MATRIARCHY. - A social institution in which, for membership in the tribe, the name, and property, matrilineal descent is followed.
I. DISCOVERY
The discoverer of matriarchy is held to be Bachofen (v. LAW. IX. Law among primitive peoples), but it would be more correct to call him its rediscoverer, because, as P. Koppers has pointed out, the first to call attention to it was Father Lafitau, a Jesuit missionary, who, in studying the culture of the Iroquois of North America, glimpsed in it certain similarities with that of the Hellenistic peoples, especially the Lycians of Asia Minor.
II. DENOMINATION
The development of ethnology in the knowledge of the peoples of the various parts of the world has led to the distinction of several forms of matriarchy and to the study of their mutual and genetic relations. There is a form of pure matriarchy and others of mixed matriarchy, that is, crossed with other forms characteristic of primitive civilization. Pure matriarchy was called by G. Montandon "paleo-matriarchal culture" as opposed to "neo-matriarchal," basing himself on the evaluation of the forms of matriarchy according to time; by Fr. Gräbner: "Papuan cultural cycle," by B. Ankermann: "West African cultural cycle," basing themselves respectively on the geographic regions studied; by Foy-Gräbner: "culture of the two classes" and by Fr. W. Schmidt: "exogamous matriarchal cultural cycle," basing himself, more properly, on the internal characteristics of pure matriarchy.
III. SOCIOLOGY
Pure matriarchy is distinguished by the division of the tribe into two groups, the members of which cannot contract marriage within their own group but only, respectively, in the other, for which reason the two groups are called "exogamous marriage classes." The woman enjoys a marked supremacy over the man in the family and in society, a supremacy that manifests itself in the right of ownership of goods, in the belonging of the offspring, in marriage (v. DIRITTO. IX. Il d. presso i primitivi; DONNA. VII. La d. nella etnologia), and can extend as far as a true gynecocracy, as will be seen.
Owing to the great ascendancy that the woman acquires in matriarchy, the initiation of young men falls into disuse and the initiation of girls after their first menstruation comes to the fore. This initiation does not bear the character it has among gathering and totemistic peoples, as the transmission of the culture of the ancestors to the young generation, nor does it have a political character, because it does not signify admission into the tribe, but is of a merely familial and individual nature; it is a declaration of the woman's marriageability, since it is intended at the same time to celebrate the fecundity of the future mother of a family, who will continue the same. On such an occasion the girl must observe certain prescriptions, and this initiation constitutes another evident indication of the fact that in that culture the woman is everything and the man is nothing. But this manifests itself even more clearly in two typical customs. One is the so-called couvade, which is in use among many matriarchal peoples: at the birth of the offspring it is not the woman in childbed who observes rest and the other customary rules, but her husband, as if he and not the wife had given birth. It seems that the custom arose from superstitious beliefs, invented by the woman to keep her husband near her, so that he might attend to the household tasks during this time, tasks that otherwise she herself would have to perform as usual. The other is of a religious nature and manifests itself in the Indian belief of Shiva-Shakti in the cult of Tripurasundari, according to which it is obligatory to believe not only that God is a woman, but every pious believer must also religiously consider himself as a woman and strive toward the ultimate goal of becoming a woman. It is the greatest disavowal of the male sex, as Fr. Schmidt notes, a sign of its utmost debasement.
But man then reacted to the supremacy of woman, resorting to the particular male aptitude for organizing, founding special secret societies (on the juridical aspect v. DIRITTO, IX. Il d. presso i primitivi), with related masked dances. These societies are generally antifeminist, both because women are absolutely excluded from them, and because it is forbidden to make known to women, as well as to any uninitiated person, everything that is taught and done in the meetings. The masked dances, by which the women cannot recognize the dancers, are performed by the men to frighten the women and force them to provide certain vegetable foods in abundance. These are manifestations that seriously compromise the dignity of woman and particularly the authority of the mother. The evil increases, Koppers rightly notes, when access to the secret societies no longer depends on age, but on the sum that the candidate, especially the father, can pay. Thus boys ended up being admitted, who from their earliest youth underwent an education and an influence hostile to women and to the mother. And yet the m. is transformed into a culture similar to the totemistic one, in which woman, instead of being appreciated, becomes an object of deplorable contempt.
