residence prevents them from viewing their interests exclusively in terms of what is good for their fathers, brothers, and sons and at the same time brings them into daily contact with men of nearby villages. This promotes peace between neighboring villages and lays the basis for men to cooperate in forming large warparties capable of attacking enemies hundreds of miles away. (Iroquois armies consisting of over 500 warriors mounted attacks from New York against targets in places as distant as Illinois.) Divale has expanded the number of cases to which this logic applies by suggesting that the patrilineal people who were attacked by matrilineally organized groups would also have to adopt a similar organization in a short time or be destroyed.
But let me enter a caveat here against the conclusion that
all
cases of matrilineal organization are related to the practice of external warfare. The protracted absence of males for any reason may lead to a focus on women as the carriers of titles and the guardians of male interests. Hunting and fishing expeditions and long-distance trading are two male-centered activities which are also associated with matrilineality. The logic is similar to that involved in warfare: Men must join together for hazardous undertakings which will require them to be away from their houses, lands, and other property for weeks or months. Such prolonged absences mean that women must bear the responsibility for the decisions about daily work patterns and the care and training of children, and that they must also shoulder the burden of agricultural production in gardens and fields. Shifts from patrilineal to matrilineal organizations originate as an attempt on the part of absentee males to turn over the care of jointly owned houses, lands, and property to their sisters. Absentee males rely on their sisters rather than their wives because wives are drawn from someone else’s paternal interest group and have divided loyalties. Sisters who stay at home, however, have the same property interests as brothers. Absentee brothers therefore discourage marriages which would remove their sisters from the household in which they grew up together.Sisters are only too happy to comply since patrilocal marriage exposes them to abuses at the hands of male supremacist husbands and unsympathetic fathers-in-law and mothers-in-law.
The actual transition from patrilocality to matrilocality need not involve any sudden traumatic institutional changes. It can take place by the simple expedient of changing bride-price to bride-service. In other words, instead of transferring valuables as a prelude to removing his bride from her family, the husband settles in temporarily with the family, hunts for them, and helps them clear their fields. From this situation it is but a small step to the kinds of marriages that are characteristic of matrilineal, matrilocal systems. Such marriages are easily broken liaisons in which husbands are in fact regarded as temporary sojourners with sexual privileges who can be asked to leave whenever their presence causes the slightest inconvenience. Among the matrilocal Pueblo Indians of Arizona and New Mexico, for example, inconvenient husbands were ejected by the simple expedient of placing their moccasins outside the front door. Iroquois women might at any moment decide to order a man to pick up his blanket and go elsewhere; as Lewis Henry Morgan noted of Iroquois marriage, “the most frivolous reasons, or the caprice of the moment, were sufficient for breaking the marriage tie.” Among the Nayars, a militaristic matrilineal caste of the Malabar Coast in India, the insignificance of husbands reached the point where joint residence was limited to nightly visits.
Households that consist of a resident core of mothers, sisters, and daughters with men either away on war parties or other expeditions or temporarily installed with their wife’s family are incompatible with the ideology and practice of patrilineal
But let me enter a caveat here against the conclusion that
all
cases of matrilineal organization are related to the practice of external warfare. The protracted absence of males for any reason may lead to a focus on women as the carriers of titles and the guardians of male interests. Hunting and fishing expeditions and long-distance trading are two male-centered activities which are also associated with matrilineality. The logic is similar to that involved in warfare: Men must join together for hazardous undertakings which will require them to be away from their houses, lands, and other property for weeks or months. Such prolonged absences mean that women must bear the responsibility for the decisions about daily work patterns and the care and training of children, and that they must also shoulder the burden of agricultural production in gardens and fields. Shifts from patrilineal to matrilineal organizations originate as an attempt on the part of absentee males to turn over the care of jointly owned houses, lands, and property to their sisters. Absentee males rely on their sisters rather than their wives because wives are drawn from someone else’s paternal interest group and have divided loyalties. Sisters who stay at home, however, have the same property interests as brothers. Absentee brothers therefore discourage marriages which would remove their sisters from the household in which they grew up together.Sisters are only too happy to comply since patrilocal marriage exposes them to abuses at the hands of male supremacist husbands and unsympathetic fathers-in-law and mothers-in-law.
The actual transition from patrilocality to matrilocality need not involve any sudden traumatic institutional changes. It can take place by the simple expedient of changing bride-price to bride-service. In other words, instead of transferring valuables as a prelude to removing his bride from her family, the husband settles in temporarily with the family, hunts for them, and helps them clear their fields. From this situation it is but a small step to the kinds of marriages that are characteristic of matrilineal, matrilocal systems. Such marriages are easily broken liaisons in which husbands are in fact regarded as temporary sojourners with sexual privileges who can be asked to leave whenever their presence causes the slightest inconvenience. Among the matrilocal Pueblo Indians of Arizona and New Mexico, for example, inconvenient husbands were ejected by the simple expedient of placing their moccasins outside the front door. Iroquois women might at any moment decide to order a man to pick up his blanket and go elsewhere; as Lewis Henry Morgan noted of Iroquois marriage, “the most frivolous reasons, or the caprice of the moment, were sufficient for breaking the marriage tie.” Among the Nayars, a militaristic matrilineal caste of the Malabar Coast in India, the insignificance of husbands reached the point where joint residence was limited to nightly visits.
Households that consist of a resident core of mothers, sisters, and daughters with men either away on war parties or other expeditions or temporarily installed with their wife’s family are incompatible with the ideology and practice of patrilineal
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