for a whole year to the house of the parents of his betrothed to prepare the food, carry the water, or heat the bath-chamber; then, when his year of service was over, he took away the daughter.[1] In Yucatan the son-in-law was obliged to serve his father-in-law for two or three years. This manner of acting even became a general custom which it was considered immoral not to follow.[2] With the Mayas, the bridegroom was required to build himself a house opposite that of his future father-in-law, and he lived there five or six years, giving his labour during all that period.[3]
Although more common in America than elsewhere, the custom of marriage by servitude is not confined to that continent. The Limboos and the Kirantis of Bengal often buy their wives by giving a certain term of labour to the father, in whose house they remain until the payment is finished.[4] We know also that marriage by servitude is not peculiar to savages of inferior races, since the Bible informs us that Jacob only espoused Leah and Rachel at the price of fourteen years' service. Without dilating further on marriage by servitude, I shall remark by the way that it had for its result the placing of the husband in a subordinate position towards the woman, or at least towards the family of the woman, in which he had so long been treated as a servant. A certain independence was gained by the wife who had been acquired in this manner. Thus, with the Kenaï, of whom I was speaking just now, the woman had the right to return to her father if she was not well treated by her husband.[5] Marriage by servitude had therefore, in fact, a moral side; it lessened the subjection, always hard and sometimes cruel, to which woman is liable in nearly all savage or barbarous societies.
III. Marriage by Purchase.
Marriage by purchase is much more widely spread than marriage by servitude or service. All over the world, in all races and in all times, wherever history can inform us, we find well-authenticated examples permitting us to affirm that
