indeed, that it forms a serious barrier to a fresh reading of his work today. His theory was appropriated early on by Engels, whose particular interpretation still has committed supporters. Later, Boas made Morgan the special target of his critique of evolutionism. In consequence, Morgan's theses became the battleground for two generations of American anthropologists. Precisely on account of this intense controversy, Morgan's ideas have very often been misrepresented and misunderstood.1 In order to recapture the intended meaning of what Morgan wrote, one must try to ignore what was to come, and to concentrate upon the immediate sources and contexts of his thinking; to recreate his intellectual milieu, which he assumed his readers would share. This is an intriguing exercise in itself, and it is an essential preliminary if one wishes to specify the kinds of transformation which characterize his work. Morgan reacted to his contemporaries, but not in the radical way which led Maine and McLennan to select particular adversaries and then to turn their ideas on their heads. He collected enormous quantities of data and drew with considerable expertise upon a variety of theories (including McLennan's); but in the end he reworked his materials to fit the models which had become current among the British scholars in his field. 1 Cf. E. Service (1985), A Century of Controversy, Chapter 3. Lewis Henry Morgan and ancient society 43 b es Presbyterians and Darwinism 's immediate intellectual circle is perhaps best approached M°r<ä , j1js closest friend during his early adult years in Roches- by V,,,,. York, the Rev. J. S. Mcllvaine, who was the Presbyterian tcf'. 0f Kochester from 1848 until 1860. Mcllvaine was inti- 111 lv associated with Morgan's research, and he was instrumental ■" curing the eventual publication of Morgan's Systems of Con- ' nity (1871). A formidable intellectual, he was a philologist, j ret:ognized authority on Sanskrit. Mcllvaine was associated •fh the Smithsonian Institution, and when he left Rochester it as to take »p an academic appointment at Princeton. He was also a minister of religion. He did his best - with the support of Morgan's wife - to ignite Morgan's Christian faith, but with only partial success, though he claimed that Morgan's heart lav in the end with the Christian religion; and Morgan was certainly at the least a Deist, and was prepared to respect Mcllvaine's faith. An earlier generation sometimes represented Mcllvaine as a censor, who checked the free expression of Morgan's Darwinian beliefs for theological reasons. This interpretation derived some plausibility from Mcllvaine's own claim: that whilst liih great work on 'Ancient Society' was passing through the press, I called his attention to a passage which inadvertently might have found its place there, andfwhich might be construed as an endorsement of these materialistic speculations in connection with evolution; and he immediately cancelled the whole page, although it had already been stereotyped.'' This view ol Mcllvaine's role altered as the context of the evolutionist debate in the United States was better appreciated. Indeed Morgan's second biographer, Carl Resek, concluded that on the contrary Mcllvaine had inspired Morgan's evolutionist hypothesis.1 Morgan and Mcllvaine's branch of the Presbyterian church participated in a markedly liberal movement within New England-Calvinism in the second half of the nineteenth century.4 It repudi- 2 McIlvuiiiL '.1923), 'The life and works of Lewis H. Morgan, LL.D.: an address arhK.'uniTuľ, p. 57 3 Rcsek (l'JH'r. lewis Henry Morgan: American Scholar. 4 ror dmcusiions of contemporary American Calvinism, its attitudes to slavery and to Daruuii.in ilieory, see: Winthrop Hudson (1965), Religion in America; James 44 THE CONSTITUTION OF PRIMITIVE SOCIETY ated slavery and affirmed a faith in democracy and Utilitar: political ideas. On scientific matters, it was equally determined f accommodate the most enlightened modern theories. Nor was th theory of evolution a special problem. Evolution might even h, reconciled with Calvinist ideas of predestination - 'Evolution' ^ one divine explained, 'is God's way of doing things'.5 The ^,1 chronology could also be taken on board. 'I cannot find sufficient data in the Scriptures for a revealed chronology', Mcllvaine con, mented. 