CHAPTER VIII.
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 amimals, 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
