sends her back when he is tired of her.[1] The Chinook husband can also repudiate his wife according to his caprice.[2] In a tribe of the Nahuas, the husbands enjoyed the same rights, but on condition of exercising them on the day after the marriage; the experimental union preceded the durable one.[3] In New Mexico, the husband repudiated at will, on condition only of restoring his wife's possessions.[4] A single word of the Caribean husbands also sufficed to dismiss the wife.[5] The same rule is found with the Abipones also, where the husband can repudiate his wife on the slightest pretext.[6]
The conclusion to be drawn from all these facts is, that there are no more fixed rules for divorce than for marriage in savage societies. But, as the wife is more often bought or captured, it is quite natural that her owner should send her away at his pleasure. Wherever divorce is mutual, it is when the wife costs little to obtain, or where the ties of relationship are well defined between the members of her and her tribe, or her gens, who then think themselves bound to afford her a certain protection. II. Divorce and Repudiation among Barbarous Peoples.
These free and fragile marriages are found in societies more civilised than those of the Polynesians and the American Indians. Bruce tells us that in Abyssinia marriage is in reality only a free union, without any sanction or ceremony; couples unite, part, and re-unite as many times as they like. There are neither legitimate nor illegitimate children. In case of divorce the children are divided; the girls belong to the father, and the boys to the mother.[7]
M. d'Abbadie affirms also that Abyssinian marriage is purely civil and always dissoluble; he adds that it is dotal, and co-exists, for rich men, with the concubinate.[8] It is
- ↑ Bancroft, loc. cit., vol. i. p. 117.
- ↑ Id., ibid. vol. i. p. 241.
- ↑ Id., ibid. vol. ii. p. 261.
- ↑ Id., ibid. vol. i. p. 511.
- ↑ Voy. à la Terre-ferme, etc., t. I^{er.} p. 304.
- ↑ Dobritzhoffer, An Account of the Abipones of Paraguay, vol. ii. p. 97.
- ↑ Bruce, Hist. Univ. des Voy., t. xxiii. p. 365.
- ↑ D'Abbadie, Douze ans dans la haute Ethiopie, pp. 100, 128.