When the m. intersects with totemism, there are very varied developments, so much so that original civilizations often appear. The two marriage classes are subdivided into subgroups, totemic clans, and the classes are called phratries. Among the Volgal of southeastern Australia, for example, there is the hawk phratry and the crow phratry. The first comprises the totemic clans of the kangaroo, the emu, the dog, the flying squirrel, the bat, etc.; the second those of the wombat, the brown snake, the bandicoot, the echidna, etc. But the organization becomes very complicated when the tribe is divided into four marriage classes and into eight, which by reduction may also be six. To understand the complexity of this organization one may briefly examine the tribe of the Nyamai, which consists of four classes, Banaca, Burong, Palyeri and Caimera. If an individual belongs to the Banaca class, all those whom he calls "brother," "sister," and "grandfather," father of the father, are likewise Banaca; those whom he calls "father," or "son" are of the Palyeri class; those called by him "mothers" and "uncles," brothers of the mother, are of the Burong class. He may choose his wife among the cousins, daughters of the mother's brother, that is, among the Caimera, so that, following this rule: a Banaca may marry a Caimera, except the Caimera who are his relatives; he is forbidden to take a wife from the other three classes; the bride and the groom must be of the same generation. Radcliffe-Brown synthesizes these laws as follows: a Banaca marries a Caimera, the children will be Palyeri; a Burong marries a Palyeri, the children will be Caimera; a Caimera marries a Banaca, the children will be Burong; a Palyeri marries a Burong, the children will be Banaca.
Marriage is negotiated by the parents, who may make the relevant decisions even before the birth of the future spouses. When the class organization disappears, marriage is regulated by blood kinship. One then has the "cultural cycle of free m." of Fr. Schmidt, the "Melanesian culture" of Gräbner and the "bow culture" of Foy-Gräbner.
Sometimes the m. has come to be a gynecocracy, as happened among the Hurons of North America. One has a sample of it in what Fr. Lafitau says emphatically about the position of woman among them: "Nothing is more real than this superiority of woman. On women properly rests the nation, the nobility of blood, the succession of generations, the preservation of the family. In them is placed all true authority; the country, the fields, and all the harvests belong to them. They are the soul of the council meetings, the arbiters of war and peace, they have the superintendence of the public treasury. To them are given the slaves; they make the marriages; the children depend on them and in their blood is founded the succession. Men, on the contrary, are completely isolated and reduced to themselves; the children are strangers to them; with them everything goes to ruin; it is only the woman who maintains the house; whereas if there were only men in the house, however numerous they might be, the family would become extinct."
IV. RELIGION
The belief in the Supreme Being has been obscured by lunar mythology and by the cult of the dead, which are cultural manifestations proper to the matriarchy. The moon is conceived as a woman and as a co-ancestral mother, who gives life to twin children, of whom one is a wise hero, the full moon, and the other is a fool and simpleton, the dark moon, and they are placed in relation to the system of classes. The full moon then took on many characteristics of the Supreme Being. Related to lunar mythology is the pectoral ornament in the shape of a sickle or trident. In the crossing of the matriarchy with totemism, lunar mythology combines with solar mythology, which is proper to totemism. The sun takes the place of the full moon. The sun class has as its marks the solar animals, mostly birds of prey such as the falcon, the sparrowhawk, the eagle, but also terrestrial animals such as the lion and the wolf, though less often; the lunar class adopts as its distinctive signs lunar animals, such as the hare, the crow, but also the serpent. In the matriarchy the so-called double burial is in use, that is, after a certain time, when the flesh has been consumed, the corpse is disinterred, the skull is kept apart in veneration, while the rest of the skeleton is buried again.
To give an idea of what is done for the dead in a mixed matriarchal-totemist culture, here are some reports from Fr. C. Salerio, missionary of the Institute of Foreign Missions of Milan, on the cult of the dead among the inhabitants of Woodlark Island, to the east of New Guinea in Melanesia. It is a people with an organization of eight classes. When the chief of the village dies, the other villages have the right to sack the village of the dead man in order to punish the sorcerers, who have caused that loss. The village ransoms itself from this sacking, generally, by offering some pigs or other notable gift. The sepulcher (every family has one) is sacred, kept well clean and adorned with fragrant plants, and is the most inviolable place. They wear mourning for about a year; all the villages wear it at the death of a chief. This mourning consists in shaving the head and dyeing the whole body black with coconut charcoal. The woman in mourning dresses less elegantly, but in wider garments, reaching down to the foot. They celebrate "the feast of the dead" (Jumalare), which is the most religious feast. Afterwards the planting of yams is done, which is preceded by five or six days of general fishing, for all the villages of a bay. The food, duly cooked and prepared, is placed at the back of the hut, behind a mat, and the deceased are invited with tears and groans. Then each one withdraws, sits on his bench which is at the side of the door of the hut, and speaks of the glories of his ancestors, while the dead are supposed to be eating. Then, tired of waiting, beating around the hut, they dismiss their invited dead, and congratulate themselves on their temperance (the great must eat little). The family does not eat the banquet of its own dead and offers it all to friends and relatives. Finally, in the evening, noise is made again to drive the souls of the deceased (serii) back to their tombs. There is, therefore, the concept of the immortality of the soul. When someone dies, setting aside any consideration of morality, his soul sets out toward the Tum, an animal paradise, a place of delights, which is imagined to have its seat on an uninhabited islet to the west of the Muju (Woodlark).