'Neither, as I read the first chapters of Genesis, does» appear that man was created in a high state of development, thounl, certainly in a state of innocence.'6 The northern Presbyterians in fact welcomed Darwin's witnes-with respect to one very sensitive political issue. This was th-question of the unity of origin of the human species. They wereun in arms against their southern Presbyterian brethren, who justified slavery on the grounds that God had created several distinct species of man, each with a particular destiny. During the Civil War m 'American school of anthropology' developed in the South which propagated this view. It drew the support even of Agassiz, the eccentric Lamarckian biologist of Harvard.7 According to the northern Presbyterians, this 'polygenist' thesis was a denial of the truth, to which both the Bible and the Declaration of Independence bore witness, that all men were created equal. Darwin unequivocably supported the view that all the races were simply varieties of one species, with a common origin. This aspect of Darwinian theory was particularly stressed by Asa Gray, Agassiz's rival at Harvard, and the leader of the American Darwinians. On one vital matter, however, Darwin's views were unacceptable to many, indeed most, Christians. He posited the mutability ci species and - despite his inital caution - it became evident that he believed man had evolved from non-human primate forebears. This theory of the transmutation of species was clearly irreconcilable with the Book of Genesis, but there were many respect- Moore (1979), The Post-Darwinian Controversies; H. Smith et. al. (1963). Av.j-ican Christianity; and R. Wilson (1967), Darwin and the American Intelleuiuu 5 Quoted in Hudson (1965), Religion in America, p. 267. 6 Mcllvaine (1923), 'The life and works of Lewis H. Morgan', p. 56. 7 See especially William Stanton (1960), The Leopard's Spots: Scientific A::i"s iexjCOn of the Dakota language and found that checke» w rĽ[atives together in the same 'classificatory' manner they ^""quojs, and Ojibwa. The question now arose: How widely aSl h "vstem distributed? In December 1858 he sent schedules WaS r ľ dian areas to be filled in by missionaries and Indian agents. °utt°esults %Vere disappointing, perhaps not surprisingly, since T ucstionnaire ran to eight printed pages and its completion qnded considerable time and effort. But a few satisfactory hdulcs were returned, and Morgan carried out his enquiries in SC on in reservations in Kansas and Nebraska. By mid-1859 h" was convinced that the system of classifying relatives was fundamentally uniform throughout North America. This he ok as evidence that the North American Indians had a common origin. But if the Indians were ultimately one group, where had they come from? Morgan was inclined to accept the hypothesis of Schoolcraft and other specialists, supported by Haven, that they were ullimately of Asian origin. Obviously they were not 'Aryan', and so Morgan looked for connections among Müller's prototypical Asian Turanians, the Tamils. Accordingly, he invited an American missionary. Dr Scuddert to prepare a schedule for Tamil and Telugu. Mcllvaine testified that at this time Morgan: lived and worked often in a state of great mental excitement, and the answers he received, as they came in, sometimes nearly overpowered him. I well remember one occasion when he came into my study, saying, 'I shall find it, 1 shall find it among the Tamil people and Dravidian tribes of Southern India'. At that time I had no expectation of any such result; and I said to him, 'My friend, you have enough to do in working out your discovery in connection with the tribes of the American continent - let the peoples, of the old world go'. He replied, 'I cannot do it - I must go on, for I am sure I shall find it all there'.29 29 Mcllvaine '1923), 'The life and works of Lewis H. Morgan', pp. 50-1. 56 THE CONSTITUTION OF PRIMITIVE SOCIETY When the Tamil-Telegu schedule came back, Morgan laid if ■ by side with the Seneca-Iroquois system and concluded thai'»i!^ the same structure. He wrote to Scudder 'that we had now liable to put our hands upon decisive evidence of the Asiatic n -^ of the American Indian race'.30 In Systems he expressed ihe ^ conclusion more grandiloquently: ^ When the discoverers of the New World bestowed upon its inhabitan the name of Indians, under the impression that they had reached the Indies, they little suspected that children of the same original familv although upon a different continent, stood before them. By a singuú coincidence error was truth.31 Classificatory and descriptive systems of consanguinity Morgan concluded that all the members of Müller's souther» Turanian family had what he called 'classificatory' kinship systems The Aryans, Semites and northern Turanians all had 'descriptive' systems. These two types of systems were quite distinct. Indeed they were virtually inversions of each other. In descriptive systems there are different terms for father and mother, husband and wife, brother and sister, and son and daughter, and none of these terms is applied outside the nuclear family. Morgan argued that such systems mirror the reality of biological kinship, clearly marking the degrees of blood relation' ship. Classificatory systems, in contrast, did not reflect the natural degrees of kinship. They lumped relationships of different kinds together under one term. The same word might refer, for example, to father, father's brother, father's father's brother's son, and also perhaps to other relatives, confusing different kinds and degrees of biological relatedness. 