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.[1] Sometimes also the girls are retained from infancy, and then, as happens with the Noutka-Columbians, the buyer deposits certain valuable articles as security.[2] 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.[3] 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.[4] Sometimes there is a chief wife having authority over the other wives.[5] 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.[6]
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
