'Lennan states: "The tie
between mother and child, which exists as a matter of necessity during
infancy, is not infrequently found to be lost sight of among savages
on the age of independence being reached." [161] Personal names were
probably long subsequent to clan-names, and when they were first
introduced the name usually had some reference to the clan. The Red
Indians and other races have totem-names which are frequently some
variant of the name of the totem. [162] When personal names came to
be generally introduced, the genesis of the individual family might
soon follow, but the family could scarcely have come into existence
in the absence of personal names. As a rule, in the exogamous clan
with female descent no regard was paid to the chastity of women, and
they could select their partners as they pleased. Mr. Hartland has
shown in _Primitive Paternity_ that in a large number of primitive
communities the chastity of women was neither enforced nor desired by
the men, this state of things being probably a relic of the period
of female descent. Thus exogamy first arose through the women of
the clan resorting to men outside it. When we consider the extreme
rigour of life and the frequent danger of starvation to which the
small clans in the hunting stage must have been exposed, it does
not seem impossible that the evil effects of marriage within the
clan may have been noticed. At that time probably only a minority
even of healthy children survived, and the slight congenital weakness
produced by in-breeding might apparently be fatal to a child's chance
of life. Possibly some dim perception may have been obtained of the
different fates of the children of women who restricted their sexual
relations to men within the clan and those who resorted to strangers,
even though the nature of paternity may not have been understood. The
strength of the feeling and custom of exogamy seems to demand some
such recognition for its satisfactory explanation, though, on the
other hand, the lateness of the recognition of the father's share in
the production of children militates against this view. The suggestion
may be made also that the belief that the new life of a child must be
produced by a spirit entering the woman, or other extraneous source,
does not necessarily involve an ignorance of the physical fact of
paternity; the view that the spirits of ancestors are reborn in
children is still firmly held by tribes who have long been wholly