'It thus confounds relationships, which, under the descriptive system, are distinct, and enlarges the signification both of the primary and secondary terms beyond their seemingly appropriate sense. '32 The classificatory principle immedi ately suggested the mechanism of 'agglutination'. Moreover, the languages which according to Morgan applied one kin term to 30 Stern (1931), Lewis Henry Morgan, p. 27. 31 Morgan (1871), Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity, p. 508. 32 Op. ctí., p. 12. Lewis Henry Morgan and ancient society 57 j rř-i«i of relationships were precisely those which Müller V8rÍOľedaf'agglutinating'. jegara iassjficatory systems did not properly describe biological relatio ^ ^^ Napoleon, the systems made perfect sense if Wh° r dcrlying axioms were granted. If, for example, father's ^elT -as 'father', then, quite properly, father's brother's wife vrnther was lacnci , u.^, M— ť*~ť».„J3 ~— u _^.„ u „„„. Dr° , h r' father's brother's son 'brother', etc. Morgan congas mom : (juded that has been created which must be regarded as a domestic ? ■ 'nn in the highest sense of this expression. No other can properly ,nS teri'/e a structure the framework of which is so complete, and the details of which are so rigorously adjusted.33 The oppos'1'011 Detween descriptive and classificatory systems was alwavs clear-cut. Morgan was aware that the 'descriptive' terns 0"ftei] had 'classificatory' elements. For example, discussing the Dutch kinship terminology, he commented that 'The terms »tee/and nicht are applied indiscriminately to a nephew and niece, to a grandson and granddaughter, and to each of the four classes of cousins."1' This was the sort of lumping together one might expect to find in a classificatory system. But Morgan argued that the history of the Germanic systems showed that they were originally purely descriptive in form, as some of the Scandinavian systems have remained. The introduction of classificatory terms for 'uncle' and 'aunt', subsequently for 'nephew' and 'niece', and finally for 'cousin', were later rationalizations, which simplified the system while not transgressing its fundamental opposition between lineal and collateral kin. In this particular instance the argument was made more difficult by the fact that the Dutch classified nephews, male cousins and also grandsons together, so indeed confusing lineals and collaterals. Morgan's comment was that the Dutch system 'is defective in arrangement, and imprecise in the discrimination of relationships', which placed the error firmly with the Dutch rather than in his theory.35 Nor did the classificatory systems constitute a uniform set. 33 Op. tit., p. 472. 34 Op. cit., p. 35. 35 Op. ní., p. 35. it is perhaps worth remarking that the use of the terms neef and nicht for granddiildren is now obsolete in Dutch. 58 THE CONSTITUTION OF PRIMITIVE SOCIETY Morgan divided Müller's southern Turanian group into three the basis of a typology of classificatory systems. The three t»^ were termed respectively the Turanian, the Malayan, and. 7s Ganowanian (the American Indian group). He was, of Cou ,c particularly interested in the Ganowanian, and his discussion"'1 the American systems is the longest and most detailed, running 135 pages of text plus 100 pages of tables, or almost 40 per ccm ! the whole of Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity. But he «, convinced that the Ganowanian system was closely related io * Turanian, of which the Tamil and Dravidian systems were typjCaj" Chinese and Japanese were also 'Turanian'. The 'Malayan' system were, however, very different from them. In both the Turanian and Ganowanian systems, only one set of cousins was identified with siblings and termed 'brother' Sn|i 'sister'. These were children of father's brothers or mother's sisters Other cousins (children of father's sisters or mother's brothers] were distinguished from siblings. The Malayan systems, in contrast, classed all cousins together with siblings, and all parents' siblings together with parents. This category included not only the peoples of the Pacific but a number of far-flung peoples, and even the Zulu, Morgan's only African group. 'Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family' When his argument had reached this stage, Morgan believed that he had successfully completed a type of philological study demonstrated the unity and the ultimately Asian origin of the American Indian languages, and suggested the existence of two great linguistic stocks, one European and north-west Asian, and the other southern, tropical and firmly non-European. Within this framework Morgan wrote up his massive materials, tabulating and analysing 139 kinship schedules from all the over the world, listing over 260 kin-types for each. In 1865 he submitted the manuscript for publication to the Smithsonian Institution. Joseph Henry, the director of the Smithsonian, was reluctant to accept it, writing to Morgan that 'ihe firü impression of one who has been engaged in physical research :s that; in proportion to the conclusions arrived at, the quantity cf your material is very large'36; but he sent it for consideration to two philologists and Sanskritists - Whitney at Yale, and Mcllvaine. 