PRIMITIVE POLYGAMY.
I. _Polygamy in Oceania, Africa, and America._--Polygamy and
sociability--Polygamy in Australia, in New Caledonia, and at Fiji--The
legitimate wife and concubines at Fiji--Polygamy among the Hottentots
and Kaffirs--Economic reasons of polygamy in Africa--Brutality
of husbands on the Gaboon--Polygamy limited by the law of supply
and demand--Its effects on the morality of women--Commercial
fidelity--Mumbo Jumbo--Love unknown in black Africa--Legal
marriage with the Bongos at Madagascar--Hierarchical polygamy at
Madagascar--Polygamy in Polynesia, in America--Jealousy unknown to
the female savage--The sister-wives among the Redskins--Religion
sanctifies polygamy--Monogamic tendencies in America.
II. _Polygamy in Asia and in Europe._--Polygamy among the aborigines
of India, in Bootan, among the Ostiaks and the Battas--Universality
of primitive polygamy--Polygamy of the ancient Peruvians, Chinese,
and Vedic Aryans--Polygamy among the Gauls and the Germans--Causes of
primitive polygamy--Its evolution.
I. _Polygamy in Oceania, Africa, and America._
We have seen that in the animal kingdom species are sometimes
monogamous, sometimes polygamous, but that in general a gregarious
life, a life in association, favours polygamy. Now, man is surely the
most sociable of animals, therefore he is much inclined to polygamy,
like the great anthropoid apes, with whom our primitive ancestors must
have had more than one analogy. We have already spoken of the causes
which in human societies of the earliest ages disturbed the normal
relation of the sexes, or the approximate equilibrium between the
number of men and that of women. We have seen how savage life rapidly
uses up the men to such a degree that often, in spite of the custom
of female infanticide, there is still an excess of women sufficient
to impose polygamy. Although primitive morality may not think in the
least of blaming the plurality of wives, it yet happens that this
polygamy, to which all men aspire in a savage country, is spontaneously
restricted; and, as with chimpanzees, and for the same reasons, it
becomes, in fact, the privilege of a small number of the strongest and
the most feared, the chiefs, the sorcerers, or the priests, when there
are any.
In Australia, for example, the adult men take possession of the women
of all ages, and in consequence the greater number of young men cannot
become proprietors of a woman before the age of about thirty years.[339]
Enforced celibacy is, besides, softened by the complaisance of the
men already provided for, the husbands, if we may so call them, who
are generous to the other men, and much more jealous of their rights
of property than of their conjugal rights. It is easy to have an
understanding with them, and, with the aid of a suitable present, to
induce them to lend their wives. In New Caledonia the chiefs and rich
men only can indulge in the luxury of polygamy, and in this archipelago
the plurality of wives has already the character that it nearly always
assumes in a primitive country. If the New Caledonians ardently
desire to have several wives it is not generally with a sensual aim,
for among the Canaks the genetic appetite is little developed; their
reasons are of quite another kind. Neither slavery nor domesticity
yet exist in New Caledonia. However, agriculture is already practised
there, and this requires hard labour, from which the men, especially
the chief men, like to exonerate themselves. Now, it is polygamy that
furnishes the Canaks with servile labour, which they cannot do without;
it exactly replaces slavery. Therefore, every man, of however little
importance he may be, procures a number of women in proportion to the
extent of the land he has in cultivation, and also to the figure he
must make in the world. We shall find this servile polygamy in many
other countries, notably among the Fijians, who resemble the New
Caledonians, but at Fiji polygamy had already evolved and become
complicated. It was accompanied by concubinage. As we shall see later,
this is generally the case. Nowhere do we find men passing abruptly
from polygamy to monogamy, and long before arriving at the latter, when
first custom and then law restrains and regulates the loose polygamy
of the earlier ages, the change is only at first effected in the form;
a man has a small number of wives, who, with their children, enjoy
certain privileges, but by the side of these titular wives he possesses
concubines in greater or less number. In this manner everything is
reconciled--morality with sensuality, and the family with the interests
of property.
