parts of both continents there seem to have been certain festivals during which restrictions were relaxed, but the latitude granted by all these social sanctions did not weaken the gravity of transgression under other conditions.
As to forms of marriage, it appears that the general tendency in both continents was monogamous. On the other hand, almost everywhere the custom was for chiefs, priests, and shamans to have more than one wife. In the centers of higher culture, those occupying positions of power and influence kept large establishments for women. The area in which plural marriage seems strongest is the bison area of North America, but this may be a partial exaggeration due to relatively richer data. Some reports for the Eskimo and Déné tribes indicate occasional states of plural husbands, but this appears rather as an adjustment to necessity than as an established mode of marriage. So thus, taking the New World as a whole, we find it singularly free of anything like group marriage, such as is found in the Pacific Islands and Asia. Yet we do find forms of cross-cousin marriage in California and northward into the salmon area;[1] also, it has been found in Guiana, South America.
The notion that the husband of a woman acquired superior rights to his wife's sisters is found in many parts of the New World, and its natural correlate, the taking over of a brother's or, in some cases, a maternal uncle's widow. These are particularly strong wherever plural wives are common. On the other hand, strict and universal monogamy holds for a few communities, as the Iroquois and certain Pueblo villages of southwestern United States.
Marriage ceremonies and the regulations for divorce vary greatly from tribe to tribe, making their discussion here impractical. The conventional exchange of presents previously noted is so developed in some localities as to give the impression that a man purchases his wife, but in many such cases the relatives also make an equal return as a preliminary to the ceremony. Yet, when property is given to the bride's family, whether as gift or purchase, and the woman for any cause deserts her husband, he can demand equivalent return.
- ↑ Rivers, 1914. I.
