[256] MCLENNAN, _Studies_, I, 23, 72, 73, _passim_.
4. Wife-capture leads directly to exogamy, or the rule of not marrying within the group of recognized kindred; that is, at first, among those having the same totem. Exogamy is therefore not regarded as the result of a prejudice against intermarriage of those related by blood. For a time, doubtless, marriage within and without the group was practiced indifferently, as pleasure or opportunity favored. But eventually the possession of a foreign woman was looked upon as the more honorable or respectable; and so at last marriage within the kindred was entirely forbidden. With the rise of wife-capture the original homogeneity of the group gave place to a growing heterogeneity. Soon many alien stocks were represented in the horde. Where polygyny existed, or where several wives were taken in succession, the same family might comprise children representing several totems. These children like their mothers were counted as foreigners. Thus a modified form of exogamy arose. "So far as the system of infanticide allowed, the hordes contained young men and women accounted of different stocks, who might intermarry consistently" with the original rule of exogamy. "Hence grew up a system of betrothals, and of marriage by sale and purchase." But the effect of the system of kinship through males, when it superseded the maternal system, was to "arrest the progress of heterogeneity," and to "restore the original condition of affairs among exogamous races, as regards both the practice of capturing wives and the evolution of the forms of capture."[257]