This _régime_ was already in force among the Melanesians of the Fiji
Isles, where the chiefs, living in great state, acquired in one way
or another three or four hundred women, of whom the greater number
filled only the position of servants to the master, and at the same
time of concubines, who were at the disposition of the warriors or of
the guests. The wives whose children inherited were very few in number.
They were daughters of chiefs, and their situation, although less
degraded than that of the concubines, was still very humble. Not only
did they resign themselves without difficulty to polygamy, but they
were subjected to a singular duty--that of rearing for their husband
a chosen concubine. The fact is curious, and worth the trouble of
narrating. “The bride takes with her a young girl who is still a child,
but who promises to be beautiful, and who has been carefully selected
from the lower class of the people. It is a virgin destined for her
husband. She brings her up with the tenderest solicitude, and when the
girl is marriageable, the queen, on an appointed day, undresses her,
washes her carefully, and even pours perfumed oil on her hair, crowns
her with flowers, conducts her thus naked to her husband, presents her
to him, and retires in silence.”[340] Excessive as it seems to us, this
absolute resignation is quite natural among savages.
In primitive countries the married woman--that is to say, the woman
belonging to a man--has herself the conscience of being a thing, a
property (it is proved to her often and severely enough), but she does
not think of retaliating, especially in what concerns the conjugal
relations. Moreover, as her condition is oftenest that of a slave
over-burdened with work, not only does she not resent the introduction
of other women in the house of the master, but she desires it, for
the work will be so much the less for herself. Thus among the Zulus
the wife first purchased strives and works with ardour in the hope of
furnishing her husband with means to acquire a second wife--a companion
in misery over whom, by right of seniority, she will have the upper
hand.[341]
In consequence of this the greater number of the men in Kaffirland
have two or three wives, and hence a certain scarcity of feminine
merchandise in the country; the young men have difficulty in providing
for themselves, and many girls are sold from infancy.[342] The same
customs prevail with the Hottentots; and both Kaffirs and Hottentots
esteem the monogamic preaching of the Christian missionaries as very
impertinent, and on this point both men and women are agreed.[343]
Along the whole course of the Zambesi, says Livingstone, the number of
wives are the measure of a man’s riches, and the women are the first to
find this quite natural.
It is important to observe that in savage societies the woman could not
live independently; for her, celibacy is synonymous with desertion, and
desertion would mean a speedy death. This is even the reason of the
levirate, of which I shall have to speak later.
As for all the negroes of Africa, whatever the degree of their
civilisation or savagery, they have not even a suspicion of the
monogamic _régime_. But, in Africa also, sensuality is only one of the
secondary causes of the plurality of wives so strongly desired by all
the blacks. Their polygamy is chiefly founded on economic motives. At
the Gaboon,[344] says Du Chaillu, the supreme ambition of a man is to
possess a great number of wives. Nothing is of more value to him, for
they cultivate the ground, and their strict duty is to serve him and
furnish him with food. The wife is always purchased from her father
at a price agreed on, and often from her earliest infancy. In this
case she is placed under the care of the husband’s chief wife. The
husband-proprietor does not interfere at all with the agricultural
labour executed by the wives; he only requires them to supply him with
food. If he has bought them, it is merely as a profitable investment.
He consequently treats them as slaves, or as domestic animals, and
has no scruple in lashing them with a whip for nothing at all, and
thus causing ineffaceable scars. “I have seen very few women,” says Du
Chaillu, “who had not traces of this kind on their bodies.”
The whip which serves for these conjugal corrections has a double
thong, made of hippopotamus or sea-cow hide. “You should hear,” says
the traveller, “the worthy husband cry out--‘Ah, wretch! do you think
I have bought you for nothing?’”[345] The Gaboon tribes, of whom Du
Chaillu speaks, are reckoned the least civilised of negroes; but even
among the least gross of African races the conjugal _régime_ and the
degree of subjection imposed on women are scarcely lessened.
