Whether or not the pairing family has in our time entirely supplanted group marriage in America, can be decided only by closer investigations among those nations of northwestern and especially of southern America that are still in the higher stage of savagery. About the latter so many reports of sexual license are current that the assumption of a complete cessation of the ancient group marriage is hardly warranted. Evidently all traces of it have not yet disappeared. In at least forty North American tribes the man marrying an elder sister has the right to make all her sisters his wives as soon as they are of age, a survival of the community of men for the whole series of sisters. And Bancroft relates that the Indians of the Californian peninsula celebrate certain festivities uniting several "tribes" for the purpose of unrestricted sexual intercourse. These are evidently gentes that have preserved in these festivities a vague recollection of the time when the women of one gens had for their common husbands all the men of another gens, and vice versa. The same custom is still observed in Australia. Among certain nations it sometimes happens that the older men, the chief and sorcerer-priests, exploit the community of women for their own benefits and monopolize all the women. But in their turn they must restore the old community during certain festivities and great assemblies, permitting their wives to enjoy themselves with the young men. A whole series of examples of such periodical saturnalia restoring for a short time the ancient sexual freedom is quoted by Westermarck:18 among the Hos, the Santals, the Punjas and Kotars in India, among some African nations, etc. Curiously enough Westermarck concludes that this is a survival, not of group marriage, the existence of which he denies, but—of a rutting season which primitive man had in common with other animals.
Here we touch Bachofen's fourth great discovery: the widespread form of transition from group marriage to pairing family. What Bachofen represents as a penance for violating the old divine laws—the penalty with which a woman redeems her right to chastity, is in fact only a mystical expression for the penalty paid by a woman for becoming