36 Quoted by Resek (1960), Lewis Henry Morgan, pp. 96-7. Lewis Henry Morgan and ancient society 59 ■ was prepared to accept that the analysis was incom-^* Morgan had demonstrated the inner coherence of classify6 «.-stems, but their meaning remained a mystery. He ■ d had not perceived any material significance or explanation of 0U- ense body of entirely new facts which he had discovered and the H™" ^je could not at all acount for them. In fact, he regarded this or these slightly different forms of one system, as invented and S5řSt heroic achievements of our primitive ancestors 'were part of thP plan of the Supreme Intelligence to develop a barbarian out 0f a savage, and a civilized man out of this barbarian'.71 Marx, Engels and the legacy of Morgan In later chapters I shall be returning to Morgan's theory, since his work dominated the field of kinship studies for many years, and had direct repercussions for the ethnographic study of North America and Oceania. But another tradition also stems from Morgan's writing, for he was adopted into the Marxist canon by Marx and Engels themselves. Reinterpreted by Engels, Morgan became the most important ancestral figure for Soviet ethnology, and he is a revered - though perhaps seldom read - authority in the broader tradition of Marxist theory. Marx himelf published little on either non-European or :pre-feudaľ societies. His best-known contribution on these subjects was his model of an 'Asiatic mode of production'. This was a. type of society in which a state organization existed in a primitive form. It was concerned only with war, taxation and public works, and was superimposed upon a series of otherwise independent village communities. These village communities held land in common and redistributed their agricultural surplus internally, excepi for a proportion which was appropriated by the state. This mode] posed serious theoretical problems for later Marxists, in part because it was not evident whether Marx thought of such systems ab a geographically-specific Asian development, and in part because it was not clear in what direction societies of this type might subsequently evolve.72 Towards the end of his life, Marx took an interest in the new anthropology. He wrote extensive notes on the work of Morgan, Maine and Lubbock, evidently with a view to using them laicr in experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes. (Morgan, 1877, Ancieni Society, p. 522) 71 Op. cit., p. 554. 72 There is a large literature on the 'Asiatic mode of production'. See Bailey and Llobera (1981), The Asiatic Mode of Production for a useful review. Cf. Kräder (1975), The Asiatic Mode of Production. Lewis Henry Morgan and ancient society 73 h ok After Marx's death, Engels used these notes as a starting- 3 'nt for nis own D0°k (1884), The Origin of the Family, Private p Ďcrty and State, which is essentially a popularization and i .clopmcnt of Morgan's theories. It was first published in r -rman in 1884. For present purposes it is unnecessary to enquire «.-hai extent Engels exaggerated Marx's faith in Morgan, or to s at (he manner in which Marx himself would have reconciled • rorcrjn\s developmental sequence with the existence of an 'Asiatic mode of production'. In the event it was the Morgan as defined by Kneels who became crucial for the Marxist tradition. The element of Morgan's theory on which Engels seized was his 'rediscovery of the primitive matriarchal gens as the earlier stage of the patriarchal gens of civilized peoples'; a discovery which (so Engels claimed in his preface to the first edition) 'has the same importance for anthropology as Darwin's theory of evolution has for biology and Marx's theory of surplus value for political econ-omv'. The evolutionary importance of this discovery was that it opened ihe way to a history of the development of the family, regarded not as a natural institution but as the product of historical processes. In its modern form, the family was just a way of organizing private property - it 'was the first form of the family to be based not on natural but on economic conditions - on the victory of private property over primitive, natural communal property'.74 No more was there anything natural or morally superior about monogamy. The civilized monogamous family was not (as Morgan in fact firmly believed) the ultimate realization of man's best instincts. It was a form of exploitation, comparable to the exploitation of one class by another. 