At Tchaki, and at Badagry, etc., when Clapperton spoke of English
monogamy to the natives, all his auditors, without distinction of
sex, burst into a laugh,[346] so absurd did the thing appear to them.
Throughout Africa the number of a man’s wives is only limited by his
resources. If, as Schweinfurth tells us, among the Bongos of the upper
Nile, a man rarely has more than three wives, it is simply on account
of the strict law of supply and demand; for a woman costs no less than
ten iron plates, each weighing about two pounds, to which must be
added twenty iron spear heads, all precious articles and not easily
procured.[347] At Bornou also men in easy circumstances have seldom
more than three wives; and the poor have to content themselves, whether
they will or not, with monogamy.[348] But among the negroes of Kaarta
and the Fantis of the coast of Guinea polygamy is excessive. In Kaarta
a private individual often has ten wives and as many concubines;
but princes or knights often have threefold or even tenfold that
number.[349] In consequence of this, about a third of the inhabitants
are of princely or royal blood. As for the Fantis, polygamy is a source
of riches, not only through the labour of the women, but also through
the sale of the children, of whom a large and profitable trade is
made.[350] This trait of morals is not in the least peculiar to them;
throughout black Africa the right of the father of a family includes
that of selling the children, and he exercises it without scruple.
Naturally the last sentiments we may expect to find in African
households are those of delicacy or moral nobility. Humble to servility
in presence of the master, the women give the rein to their shameless
excesses as soon as they can do it without danger.
In Bornou a wife never approaches her husband without kneeling.[351]
When a Poul orders one of his wives to prepare his supper, which
implies that the master desires her company for the night, this signal
favour is received with transports of joy. The chosen wife hastens to
obey, and when the repast is ready she proudly goes to seek the master,
thus humiliating her female colleagues, who retreat in confusion to
their cabins to await their turn.[352] But all this abject behaviour
is merely by compulsion, and the women recoup themselves well for it
whenever they have the chance.
The poor women of the Gaboon, who are lacerated by whips for no
offence, do not understand chastity, and their intrigues constantly
provoke conflicts and _palavers_ between the men of the villages.[353]
The obscenity of the Monboottoo women astonished Schweinfurth, well
acquainted as he was with negro customs.[354] The Bambarra women easily
forget conjugal fidelity for a bead necklace, a fine waist-cloth, etc.;
and, as in so many other countries, the husband-proprietors have no
scruple in hiring out their wives for a sufficient price.[355]
Nevertheless, unauthorised adultery is cruelly punished throughout
Africa; but fear is powerless to ensure to the negro husbands the
purely commercial fidelity they exact from their wives, and therefore,
in order to correct feminine morals, they have recourse in certain
parts to fantastic methods--to the _Mumbo Jumbo_ which Mungo Park
describes.[356] Strangely attired and unrecognisable, a singular
personage, doubtless a sorcerer, appears in the evening after being
called for by frightful howlings in the woods, and first goes to the
spot where the inhabitants are accustomed to assemble to talk at their
ease. This coming is the signal for songs and dances, which last into
the middle of the night. Then the _Mumbo Jumbo_ designates the guilty
or indocile woman. The latter is immediately seized, stripped, bound
to a stake, and vigorously beaten by the _Mumbo_ himself, amid the
acclamations and laughter of the assembly, and especially of the other
women.
In all negro Africa the husbands are generally strangers to the
jealousy of honour which exists among the intelligent husbands of
civilised countries. They do not care for moral fidelity, based on
affection and free choice. The Kaffir woman, Schouter tells us, is the
ox of her husband. A Kaffir said one day, speaking of his wife, “I have
bought her, therefore it is her duty to work.”
