History of Marriage
for Uncommon Unions

History of Marriage for the Oneida Community

• This group was founded in 1848 in upstate New York, and grew to about 200 people.
  

• All the men in the group were married to all the women in the group in a "group marriage," and all their possessions were shared (no private property between them).
  

• The adults all shared responsibility equally for the children that came out of this arrangement.
  

• This went on until about 1881 when a warrant was put out for the arrest of the group's leader, John Humphrey Noyes. He fled to Canada and the group disbanded a year or two later.
  

• After this, several people from the group got married in the traditional monogamous way (one man married to one woman at a time), and together they formed the Oneida Silver Company which manufactured flatware (forks, knives, etc).
  
  

History of Marriage for the Kaingang Tribe

• The Kaingang indigenous people of southern Brazil also practiced group marriage, amongst other types of marriage such as polygamy (one man having multiple wives) and polyandry (one woman having multiple husbands).
  

• The Kaingang lived in extended family groups of 50-300 people.
  

• In their group marriages, the only sexual relationships that were forbidden were between parents and their real children, and between full brothers and sisters. Those related in any other way were free to have sex with each other.
  

• Kaingang men married at the age of 18-20, but if their bride had not yet reached puberty, they lived with her family until she started her period.
  

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