'Within the family [the husband] is the bourgeois, and the wife represents the proletariat.' The family 'is based on the supremacy of the man, the express purpose being to produce children of undisputed paternity; such paternity is demanded because these children are later to come into their father's property as his natural heirs'.75 The slate itself was as temporary and artificial as the family. Morgan had revealed that before the state existed, political systems had been based upon kinship. The state had emerged only as a 73 These luve been transcribed and edited. See Kräder (1974), The Ethnological \'otchoi)lis of Karl Marx. 74 Engels ■ 1972), The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, p. 128. 75 Op. tit., pp. 137, 125. 74 THE CONSTITUTION OF PRIMITIVE SOCIETY r consequence of the growth of property and the evolution of ci conflict; and it would break up when production was ordered S the basis of a free and equal association of the producers. These ideas all have a recognizable point of origin in Mores ' work, but Engels himself conceded that he had 'moved a co S siderable distance' from Morgan on some matters.76 Morgan would certainly have repudiated Engels' analysis of monogamy, and h would probably have had great difficulty with other aspects of h" theory. This is not in itself a criticism of Engels, but it docs mea that the Morgan who took his place in the Marxist tradition wa already at several removes from the historical Morgan. In the American anthropological tradition Morgan figures especially in debates about kinship systems. The tradition of analv. sis which Engels inaugurated was concerned rather with stages of social evolution and with the 'origin of the state'. More recently some feminist anthropologists have found inspiration in Engels' discussion of the monogamous family, so providing yet another context in which the implications of these ideas may be worked out, but one in which the contribution of Morgan hirrsclf can hardly be discerned any longer. Morgan's transformations \ It can be argued that Morgan's greatest influence was in the accumulation of data. He himself collected a great deal of ethnographic material by fieldwork and through questionnaires. He even invented a whole new category of data, kinship terminologies, and persuaded generations of anthropologists that they were the key io defining systems of kinship and marriage. And he inspired others to do fieldwork on his behalf, notably Bandelier and Fison. In the next generation the Bureau of American Ethnology was set up in the Smithsonian Institution essentially to carry out Morgan's programme of ethnological research. ' Nevertheless, it must be admitted that Morgan's reputation has depended largely on his theory; and on the face of it this is si range, since his organizing ideas were derivative. His theoretical progress is replete with transformations in Cohen's sense. Again and again he borrowed an established framework and adapted it to his needs. Müller's philology, the 'gens' of Grote, McLennan's exogamy and Lewis Henry Morgan and ancient society 75 ■ rclWj Lubbock and Tylor's intellectual and technological bis1"3. ■ ITi; aii were grist to his mill. It is almost as though he eV°-1UUd the person he had last read. belieV . kjs career one cannot fail to be impressed by the ■ eiit nature of his various syntheses. The history of his 1871 COtl in particular, is an extraordinary chapter of accidents. $ys ' injs element of chance is intrinsic to this sort of trans-^ tion, since its autnor depends, like a magpie, on what others left lying about. To borrow one of Lévi-Strauss's images, this ■ h science of the bricoleur. And yet this account seems ultimately lS rcinsive; there is clearly an underlying direction behind Mor-ean's work, at some level at least. His political inspiration is very evident at several points, perhaps st particularly in his insistence on monogenesis and in his revul- 'onfrom monarchies. Nevertheless it would not be easy to account for his model in terms of his politics. After all, it could be used by Eneels as an argument for communism, and by Morgan himself in defence of" American capitalism and democracy. I think that the fundamental consistency of Morgan's thinking has to do with religious rather than political beliefs. His ultimate aim was to demonstrate that human history made moral sense, that it was a history of progress, and that it united all branches of the species. If he could borrow ideas so promiscuously from Müller and McLennan and Tylpr, it was because they all shared this faith. 76 Op. cit., pp. 145-6.