“The negro,” relates another traveller (Monteiro), “knows neither love,
affection, nor jealousy. During the many years that I have spent in
Africa I have never seen a negro manifest the least tenderness for a
woman--put his arms around her, give or receive a caress, denoting some
degree of affection or love on one side or the other.... They have no
word in their language to signify love or affection.”[357]
A French traveller says also of the Malagasies, “Modesty and jealousy
are two sentiments very little developed among the Malagasies of both
sexes and all ranks. They push licence very far in their manners, but
quite unconsciously.”[358]
Throughout black Africa, indeed, marriage does not exist, at least
in the sense we attach to the word. It is not a civil institution,
much less a sacrament; it is a bargain, delivering the woman to the
mercy of the buyer. Here and there, however, we see dawnings of legal
marriage--that is to say, a contract sanctioned by civil authority.
Among the Bongos of the upper Nile, for example, a man who wishes to
procure a certain woman generally applies to the chief or to some
dignitary, who enforces his demand.[359]
With the Malagasies, where the social organisation is much more complex
and _quasi_ feudal, there is already a veritable civil marriage. The
future pair, accompanied by their parents, go before the judge or the
chief of the village, declare their intentions, pay the _Hasina_,
or matrimonial tax, and the union is concluded. As is the case in
many countries, Malagasian polygamy already tends towards monogamy.
At Madagascar, as in China, rich men have one chief wife, who has a
house to herself and other privileges; but by the side of the titular
wife there are lesser wives.[360] I shall have to return to this
hierarchical polygamy, which forms a sort of evolutionary connecting
link between primitive polygamy, subjecting all the wives equally
before their owner, and monogamic marriage. But for the present I must
pursue my summary inquiry through the lands of primitive polygamy.
In the whole of Polynesia polygamy was general and unlimited. There,
again, the number of wives was strictly in proportion to rank and
riches.[361] There were, however, examples of voluntary monogamy[362]
among the chiefs, and a much larger number of monogamists, in spite of
themselves, in the lower classes.[363] In several Polynesian islands
polygamy was already evolving towards monogamy; thus, at Samoa,[364]
at Tonga,[365] in New Zealand,[366] there existed a chief wife,
exempted from hard work, and having pre-eminence over the other wives.
Over all the great American continent polygamy is or has been in force.
The Ancas or Araucanos of South America--nomads and robbers--buy very
dear wives when they can, and make concubines of all the prisoners
procured in their razzias, exactly after the manner of the ancient
Arabs. The poor or the feeble among them, as elsewhere, are badly
provided, and are frequently reduced to remain celibate,[367] or to
have only one wife. For the same reasons, the young men among the
Otomacs were often obliged to be contented with an old woman,[368] and
the Charruas waited till their first wife grew old before procuring
a younger one.[369] Herrero tells us also, that in Honduras forced
monogamy was general enough, except, indeed, for the chiefs, who
appropriated the women by the right of the strongest.[370] In South
America, as in Africa, the women were very far from rebelling against
polygamy; for there, also, all the hard work fell to them, and the
burden of it was lightened in proportion to the number of labourers. In
the tribes that were already agricultural, the Guaranis, for example,
the men did nothing to the land but clear off the brushwood and timber;
then came the women, who did all the sowing, harvesting, prepared the
fermented drink for guests,[371] without mentioning other domestic
cares. Such a kind of life is necessarily unfavourable to delicacy, and
even amongst civilised people habitual overwork is hardly compatible
with refined sentiments. In all countries exclusive love and jealousy
suppose not only some moral development, but also a certain amount
of leisure and of time and capacity, to think. It is therefore quite
natural that the savage woman should seldom pretend to possess a man
for herself alone, and on this point the women of the Redskins of
North America think and feel like the Guarani women of Brazil. Thus,
with the Omahas, the man hardly ever takes a second wife but with the
consent of the first.[372] Often the initiative even comes from her;
she goes to find her husband, and says to him, “Marry the daughter
of my brother. She and I are of the same flesh.” It must be admitted
that America is the promised land of the matriarchate, or rather, of
maternal filiation; polygamy easily takes an incestuous colour there;
the wives of the same man are often relatives, habitually sisters. In
about forty of the Redskin tribes, and surely they are not the only
ones, when a man marries the eldest daughter of a family, he acquires,
by express privilege, the right of taking afterwards for wives all the
sisters of the first as soon as they become marriageable.[373] This was
the custom of the Omahas, the Cheyennes, the Crees, the Osages, the
Black-feet, the Crows, the Spokans of Columbia,[374] the Chawanons of
Louisiana, etc.