In matriarchal cultures animism is highly developed and magic is also present. Infanticide exists. The cult of the skull is practiced especially in secret societies. These use masks in the shape of a tower, which rise above the head and cover the body, as in the Duk-Duk societies, or they are plastic, and, when the matriarchy crosses with totemism, they depict the respective animals. The masks are used by the men of the secret societies when they put on representations, the germ of the future drama, often combined with declamations and dances. When the matriarchy crosses with totemism, the bloody rites of fertilization of the earth come into use, which in the later matriarchy is placed in relation to sexual fertilization.
V. ECONOMY AND ETHNOLOGY
In the matriarchate the means of subsistence come from agriculture, practiced first with the digging stick, then with the hoe and finally with the plow, drawn by an animal, e.g., the ox (v. ECONOMIC SYSTEMS). Agriculture was not held to exist in Australia. The hoe is of stone, fixed to a wooden handle with two bindings. Edged weapons and blunt weapons, especially heavy maces or clubs, are characteristic of the matriarchate. The flat shield is used, often fixed to a grip. The musical instruments of the matriarchate are the pan flute and the musical bow, and later also the wooden drum. The boat is made of planks, but without an outrigger, except for Australia, where it is made of tree bark. Baskets, hampers and other objects used for fishing are manufactured with wickerwork of plektenchyma. Pottery is painted with ornaments in round forms, meanders and concentric circles. The house is a wooden hut, square or rectangular, with a pitched roof. Within this same culture villages arise, which are governed under a democratic regime.
VI. ORIGIN
On the basis of the matriarchal cultural complex of the Lycians and the Iroquois, Father Lafitau concluded, as has been said, that they were genetically related. This conclusion, observes Father Koppers, was fundamentally correct, but for that time it was premature to speak, as that missionary did, of a relationship between the two peoples. It is right to discern a connection between the Lycians and the Iroquois, but it is not possible to conceive of it through a direct emigration from the pre-Greek territories to North America. Since the Lycians and the Iroquois were participants in a matriarchal complex of a much wider scope, it was justified to conclude in the sense of a genetic relationship between them, but it was absolutely arbitrary to think of relations direct relations between them. Since matriarchy is connected with agriculture, the question of its origins is likewise linked to the latter. According to one thesis, matriarchy arose in the Near East, in Mesopotamia; according to another, it originated in the southeast of eastern Asia (v. SISTEMI ECONOMICI). It is commonly held by ethnologists and by many prehistorians that agriculture is a female invention, because woman, gathering daily the spontaneous fruits of the earth, was naturally led to observe the life of plants and to conceive the idea of cultivating them. The cultivated field became her property; the labors of the field required her proximity and the stability of the dwelling; hence a change in the economic, juridical and psychological relations between man and woman, between wife and husband (v. DONNA. VII. La d. nella etnologia; DIRITTO. IX. Il d. presso i primitivi).
VII. CONCLUSION
Laviosa Zambotti has pointed out the importance of agriculture in human history, saying that it was the last great cultural current to spread to the most remote corners of the earth, and to remain relegated there — therefore, presumably, without fundamental alterations — until the worldwide diffusion, after the 15th century, of Western European civilization. If, however, one judges matriarchy in its most ancient forms and from the moral aspect, one must say that it lacked the harmony of male and female relations and activities. In fact, in matriarchy, according to Fr. Schmidt, the father cannot be as much of a father as he ought to be, but the mother too is not a mother in the way and to the extent that she could be, because she is too much a sister and a daughter, too dependent on the elder brother and on the mother. The offspring is too exclusively hers and is not the happy fruit of the union with another beloved being and of the bond of love that unites this being to her; therefore the motives of maternal love appear diminished and weakened in it.
