their advantages and disadvantages. Capture cost nothing, and it procured wives and concubines over whom the husband had every possible right; but, in practice, it was not exempt from danger, and once accomplished, it exposed him still to revenge and retaliation. Men became resigned, therefore, to the purchase of the wife, as soon as they could dispose of some exchange-values; and as nothing, absolutely nothing, was any obstacle to the caprice or avidity of the parents, the most unreasonable marriages were often negotiated, and notably the marriages of children.
This custom of selling children, especially girls, for a future conjugal association is very common all over the world.
In New Caledonia the children are betrothed by the parents almost from the moment of birth.[1] In Africa, among the black races, and notably the Hottentots, whose women age fast, the prudent men retain, years in advance, the little girls destined to succeed their actual wives.[2] In Ashantee little girls of ten and twelve thus sold are already legally considered the wives of the acquirer, although they have not yet left their mothers, and any familiarity taken with them by another man is punished by a fine paid to the future owner.[3]
In Polynesia, also, the fathers, mothers, and relatives arranged the conjugal unions of the children years before these unions were actually possible.[4]
With the Moxos and the Chiquitos of South America premature marriages were such a settled order of things that there were no celibates above the age of fourteen for the men and twelve for the women. The Jesuit missionaries in America had completely adopted this native custom, and they often married young girls of ten to boys of twelve years. Naturally these child marriages entailed sometimes equally precocious widowhood. D'Orbigny states that he has seen among these tribes a widower of twelve and a widow of ten years.[5]