The custom was not, however, obligatory. The wives were not necessarily
relatives, or, at least, not necessarily sisters. Thus, with the
Omahas, a man sometimes took as wives an aunt and a niece of his first
wife.[375] Among the Californians a man sometimes married not only a
group of sisters, but also their mother,[376] and in this respect the
Greenlanders imitated their hereditary enemies, the Redskins.[377]
But, consanguine or not, polygamy was general among the savage tribes
of North America. The possession of a numerous flock of wives placed
a man above the common as surely as that of a large fortune does
in Europe;[378] religion even sanctified this polygamy, for in all
countries it can accommodate itself to the dominant morals. Thus, the
Chippeways believe that polygamy is agreeable to the Great Spirit; for
it is a means of having a numerous posterity.[379]
Except the habitual consanguinity of the wives, the polygamy of
the Redskins has nothing original in it; it is, as elsewhere, the
privilege of the rich men.[380] Sometimes also the girls are retained
from infancy, and then, as happens with the Noutka-Columbians, the
buyer deposits certain valuable articles as security.[381] In these
polygamous families of Redskins the harmony is rarely disturbed; and
the man, always having the power to repudiate any wife as he may
please, only has to command very submissive ones.[382] Here and there
certain customs appear which have a shade of monogamy about them; for
instance, among the Columbians every wife has her separate habitation,
or, at the least, her special fireside.[383] Sometimes there is a chief
wife having authority over the other wives.[384] But everywhere the
subjection of women in regard to man is extreme. Among the Indians
of New Mexico--and these are not by any means the most savage--the
women have to prepare the food, tan the skins, cultivate the ground,
fabricate the clothes, build the houses, and groom the horses. In
return for this, the men, whose sole occupations are hunting and war,
beat their wives without pity, and often mutilate and kill them.[385]
II. _Polygamy in Asia and Europe._
We might already deduce some general ideas from our rapid survey
of savage polygamy in Oceania, Africa, and America; but it will be
convenient, before we do so, to interrogate the primitive races of Asia
and Europe. Doubtless, the description of their conjugal manners and
customs, after all that precedes, may seem monotonous; nevertheless,
this monotony even is instructive; it proves that in all times and
places, in despite of differences of race, climate and environment, the
evolution of human groups is subject to certain laws, that the family,
marriage, the constitution of property, and social organisation pass
through a series of necessary phases; in short, that in attempting to
construct a science of sociology we are not pursuing a chimera.
I resume, therefore, my enumeration. Among the indigenous tribes of
India polygamy is widely spread, without, however, being universal; for
each one of these small peoples has evolved, as it has been able, more
or less rapidly. Some among them are polyandrous, and even monogamous.
Often enough polyandry co-exists with polygamy, the one appearing as
moral as the other.
With all these aborigines, marriage, or what we are pleased to call
so, is generally concluded by purchase, and the price of the woman
naturally oscillates according to the law of supply and demand. Most
often it is represented by poultry, pigs, oxen, or cows, given to the
parents. From this manner of procuring wives it seems that, there
also, polygamy is the luxury of the rich or of chiefs. Among the
Mishmis these privileged individuals sometimes possess sixty wives.
The Mishmi husbands form a rare exception on one point--they are not
at all exacting about the fidelity of their wives; they consider them
as slaves or servants, and provided they continue to benefit their
masters by their work, the latter willingly shut their eyes to their
intrigues.[386]
Among these polygamous tribes, which it would take too long to
enumerate, may be counted the Miris, the Dophlas, the Juangs, the
Khamtis, the Singphos, etc.
