but certain tribes either admit divorce by mutual consent, or limit the right of repudiation, or recognise certain rights of the wife. The Malemoute Esquimaux drive away their wives at will,[1] as do also the Kamtschatdales, their congeners of Asia;[2] but, with the Esquimaux, hardly any but a free and capricious union is known; there is as yet no durable marriage. It is nearly the same in a certain number of American tribes, where divorce is easy at the will of the two parties. Among the Dakota Santals the wife who is ill treated by her companion has the right to retire; but she cannot take the children without the husband's consent.[3] The marriage of the Iroquois, and of some other neighbouring tribes, was also broken by mutual consent. These Redskins lived in great common houses, each one inhabited by a fraction of the tribe, a gens, and consequently, that one of the divorced couple whose relations dominated in the gens, remained there; the other was forced to depart.[4] The Redskins of California also practised this easy and mutual divorce.[5] The Navajos still recognised the right of the wife to leave her husband, but already the masculine point of honour entered into play, and the deserted husband was obliged, under pain of ridicule, to revenge himself by killing some one.[6] At Guatemala the wife and husband could part at will and on the slightest pretext.[7] The Moxos of South America only regarded marriage as an agreement that could be dissolved by the will of the two parties.[8] But in many other Redskin tribes the right of divorce seems far from being reciprocal; it is replaced, to the detriment of the wife, by repudiation, which the husband can pronounce with a word. According to the Abbé Domenech, it is the fear of this terrible word which maintains an appearance of harmony among the many women in the interior of the Indian wigwams.[9] With the Chippeways a man takes or buys a girl of twelve, and
- ↑ Bancroft, loc. cit., vol. i. p. 81.
- ↑ Beniouski, Hist. Univ. des Voy., t. xxxi. p. 410.
- ↑ J. O. Dorsey, Omaha Sociology, Smithsonian Institution, 1885.
- ↑ L. Morgan, Ancient Societies.
- ↑ Bancroft, loc. cit., vol. i. p. 412.
- ↑ Id., ibid. p. 512.
- ↑ Id., ibid. vol. ii. p. 672.
- ↑ A. d'Orbigny, L'homme Américain, t. ii. p. 211.
- ↑ Id., Voy. pittor., etc., p. 511.