We must again note in certain tribes, the Khamtis, for example, the
monogamic pre-eminence of the first wife.[387] It is one of those
sociological analogies of which I have already spoken, and it is
important to point it out.
Polygamy still prevails with the mountaineers of Bootan, concurrently
with polyandry. It is often incestuous; a man willingly marries two
sisters, the one an adult, the other younger. But no other incest
is recognised or punished except that committed between son and
mother.[388]
Farther north, among the Ostiaks, a man feels no repugnance to marrying
several sisters,[389] and, in general, polygamy is very widely spread
among the nomad Mongols. A Yakout, for example, if obliged to make
frequent journeys, takes care to have a wife in every place at which
he stops.[390]
The polygamic _régime_ is also in great honour in the Mongolian
archipelagoes of Asia, in the Palos Islands, in the Caroline Islands,
etc. Among the Battas of Sumatra it evidently begins to be distasteful
to the women, since the polygamous husband is obliged to assign to each
of his wives a special hearth, and kitchen utensils of her own, with
which she prepares her food apart, or with that of her husband, when
she is on duty, and required by the master.[391]
In this chapter I confine myself to primitive polygamy, to that of the
grossest savages or barbarians; but there are barbarians of every race
and colour, and the roots of all superior civilisations necessarily go
far down into primitive savagery. Now we have seen that the polygamic
_régime_ is prevalent throughout the world among races that are little
cultivated; we may hence conclude that the most civilised nations must
have begun with polygamy, and, in reality, it has been thus everywhere
and always. In the various civilised societies, living or dead,
marriage has commenced by being polygamous. It is a law which has few
exceptions.
In ancient Peru, the Incas decreed monogamy to be obligatory for the
lower classes. The Chinese attribute to Fo-Hi, their first sovereign,
the institution of marriage. This legendary king is said to have raised
them out of promiscuity. Such also was the _rôle_ of Cecrops, in
Greece, and the same thing happened in primitive India. About thirty
years ago a number of erudite Europeans, especially the mythologists
and linguists, were smitten with a blind love for the Indian hymns of
the Rig-Veda. They set to work to torture these old Sanscrit texts,
naturally obscure, and by subjecting them to a sort of linguistic
examination, they wrung from them imaginary revelations. It was
decided that a unique and marvellous race, primitively endowed with
every virtue and capacity, had sprung up one fine day on some plateau
or other of Central Asia. The most enthusiastic of them generously
endowed these hypothetical Aryans with superhuman faculties. A French
academician believed and declared that from the high plateaus of Pâmir
they perceived the sea, distant, however, some hundreds of leagues;
he affirms that they understood the “circles of the stars,” and were
omniscient. It is to be presumed that this model race was of necessity
monogamous, since it was perfect. To-day, however, we must demolish all
these castles in the air, too lightly built in primitive and chimerical
Arya. The antiquity of the Vedic hymns has had to be much shortened,
and, if we consent to read them without prejudice, we shall have little
admiration for the authors, those gross Aryans, who tried to make their
gods drunk in order to obtain cows, and who sacrificed and cut to
pieces animals, and perhaps men, on their altars. There is surely room
to suppose that their social condition was not more refined than their
religion. On this point the information that may be drawn from the
Vedic hymns is vague and drowned in the waves of religious effusion.
Nevertheless the Rig-Veda speaks of spouses of the gods, and of princes
surrounded by their wives, etc. In fact, a document much more precise
and more recent, the Code of Manu, abundantly proves that the Hindoos,
like all other peoples, have begun by being polygamous.
I do not now insist on this point, as I shall return to it later.
In every country the primitive races have practised polygamy, when
that has been possible for them. Our European ancestors have not been
more scrupulous on this point than our hypothetical Aryan cousins of
Central Asia. Cæsar tells us that the Gauls were polygamous, and had
the right of life and death over their wives.[392] Tacitus vaunts much
the monogamy of the Germans; this moral feature, says he, distinguishes
them from other barbarians, but he confesses that certain German chiefs
had several wives, and that, as it happens in all barbarous countries,
the wife was sold by the parents for presents consisting of oxen,
horses, and arms.[393]
Polygamy was so natural to German morals that, long after Tacitus, the
Merovingian kings, Clotaire and his sons, for example, still practised
it, that Dagobert had three wives, and that Charlemagne himself was
bigamous. We know, too, that Saint Columban was banished from Gaul
only for having blamed the polygamy of King Thierry. Let us resign
ourselves, therefore, to confess the truth. The white race has no
divine investiture. Like all the others, it has sprung from animality;
like all the others, it has been polygamous, and we have only to open
our eyes to perceive that, in the present day, in countries reputed to
be the most civilised, and even in the classes reputed to be the most
distinguished, the majority of individuals have polygamic instincts
which they find it difficult to resist.
We are now in a position to form a just opinion of primitive polygamy.
Its causes are manifold. The principal one is often the disproportion
of the sexes, resulting from the enormous mortality of men which savage
life necessitates. The desire of giving the rein to a sensuality that
there is, as yet, no thought of repressing, may have a certain share
in the matter; but this motive, which is perhaps dominant in the
polygamous anthropoid apes, quickly becomes secondary in man.
Even the lowest savage is more calculating, and has more forethought,
than the monkey. His first slave, one may say his first domestic
animal, is his wife. Even when he is still a simple hunter and nomad,
he has always game to be carried, fire to be lighted, a shelter to be
erected, without reckoning that wives are very apt at gathering edible
fruits and shell-fish, and rendering a thousand services. Besides, they
give birth to offspring that can be bartered, sold, or even eaten at
need.
It is, therefore, very desirable to possess as many as possible
of these beings, fitted for such various ends. If a man is an
agriculturist, the wife is then of still greater utility; he puts upon
her all the hard work; she digs, plants, sows, reaps even, and all
for the profit of her master. She is, besides, a subjected and feeble
creature, whom he can treat just as he will, and on whom he can let
loose his instincts of brutal domination. By force or by ruse, by
capture or by purchase, he therefore procures himself as many wives
as possible. He often buys them in the lump; for example, a lot of
sisters, or of relations of different ages. This diversity of age has
its value; for, in all the numerous uses to which a wife can be put,
the younger ones can take at need the place of the elder when the
latter are worn out or broken down.
Polygamy begins with equality--that is to say, that the man subjects
his little feminine flock to an equal servitude, against which the
wives do not think of rebelling, as they find it quite natural, for
they are not of a more refined nature than their proprietor. By
degrees, however, a certain hierarchy is established among the wives of
the same man. This comes to pass when the social structure is already
more complex, when there are chiefs, nobles, and priests. Polygamy,
in this case, is restrained. Though it continues to be the taste of
nearly all men, it becomes the privilege of the rich and powerful. The
latter sometimes even indulge in an excessive polygamy, and it becomes
difficult for them to maintain order and servile submission among their
feminine flock. From this time they have one or more titular wives, who
rule over their companions, and are sometimes exempt from hard labour.
These chief wives are often daughters, sisters, or relatives of noted
warriors, or of important men, with whom the husband is allied, and
whose prestige somewhat protects the wives that they have given, or
more often sold. In consequence of this, a certain tendency to become
a distinct personality awakens in the wives themselves; they insist on
having their separate hearth, and even their distinct apartment; life
in the flock weighs on them.
Polygamy then puts on monogamic tendencies. The greater number of
superior races have adopted this hierarchical polygamy before reaching
the legal monogamy, in a mitigated form, of which I shall treat later.
It is important now to describe with some details this polygamy of
superior races.
FOOTNOTES:
[339] Baudin, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xviii. p. 34.
[340] Moerenhout, _Voy. aux îles_, etc., t. ii. p. 235.
[341] Waitz, _Anthropology_, vol. i. p. 299.--Steedman, _Wanderings,
etc., in South Africa_, vol. i. p. 240.--Delegorgue, t. I^{er.} p. 154;
t. ii. p. 231.
[342] Campbell, _Hist. Univ. des Voy_., t. xxix. p. 357.
[343] Burchell, _ibid._ t. xxvi. p. 204.
[344] Du Chaillu, _Voy. dans l’Afrique équatoriale_, pp. 376, 377.
[345] Du Chaillu, _loc. cit._ p. 377.
[346] _Second Voyage_, etc., pp. 18-48.
[347] _The Heart of Africa_, vol. i. p. 301.
[348] Denham and Clapperton, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxvii. p 437.
[349] Gray and Dockard, _ibid._ t. xviii. p. 373.
[350] Brodie Cruikshank, _Sojourn of Eight Years on the Gold Coast_.
[351] Denham and Clapperton, _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxvii. p. 437.
[352] Mollien, _ibid._ t. xxviii. p. 439.
[353] Du Chaillu, _loc. cit._, pp. 378-435.
[354] _The Heart of Africa_, vol. ii. p. 91.
[355] Raffenel, _Nouv. Voy. aux Pays des Nègres_, t. I^{er.} p. 402.
[356] _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. xxv. p. 58.
[357] Herbert Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. ii. pp. 284-293.
[358] Dupré, _Trois Mois à Madagascar_, p. 153.
[359] Schweinfurth, _The Heart of Africa_, vol. i. p. 27.
[360] Dupré, _Trois Mois à Madagascar_, p. 153.
[361] Pritchard, _Polynesian Reminiscences_, etc., p. 270.
[362] Th. West, _Ten Years in South Central Polynesia_, p. 270.
[363] Bougainville, _Voyages_, p. 244.
[364] Pritchard, _loc. cit._, p. 372.
[365] Cook (Third Voyage), _Hist. Univ. des Voy._, t. ix. p. 70.
[366] Dumont d’Urville.
[367] A. d’Orbigny, _L’homme Américain_, t. I^{er.} p. 403.
[368] _Voyage à la Terre-ferme_, etc., t. I^{er.} p. 304.
[369] A. d’Orbigny, _loc. cit._, t. ii. p. 89.
[370] H. Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. ii. p. 282.
[371] A. d’Orbigny, _loc. cit._, t. ii. p. 308.
[372] J. Owen Dorsey, _Omaha Sociology_, p. 260 (_Smithsonian
Institution_, 1885).
[373] L. Morgan, _Ancient Societies_, p. 432.
[374] Bancroft, _loc. cit._, vol. i. p. 277.
[375] J. Owen Dorsey, _loc. cit._, p. 260.
[376] Bancroft, _loc. cit._, vol. i. p. 388.
[377] Wake, _Evolution of Morality_, vol. i. p. 255.
[378] H. Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. i. p. 283.
[379] _Id., ibid._ vol. ii. p. 285.
[380] Domenech, _Voy. pitt._, p. 509.--Bancroft, vol. i. pp. 168-195.
[381] Bancroft, _loc. cit._, p. 511.
[382] Domenech, _loc. cit._, p. 511.
[383] Bancroft, _loc. cit._, vol. i. p. 277.
[384] _Ibid._ vol. i. p. 511.
[385] _Ibid._ vol. i. p. 511.
[386] Dalton, _Descriptive Ethno. of Bengal_, pp. 12, 16, 19.
[387] _Ibid._ p. 8.
[388] _Voy. au Bootan_, by a Hindoo author, in _Revue Britannique_,
1827.
[389] Wake, _loc. cit._, vol. i. p. 269.
[390] H. Spencer, _Sociology_, vol. ii. p. 280.
[391] _Id., ibid._ vol. ii. p. 292.
[392] _De bello Gallico_, vi. 19.
[393] _Germania_, xviii.